Competition for a spot in a good secondary school in Hong Kong is high, so some top schools, to ensure that they’re accepting only the brightest students, have been asking applicants some pretty cryptic questions at interviews.
An non-governmental organisation collected interview questions from several different secondary schools over the past few years and found many of the questions pretty puzzling.
Some unusual questions such as “give us five functions of a paper clip”, “give us five similarities between a book and a cloud” and “if you have 26 hours a day, how would you manage your time” were asked.
Schools say they notice that there is a trend for students’ answers to be pretty standard and formulaic as parents have been sending their children to interview workshops. By asking students more atypical questions will give the teachers a better understanding of how well the student can think on the fly and out-of-the-box.
A tip for students, the schools says it’s best students don’t recite answers they’ve memorised, but rather think about the question carefully and answer it to the best of their abilities.
Source: The Sun
Photo: See-ming Lee, Flickr
