The short answer: what interviewers write after an admissions interview is gentler and more specific than parents imagine: impressions in sentences, not scores. How the child engaged, what lit them up, how they think out loud: with context attached, like "quiet start, fully warmed by the middle." There is no rubric with a shyness column. After twenty years of writing and reading these, I can tell you the sentences that moved committees were about true moments, and a true moment is something any prepared-not-rehearsed kid can produce.
When and how is the interview write-up written?
The mechanics first, because they demystify the whole thing. The write-up happens after the conversation, not during. Most interviewers keep the notebook closed so the child is talking to a person, not performing for a clipboard, and it's written soon, while the conversation is fresh. It runs anywhere from a paragraph to a page, and it joins the application as the interview's voice in the file: the one document written by someone who actually sat with your child.
What do interviewers actually write about a child?
What's in one: the texture of the conversation. How the child engaged: the energy, the pace, whether it became a real exchange. The spark: what lit them up, often with the kid's own words quoted, because a true line is worth more on the page than any summary of it. How they think: out loud, carefully, playfully. Context that protects the child: the nervous start, the warm-up arc, the visibly tired morning. And often the child's own question, because it says so much. Lines of the genre tend to sound like: "Opened up completely when we hit dinosaurs; knows an astonishing amount." "Thoughtful; chooses words carefully. Don't mistake the pace for disengagement." "Asked what kids do at lunch. Wants to know if this is a place to belong." Those are composites, not quotes from any real file, but they are the exact shape of the real thing.
What never appears in an interview write-up?
What's not in one, and this list is the relief: scores on confidence. Columns for eye contact, volume, or the handshake. A checklist of impressive books or correct answers. The write-up also isn't a gotcha log. The flubbed fact and the blanked question rarely make the page at all, because catching mistakes was never what the conversation was for. Interviewers write what a child is, not what a child got wrong.
How do admissions committees use the write-up?
How committees use them is why they matter: until the write-up, a file is paper. Grades, scores, recommendations written by adults about a student. The write-up is the moment a name becomes a child in the room. Its sentences get read aloud. Which explains the arithmetic that should reorganize your prep: one true moment outweighs twenty adequate answers, because adequate doesn't make the page. True does.
Can you prepare for a good write-up?
So here is what this means for preparation. Honestly, it's this whole site in one paragraph. You cannot manufacture a good sentence about your kid. You can only make room for one: a rested child, un-drilled, carrying one real interest, able to survive a pause. That's the kid who hands the interviewer something worth writing. The rehearsed kid produces the other kind of sentence, and yes, coached is a word that appears in write-ups. Choose which page you're preparing for.
Jennifer Hines spent twenty years as a Dean of Admission at Noble and Greenough School. Her free guide, What They're Really Asking, decodes fifteen interview questions from the other side of the table, and shows why the quiet kid is often the one who lands them best.