How to Support Your Child Through Interviews

What Actually Helps

The pressure that piles up around interview season rarely comes from anywhere malicious. It comes from parents who want to help and aren’t sure what actually helps, so they end up doing a bit of everything: extra questions at dinner, comparisons to how things used to work, constant check ins. Most of what genuinely helps is quieter than that.

Give Them a Neutral Practice Partner

Mock interviews with someone who isn’t a parent are one of the highest value things you can offer, if you’re able to. Practicing with a stranger who gives honest feedback based on nothing but your child’s actual performance carries a different weight than practicing at the kitchen table, where everyone already knows and loves them.

I didn’t want any practice sessions when I was preparing for my own interviews. I was the type who wanted to handle everything myself. My mum booked two sessions anyway, sixty minutes each, with another medical student, without asking me first. I resisted at the time, but both sessions turned out to be genuinely useful, because the feedback was honest and had nothing to do with who I was to the person giving it. If you can afford it, this is a high return on a fairly small investment. The more real interactions your child gets before the actual day, the more prepared they’ll feel.

If the cost isn’t realistic, free options exist too. There are active parent communities online, on Facebook and elsewhere, where people share exactly what they’re going through and answer each other’s questions daily. There are also free and paid resources further down this page your child can work through at their own pace.

Be Careful With Comparisons and Old Advice

Even well-meaning comments can add weight without you realizing it. Bringing up how you or a relative went through the process, comparing your child’s preparation to another applicant’s, or drilling a rehearsed answer word for word until it sounds stiff can all backfire. What helps more is treating the process as theirs to navigate, with you there to support it rather than direct it.

Let Them Be Upset Before You Try to Fix It

After a practice session or a real interview goes badly, the instinct is often to jump straight to solutions. Give it a beat first. Let your child be frustrated or disappointed without immediately trying to reframe it or plan the next move. Once that initial reaction has settled, they’ll actually be in a better place to think constructively about what to do differently.

If You Want to Run a Mock Interview Yourself

This is one of the most useful things you can do directly, and it costs nothing but time. Find out the actual format your child’s chosen universities use. Some run interviews online, some in person, some use five stations, some use eight. Recreate that specific structure as closely as you can rather than just asking a handful of generic questions.

You can pull sample scenarios from AI tools or from free question banks online. Run it for the full length rather than stopping after a few minutes, and give feedback the way an actual interviewer would: specific, a little critical where it’s warranted, and without going easy just because it’s your child in front of you.

How Involved Should You Actually Be?

There isn’t one right answer here, it depends entirely on your child. Some want to prepare almost entirely alone and see heavy parental involvement as more pressure than help. Others do their best work with a parent directly across the table. I know someone who only ever practiced with his mum, no tutors, no formal mock interviews, and he got into medical school at the University of East Anglia. Pay attention to what your own child actually responds to rather than assuming more involvement is always better.

Remember the Bigger Picture

Interviews are one part of a process that also includes personal statements, UCAS deadlines, and ongoing schoolwork or mock exams. Your job isn’t only to help with interview prep, it’s to help your child stay on top of everything at once without burning out. Check in on whether they’re on track without hovering, help them protect time to rest, and once the interview itself is over, make sure they actually get a proper break. It’s a genuinely demanding few months, for them and for you.

If you want more structured support than this post can offer, there’s a free and a paid resource further down this page. Parents from last year’s cohort found it a genuinely useful way to help their child prepare.