A lot of people have been asking me about advice for the Loran Award regional interviews that are coming up in a few weeks. I decided to compile a lot of the things I have been telling students into an article here. Keep in mind that I did not move on to nationals when I went through these interviews two years ago.
NOTE: I’m not claiming to know anything in detail about the selection process or how the judges are trained to assess the applicants, so this is just my opinion, and you should take it with a grain of salt.
Regional Interview Structure
This is the structure for the regional interview I had in fall of 2005. It could have changed since then, but I highly doubt it.
The students in each region were divided into groups of about 10 students. Each group was associated with a panel of four judges.
In the morning you have two 15 minute interviews, each of them a 1-on-1 with a judge from your panel.
You then have lunch with a third judge from your panel, along with one or more of the other semi-finalists from your group.
In the afternoon you have a 15-20 minute interview with all four judges on your panel – so there’s one judge you won’t meet until the final panel interview.
I’m not really sure how the selection process goes from there, but I would imagine something like two students from each group move on to nationals, but I’m not really sure.