Steffen Timmer interviewed James, a Notre Dame sophomore, who went to John Adams High School.
Date: 3/1/2017
Type: Interactive Interview
Location: James’s dorm room in Fisher Hall
Team participants: Conducted interview alone
User Characteristics: Sophomore Notre Dame student, PLS major
Male
Basketball Player
Father is a professor at Notre Dame
Went to St Joseph’s Grade School in South Bend for 7th and 8th grade
Started at Adams for Freshman year of high school
What is this person about – what drives him/her? James is driven to succeed academically as well as athletically, but places academics at the forefront of his decision.
What is this person’s biggest point of pain? Getting the best education could be the pain point. But also it is that his parent’s were the ones that made the high school decision for him. They chose Adams because of the IB program.
Memorable quotes from interview:
“Adams was like a liberal, private school.”
“Adams was like a school within a school with the magnet part.”
“Public schools aren’t great, IB carries Adams.”
Top 3 Learnings:
- Other kids provide a lot of the information James has about other schools. If he hears from someone that he trusts that Adams is a good school then he follows that idea.
- James would go to St Joseph’s High School if he redid his decision. He says the IB program did not really make a difference on his education compared to if he took AP classes.
- James said his parents would want him to go to Trinity if they could redo the decision. James has two brothers currently at Trinity and apparently his parents love it there. It is a rigorous school that prepares kids academically. James described Trinity as strict and structured if kids need that. He said some of the kids there are kind of weird and it would not be his type of school.
Key Insight – (1) A prospective student gets a lot of his information about a school from other kids he knows. So making sure kids love their experience while at Clay is key. (2) Parents have a large say in the decision, as James’s parents were the sole decision maker in this situation.
I also did a card sort activity with James.
James rated academic rigor as his top reason for choosing a high school, with friends/culture and extracurricular activities tying for second. James rated AP courses as being the most important type of course when choosing a high school when given the option of CTE courses, AP courses, and Performing arts courses. If given the choice of IB courses James may have chosen that. I only had him rank the Clay courses though so we would know what Clay should target. Finally I had James rank 7 local South Bend area High Schools. Clay ranked 6th in James’s list, only ahead of Washington. Clearly there is a perception problem for Clay that we need to figure out how to fix. Finally attached is a video of James’s ranking what factor is most important to him in choosing a high school between location, academics, and safety.