2x online interviews
Interview 1: source work, discussion; Interview 2: source-based and personal statement discussion
Reviewed the “what we look for” section of the ASNC website, grammatical terms definitions, personal statement revision
The interviewers want to see how you can develop ideas and talk through new concepts presented to you
Remember this advice isn't official. There is no guarantee it will reflect your experience because university applications can change between years. Check the official Cambridge and Oxford websites for more accurate information on this year's application format and the required tests.
Also, someone else's experience may not reflect your own. Most interviews are more like conversations than tests and like, any conversation, they are quite interactive.
Number of interviews: 2
Online interview: yes
My interviews focused predominately on source interpretation and my personal statement; the questions that were asked pertaining to the images or passages of text shown were rather similar and open-ended, encouraging me to provide a point for discussion which they then probed further. My first interview focused on such source work, and grammar also, and my second used sources again but they also asked about what I thought of particular aspects of the ideas I mentioned in my personal statement. I thought this eased the pressure a bit, allowing me to feel more in control of my interview, and it less like any sort of interrogation!
I made sure to review the “what we look for” section of the ASNC website, and made sure that, despite not having a language GCSE or A Level, I understood basic grammatical terms like ‘inflexion’ and the case system, as well as being able to identify these within relevant languages. The best thing I did though was to reread my personal statement and treat it how I thought the interviewers might; by picking apart certain phrases or things I had brought up, I ensured I could substantiate points further in an interview if it arose, and I could link ideas together.
Understand that interviewers don’t want to catch you out! They want to see how you can develop ideas and talk through new concepts presented to you in whatever form that might be, whether it’s a problem sheet, image or passage of text. Also, nobody ever has a ‘perfect’ interview, and the majority of applicants who are successful can likely pick out something from their interview that they thought wasn’t the right thing to say, or should have been said differently, etc. So don’t spend time overthinking it!