My interview was one of the first in December and I arrived far too early. Because they were redoing the JCR I had nowhere to wait before my first interview so I got pretty cold sitting outside by the backs. I would definitely recommend trying to be inside so your handshake with your interviewer isn’t freezing cold...

My first interview was a general history Interview (as opposed to the subject specific ASNC interview later that morning) and was outside of the main college. There was one professor interviewing me and she made me feel very at ease in her study.

The second subject specific interview was a few hours later in old courts (there was plenty of time to get lunch in college) and I had two interviewers this time. I found this one more intimidating because they obviously knew each other quite well and had some in-jokes that were referenced.

In the first interview we just chatted for quite a while before she started to ask me relevant questions. She made it clear she wasn’t looking for the ‘right’ answers to stuff I wouldn’t know, given I wasn’t going for a history degree, but more about how I thought about the question and adapted to new information she gave me. At one point she showed me a picture of an item of clothing and asked me to think about what culture that it would have been worn in. Obviously she didn’t expect me to know the answer, but was interested in how I would take the limited information given to make an educated guess. When I started to go off on a wrong tangent she would give me some new information and steer me back on course.

The second interview was testing my commitment to the subject and my understanding of how language worked.

For the language part, we talked about structure and where English differs from Latin. We also talked about themes in an Old English poem which I had mentioned in my personal statement. They didn’t expect me to know a lot about all the areas of the subject because I wouldn’t have studied it at school, but they did expect me to have read around and shown an interest in parts of it. They seemed wary of someone coming into ASNC then converting to a different subject. They want to know you’re keen for specifically ASNC and won’t flake out on them in the first term. So they asked me what papers I was thinking of taking if I got a place. Luckily I’d looked at it quite a lot and already knew, but that could have thrown me off a bit.

I did fair amount of looking for specific events related to my subject (conferences, museum exhibitions etc) which was not only really useful to reference but also quite fun. Possibly the best thing I did was to search for my interviewers online when I got their names and do a bit of sneaky stalking. I found one of them was doing a talk a few weeks beforehand in London so I went along to it. I actually asked him a question about it at the end of the interview which was a bit sucking-up but obviously worked.

For ASNC at least they don’t expect you to be at undergrad level already, they just want to know you’re as excited as they are about all the wacky stuff the subject covers. They want to know you’re bright and you can think in a ‘teachable’ way, but more than that they want to see your passion. Letting that come across is so important. To be honest if you haven’t read a fair amount before interview anyway then it might not be the right subject for you - it’s niche and weird and wonderful and you have to be excited by that right from the start. Make them sure you won’t jump ship the second you arrive and show them why you care about the subject as much as they do, and you should be fine.