English Literature Admissions Test (ELAT); 2x interviews
Interview 1: personal statement, SAQ; Interview 2: reading habits, submitted essays
Further reading to supplement personal statement
Past papers
Interviews are interesting chats - try to enjoy it if you can.
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.
Test taken:
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: About a minute
Length of interviews: 30 mins
Online interview: No
We talked about my personal statement for a bit - not all of it but a couple of texts. We also talked about the unseen poems they gave me half an hour before the interview - that was the bulk of the first one. I was asked briefly about something I put on my
In the second interview, we talked about my reading habits - e.g. how much I read a week. We also talked about my submitted essays. The interviewers introduced a theory about character to me and asked me to respond to it in relation to a book I'd put on my statement.
I reread the things on my personal statement and cast around for some further reading, especially criticism, which I could being in if asked for some back-up evidence to any of the points I made in my statement. The best advice I got was to be teachable - they don't expect you to know everything, you're applying to do a degree and learn! But they do want you to respond positively to suggestions they make, so if they suggest a theory or an idea about a text, roll with it and see if you agree. You don't have to agree, but you do need to consider stuff carefully. I also
The ELAT is unseen analysis - it's skills you already have from your English lessons in school. So there's no need to worry or feel you need to spend loads and loads of time preparing. That said, it's a good idea to know what's coming up, so looking through a few past papers to get a feel of the paper is a good idea. They're all available online somewhere - just see what you would write and get used to the rubric.
The application is holistic - messing up one part doesn't mean you've not got in! It's also super hard to tell what 'messing up' looks like so don't try to second guess the process. Getting into any university is a great achievement, so don't feel like it's Cambridge or bust. Interviews are interesting chats - try to enjoy it if you can. Don't stress! They just want to get to know you and see if you're right for them, for the cohort they're building, and if they're right for you.