Test taken: ELAT
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 5 minutes
Length of interviews: 20 minutes
Online interview: Yes

I mainly got asked about my personal statement and not really the essays I submitted. I got asked about how my other a-levels relate to English and I talked about translation and understanding a language more based on how it differs in the original (I used Albert Camus and the ‘maman’ translation on the first page because I did French a-level) We also talked about what I meant by ‘subversive literature’ in my personal statement and I got asked a question about whether structure and not theme can be subversive and I talked about 'Girl, Woman, Other' and how the lack of punctuation and free flow emulated liberation etc.

I practised once with a teacher but mostly made sure to include things on my personal statement that I really wanted to speak about. I made sure to know what I wrote about inside and out and that I had flexibility in my thinking about them.

I didn’t really do any practice papers, but read around what I was interested in in English Language e.g. speech acts, modality etc.

I’ve done mock interview examples at teaching conferences with the admissions team at my college and spoke to hundreds of students on residentials and open days and what I always say is try to show you’re flexible with your thinking and always think out loud! Talk the interviewers through your thought processes instead of staying silent, even if you’re not quite sure what to say … they really appreciate seeing how you get to conclusions/ideas and even if it’s not perfect, this shows your process etc. And also if you’re wrong to begin with, they will try to guide you towards the right answer by e.g. Slowly revealing more information to you or phrasing something differently so keep this in mind!