English @ Girton, Cambridge in 2022

Interview format

CELAT (Cambridge English Literature Admissions Test), 2x interviews

Interview content

Interview 1: Unseen poem, abstract questions about literary theory. Interview 2: Personal statement and wider reading interests

Best preparation

Finding out about interview process, including from Youtube Videos

Test preparation

Practice with unseen texts

Final thoughts

Be honest, and show your genuine passion and curiosity

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.

Interview Format

Test taken: CELAT (Cambridge English Literature Admissions Test) 
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 2 hours
Length of interviews: 35 and 25 minutes
Online interview: Yes

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

Interview 1: Unseen poem, abstract questions about literary theory.

Interview 2: Personal statement and wider reading interests

How did you prepare for your interviews?

I sought advice from friends who had been through the interview process. I also watched lots and lots of YouTube videos about the Oxbridge application process. As an English student, Benjamin McEvoy's videos were particularly helpful.

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

Practice papers, reading unseen texts and annotating them.

What advice would you give to future applicants?

1) Be truthful and honest on your personal statement, but do try to be original and come at things from a different angle. For example, I avoided writing about Jane Austen and Shakespeare in my English personal statement, as everybody writes about them. Instead, I spoke about my interests in film, German philosophy, and a lot of 'lower-brow' literary interests.

2) I expected everything to be based on my personal statement. That was not the case.

3) If I could do anything differently, I wouldn't have rehearsed a 'script' in the way I did. You cannot predict the interviews, and they will not go the way you expect. You can be prepared in the sense that you're comfortable, but all your thinking will be spur of the moment. For the same reason, I also would avoid cramming.

4) Do make sure you know your personal statement inside out, as they will likely pick up on a snippet of it for discussion, and it will probably be a bit of the personal statement you weren't EXPECTING them to pick up on.

5) Interviewers want to see genuine passion for their subject. They want you to be honest. There's no harm in getting anything wrong, either. But show that you're curious.