My interview was in early December. I arrived in the morning, and waited in the JCRwith some other applicants and some student helpers. Before the first interview I was taken to another room and given an hour to look at two poems that were given to me; then I was taken to the interview room where two college fellowsinterviewed me about the poems for 20 minutes. After a short break I then went to another room where two younger fellows (I think they were Junior Research Fellows or PhD students) gave me a more general interview. Then there was a longer break for lunch, and in the afternoon there was an hour-long written test with seven or eight other candidates.

In the first interview I was asked questions about the two unseen poems I'd been given. They asked about the techniques used in the two poems, and asked me to compare them, and which one I thought was better and why. They were both quite stern and didn't give much indication as to whether what I said was good or bad.

In the second interview I was expecting them to ask about things on my personal statement or the essays I'd submitted, but instead they just asked me what I'd read recently, and then asked out of the things I'd said which I wanted to talk about. They would then ask questions whenever I dried up, often asking for specific examples to back up things I'd mentioned. They were generally more smiley and positive than in the first interview.

In the written test there was a passage without the name of the author or the date - we had to analyse it in detail and write about our ideas on it more generally.

School was helpful in my case - I did some mock interviews which was really useful because I wasn't used to speaking my ideas about literature out loud, only writing them. I also made some flashcards for the texts I knew I wanted to talk about in the interview to help me remember the most important/interesting things which was useful.

It's really hard to know how your interviews went - I thought mine were awful. I think an important thing to remember is that they're not looking for someone who knows all the answers, they're looking for someone they'll want to teach for the next three years. Having said that it's really useful to have specific examples for texts you want to talk about so you can show that you can form a well reasoned argument.