Linguistics Admissions Assessment, 2x interviews
Interview 1: discussion of schoolwork and super-curricular activities, then analysis of Old English passage Interview 2: discussion of linguistics problems
Reading about linguistics, practice talking about it
Practice questions, both from past papers online and similar ones from UK and International Linguistics Olympiads
Enjoy the opportunity to talk about linguistics to people who are also passionate about it!
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: A few hours
Length of interviews: c.30 minutes
Online interview: Yes
The first interview was with someone from my college, and was a "personal" interview - we talked about my school work and the
The second interview was a "subject" interview with some folks from the department. We went through a series of problems that I had to look at on my screen and answer verbally - I don't remember them super well, but one involved discerning how many vowels and consonants each word had.
I was able to speak to a
The day before, I also had a last-minute
There were practice papers available on the department/faculty website. It's also useful to practice as much as you can using papers from the UK and International Linguistics Olympiads, which are often quite similar.
As long as you're passionate about linguistics, you'll be fine. Just enjoy the opportunity to talk about it with people who actually get what you're on about - linguistics often draws blank looks from those not in the know! Interviewers want to know that you like this subject enough to commit for three years, as well as that you have some degree of technical facility in understanding the patterns underlying language.