Classical Archaeology And Ancient History @ Wadham, Oxford in 2014

Interview format

3x 30 min interviews

Interview content

Interview 1: text given beforehand, picture; Interview 2: motivation, personal statement, ancient Athens; Interview 3: picture, archaeology discussion

Best preparation

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Advice in hindsight

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Final thoughts

Re-read plays; read uni website.

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

Number of interviews: 3

Skype interview: No

Interview spread: a few hours between the first two, then maybe 1 day between the third and fourth

Length of interviews: about 30 minutes each

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

For my first interview, I had to come about 20 minutes early to read a text on ancient epigraphics and prepare some answers about it. The interview was then looking at the text and what I had answered and talking some more about it. Afterwards I was given a picture and asked to describe it and talk about it (e.g. identify it if I could, and then we discussed why I thought that). I actually had a really lovely time during this one, it really felt like a chat and the tutors were really good about making me feel completely at ease.

My second interview was more literature-ish based and essentially about why I was interested in CAAH, then asking a few questions about what I'd mentioned in my personal statement, why I liked it and was interested in it. Going from there, we started talking about theatre and the place of comedy in ancient Athens. They asked me a few questions, e.g. considering certain aspects from different points of view. I felt a little nervous because I found one of the interviewers a bit scary, but mostly it was fine, still very conversation-like, and I got to talk about things I was originally very interested in (e.g. Aristophanes).

My final interview was at a different college. The format was somewhat similar to my first one in that I was given a picture to describe and to interpret however I could. Then I was asked some more questions about archaeology in general, nothing fact-based as far as I remember. This interview felt less pleasant than the others mostly because one of the tutors kind of terrified me and I thought I'd done particularly poorly on the picture question (plus I'd waited by the door on the stairs for a long time before going in). It made me feel like it was more of an interrogation, or a test I was failing at, than a conversation...

How did you prepare?

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What advice do you have for future applicants?

Looking back, what advice would you give to your past self?

I actually barely prepared anything at all! I knew about my subject because I had studied it somewhat and knew what things I was interested in (Aristophanes), so I brought the plays along with me to re-read on the flight to the UK as well as an extra archaeology magazine, to be able to discuss different things just in case. I think re-reading the plays I'd mentioned in my personal statement was definitely a good idea as it meant they were quite fresh in my memory and I was able to discuss them more easily. Beyond that, as an international student, I didn't know anyone who'd ever gone to Oxford interviews and didn't tell my teachers that I was applying until after I'd gone to interviews, so had no prep! I spent /a lot/ of time on the Oxford website (there was a PDF with every subject listed that also showed the kind of things that people in different subjects had been asked, for example, and I think there must have been other resources like videos showing interviews), which I think really helped me realise that interviews weren't meant to be a horrible experience of tutors trying to trick me and that "formal" ways of preparation (like a UK school offering mock interviews) were probably not very helpful.

I think it is still difficult to really expect a specific thing out of interviews- beyond feeling like I shouldn't be too afraid of them, I just didn't know what kinds of things were going to be asked of me and therefore I didn't have much in the way of expectations. Mostly though, student accounts from the website were true: they were not particularly scary, they felt like a conversation. I actually don't think there's anything I'd do differently- I think discovering what the interview was going to be like at the beginning of it helped me mobilise every tool I had to respond to questions to the best of my ability; you can't really have pre-prepared answers to questions, tutors will undoubtedly know, and that kind of defeats the point of the interview for them I'd assume (as well as your area of interest and what you've looked at in the past beyond your curriculum, they also want to know how you think under pressure/when you're looking at something that's unknown and if the tutorial system will work for you as it's definitely not for everyone!).