3 x interviews (1 x 15 mins, 2 x 45 mins), over 3 days
Interview 1: questions about language learning; Interview 2: discussed an unseen literature extract; Interview 3: discussed an unseen text focused on history and philosophy; all 3 included questions about personal statement
Reread personal statement; had mock interviews; tried to enjoy the interview experience and not get too stressed
Practice papers
Start preparing as early as you can; show passion for your subject; remember, you don't need to know everything
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: Classical Language Aptitude Test
Number of interviews: 3
Time between interviews: They were spread over 3 days, so about one day.
Length of interviews: There was a language learning interview which lasted 15 minutes, and the other two lasted 45 minutes. They were based around literature, and history and philosophy.
Online interview: Yes
For my course, Classics II, I had three interviews. One was about ‘language learning’: how I would go about learning a language. The interviewers, or tutors as they are called at Oxford, started with a question about my personal statement, which really helped me to relax because I was talking about something I knew. Tutors want you to feel comfortable and want you to do well in interviews! Then there were general questions about language learning.
My second interview was themed around ‘literature’, meaning that it was focused on an unseen extract. The tutors asked me what I thought of it, and when I was stuck they guided me with suggestions and specific questions. They will take your ideas and run with them.
The final interview was for ‘history and philosophy’, which also centred around an unseen text.
In all three, I was asked about parts of my personal statement, but they were mainly centred around my interaction with the unseen material. One final thing to note is that interviews are as much a case of YOU interviewing the tutors and seeing whether you would gel as well as the tutors interviewing you.
The first thing I did was to make sure that I understood everything that I had put on my personal statement. It sounds silly, but you can easily forget what you wrote. Then I also thought about how I could expand each point on my personal statement so that I had something to talk about if an interviewer asked me about a specific point. Another key thing I did in preparation was to arrange a
I did as many practice papers as I could in the months leading up to the admissions test. I got these from the official Oxford University website, by going onto the Classics subject page and going onto the admissions tests page. The CLAT basically tests your aptitude for learning an ancient language. It does this by making you work out the patterns in a real or made-up language. If you enjoy solving puzzles then that could come in handy. There is also a section on English grammar, which you could use your intuition to tackle.
As much as interviewers love to see passion for their subject, they do not expect or even want you to know everything there is to know about, say, material sciences. They are looking for your ability to learn about and to adapt in face of a huge amount of knowledge.
I wish that I had not left my personal statement so last minute, so I would advice that you start pulling things together over the summer between year 12 and year 13, or a few months before the application deadline if you are applying at a different time. I also wish that I had done some wider reading around my subject earlier, rather than cramming it all in.