Classics @ St Hugh's, Oxford in 2017

Interview format

2x 30 min interviews, 1 day apart

Interview content

Interview 1: philosophy, logic-based questions; Interview 2: pack of texts given beforehand, personal statement, motivation

Best preparation

Used AS / A-level resources to build vocab; practised translations

Advice in hindsight

-

Final thoughts

Go through personal statement; look into essay competitions; try to avoid impostor syndrome; do some background reading.

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: CAT

Number of interviews: 2

Skype interview: No

Time between each interview: 1 day

Length of interviews: about 30 minutes each

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

Interview 1 - philosophy: We were taken to a separate room and given a sheet of different questions to consider. No prior knowledge was expected (and I didn’t have any). They were mostly logic based, i.e. working out why a sentence was ambiguous or explaining whether or not you agreed with an argument. Some quotes were taken from a lesser used Plato text. This really did seem to be about assessing your thought process rather than the answers you came up with. This was with one tutor and one post graduate student. I completely messed up the first section of this interview but the atmosphere was so supportive that I still left feeling like I had enjoyed myself. It really felt like the tutor was working with you.

The second interview was with two tutors from the college. Again we were given a pack of pre reading, around a theme. In this case it was the representation of Gauls in different texts. The topics are picked without the assumption you have any prior knowledge, I believe. The pack had a mixture of Latin text (with English provided) and picture sources. I was asked some questions about this. I was also asked one or two about my personal statement and some general ones about my interest in classics.

How did you prepare?

Coming from the Scottish curriculum, I used AS and A level resources to build my vocab. I did lots of practice translations.

What advice do you have for future applicants?

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

Go through your personal statement and be confident that you can expand on each claim you made if asked about it.

Look into essay competitions (St Hugh's has a history and classics one) to really stand out.

Don’t let imposter syndrome get you down!! No ones application deserves to be seen more than your own and the tutors are looking for reasons to let you in.

Background reading - even if it doesn’t come up directly in the interview - never hurts and can get you thinking in the right way.