Test taken: ELAT

Number of interviews: 2

Skype interview: No

Interview spread: same day - 1 at lunch time, 1 in the evening

Length of interviews: about 1 hr each

I had two interviews, which were split into a UCAS interview (personal statement) and a poetry interview where you were given an unseen poem to analyse and discuss. Questions were open ended and encouraged discussion - they very much mirrored the tutorial setup. In my UCAS interview we talked about intertextuality - how parts of texts end up in other texts centuries later. The tutors at my college were extremely welcoming and very encouraging: they frequently complimented what I was saying. There was no hostility, as people often tell you Oxbridge interviews have. The more I was encouraged, the more I felt able to expand in my thinking and my responses - I didn’t want it to end by the time it did.

I did practice papers from previous years, and asked an English teacher at my school to mark each one for me.

One thing I did was practice of poetry analysis: I would print out a random poem and give myself half an hour to analyse it. It’s helpful in knowing what types of things to look out for in a poem (metre, form, rhyme scheme etc), and then asked if an English teacher at my school would go through it with me. I did a few practice interviews at local private schools but they were all useless: you cannot predict what they will ask you or how you will feel in that environment (and the private schools only ever gave me negative feedback).

I think being calm is the most important thing - listen carefully to what it is they are asking of you, and in a subject like English, you (usually) cannot be ‘wrong’ - it’s important to express how you feel and justify it.