2x 30-45 min interviews, 1.5 hrs apart
Both interviews: extract (prose/poetry) given beforehand, personal statement; Interview 2: general discussion of literature
6-7 practice papers, help from mentor
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Got help and mock interview from Access Oxbridge mentor; kept book journal; believed in myself and adopted a positive mindset.
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
Skype interview: No
Time between each interview: about 1.5 hours
Length of interviews: 30-45 minutes each
For both my interviews I had to read something in an assigned room 10 minutes beforehand (a prose extract for one interview, a poem for the other). Both interviews began with a discussion of my ideas of the texts I’d just read. We then moved on to discuss books/ideas from my personal statement - I felt that both interviews were quite focussed on my personal statement, but the second interview developed into a wider debate/more general questions about key debates in literature.
The atmosphere was really welcoming and I felt a LOT more relaxed than I imagined I would! The interviews were also over really quickly and on the whole nowhere near as scary or intimidating as imagined. I didn’t know what some of the words meant in the poem I was given, so I asked for clarification and my
Practice papers!! I did about 6 or 7 in total. I also had help from my mentor from ‘Access Oxbridge’, a similar program to this program.
Access Oxbridge helped me massively as it allowed me to have access to a
I also prepared by keeping a book journal in which I jotted down anything I found interesting from books in my personal statement and some ones I’d read since then, so that I could remind myself quickly of the key themes/issues in each book. I re-read my personal statement countless times and made sure I could speak with relative confidence on all the books I’d listed.
Probably the best thing I did - sounds cliché but it’s true - was believing in myself and my ability to gain a place despite all the odds. It’s undoubtedly a nerve wracking time but you have to remind yourself that the interview is on a basic level an interesting conversation with someone who is super passionate about a subject you’re also super passionate about. Thinking of the interview in these terms really helped to calm my nerves.
Looking back, I would say interviewers are looking for someone who is passionate and motivated about their subject, and can debate or defend their beliefs on topics within that subject. They’re looking for someone who they think will be interesting to teach.