Geography @ Worcester, Oxford in 2016

Interview format

TSA; 2x interviews.

Interview content

Interview 1: graph interpretation, personal questions; Interview 2: critical thinking, graph interpretation.

Best preparation

Re-reading notes; further reading; keeping up with current affairs.

Final thoughts

It's about your thought process and not what you know.

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: TSA
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 1 day
Length of interviews: 20-25 minutes
Online interview: No

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

There was no theme for each interview. They were both held in two very old rooms and I had two interviewers for each. The interviewers were actually very nice and welcoming, and tried to make me feel at ease. In my first interview I remember being given a map and having a discussion about what it might represent, but I didn’t actually reach the final answer. We also had a discussion about how my hobbies related to geography. In the second interview I was given a list of geographical issues and asked what I thought the most important one was. We had a discussion around this and around why I hadn’t chosen other options. We also had a discussion around a cartogram map and what it could be showing. In my second interview I got very stressed and had to pause for a second, but the interviewers were okay with this.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

I went over all of my A Level Geography notes. I made notes from a more advanced physical geography text book, as we didn’t do much physical geography at a level - I think this made me feel more prepared but perhaps wasn't completely necessary. Mostly the tutors just wanted you to think and to hear your opinion. I also read many copies of the Geographical magazine - this gave me a wide coverage of geographical issues. I kept up to date with the news on the day - but again there was no testing my knowledge of this. I prepared to be questioned on my personal statement - made notes on the books and topics I had mentioned. The morning before the first interview I read over a lot of these notes - however this wasn’t really necessary as the interview is not at all about reciting what you know. I think before my second interview I didn’t read over my notes as much.

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

Practice papers from the oxford website, school helped us prep too. Learnt how to approach the verbal questions - learning the different styles of questions there were and what they meant - this can achieved by doing lots of practice questions. Worked on methods of how to do quick mental maths - tips for this can probably be found online/YouTube

What advice would you give to future applicants?

They’re not looking for what you know, they’re looking for what and how you think. Say your thought process out loud - but maybe take a moment to think through what your thought process is before you say it out loud.