History And Politics @ St Edmund Hall, Oxford in 2020

Interview format

History Aptitude Test; 2x interviews

Interview content

Interview 1: written work, personal statement; Interview 2: logic questions, discussion of current political affairs

Best preparation

Producing sample questions from personal statement and written work

Test preparation

Practised quickly planning and converting notes into an essay

Final thoughts

Hopefully you will feel excited by the ideas discussed in your interviews!

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: History Aptitude Test (HAT)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 1-2 days
Length of interviews: 20-30 minutes
Online interview: Yes

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

My history interview was mainly focused around my written work, with only one question about my personal statement and then one other question about the strengths and weaknesses of a particular type of historical source.

My politics interview started off with a puzzle and some situational questions. I was given the option to stick with my previous position or disagree with myself. I realised my original position was logically inconsistent and switched, which was a bit embarrassing at the time but the tutor was very nice throughout and I think that was point of the exercise. I was then asked whether I supported a given development in national politics, and this developed into a broader discussion about the duties and responsibilities of a particular political institution. In my answer I tried to be descriptive but accidentally made a normative assumption that the tutor then pointed out to me, at which point I said I didn't know where to start justifying it and the tutor told me not to worry as people spent their lives studying it and still didn't know, which was nice of him! After that they gave me time to ask a question and I asked about a core text I was reading, which they seemed pleased about, and pointed me towards a relevant resource.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

I went through my personal statement line by line, pretending each sentence was a question, and then answered it aloud to myself. I did the same thing with the written work I'd submitted. I found speaking out loud really helpful, as when it came to the interview I was asked some very similar questions and I already had a good idea of how I could articulate my  answer.

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

I was a very undisciplined and only took a proper run through previous test papers the night before my test, staying up until 2am! In the run-throughs, my biggest struggle was getting enough written down in the 1 hour time limit. Eventually, I got comfortable with doing a quick spider diagram to order my ideas as fast as possible. On the day, the question was also well suited to a spider diagram, so I did one on the first page of my answer booklet and then all I had to do was copy out my spider diagram as an essay.

What advice would you give to future applicants?

I was so nervous in the lead up to my interviews that I actually felt a bit ill at the thought of them, but in the end the tutors were very pleasant and despite myself I finished both interviews excited and fired up with the ideas we'd discussed. So my main advice is that, I know its seems terrifying, but it doesn't have to be, and you'll be on the other side of it before you know it.