Materials Science @ Mansfield, Oxford in 2018

Interview format

2x 40 min interviews, 1 hr apart

Interview content

Interview 1: motivations, personal statement, graph sketching; Interview 2: graph sketching, question on manufacturing a chemical, identifying materials

Best preparation

Practice papers

Advice in hindsight

-

Final thoughts

Practice papers; revised A-level content; talked to people about physics. Stay calm.

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: PAT

Number of interviews: 2

Skype interview: No

Time between each interview: 1 hour

Length of interviews: 40 minutes each

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

In my first interview I was asked about why I chose to study Materials Science, along with some personal statement questions. The interviewers kept on pushing me with questions in two of the topics I'd mentioned in my personal statement until they reached the extent of my understanding. Then one of the interviewers gave me a graph to sketch. The intial graph was straighforward, but the interviewer continued to add to the equation to make it more complicated. The second interviewer then gave me another problem to discuss, which also involved graph sketching.

In my second interview, I was asked to sketch another graph, then given a scenario which involved manufacturing a certain chemical. I had to use maths and chemistry to work out which quantities of chemicals to use and how to obtain them, etc. I was then presented with metal rods and asked to identify the materials, explaining my reasoning.

I felt anxious at first, but the interviewers were very reassuring and asked me questions about myself at the beginning of the interview to make me feel more at ease. When I couldn't understand, or didn't know how to answer a question, the interviewers would help me. The interviews felt more like a dicussion or tutorial and I learnt a lot from them.

How did you prepare?

I used the practice papers.

What advice do you have for future applicants?

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

I did past papers for the PAT and went over the questions I couldn't understand with my physics teacher at school. For the interview, I revised the A-level content I'd learned so far and did some subject reading. I made sure that I knew how to talk about everything that I'd mentioned on my personal statement. I practised by talking to people about my subject and thinking about how I'd answer common interview questions like "Why did you choose to study this?".

Looking back, I would've revised graph sketching because I was given lots of graphs to sketch in my interviews!

I would advise applicants to stay calm in interviews and not get stressed out if you can't answer a question - that's normal. The interviewers want to know how you can cope when faced with a new problem, rather than what you already know. If you don't understand anything, just ask.