Materials Science @ The Queen's, Oxford in 2016

Interview format

2x 30 min interviews, over 1 day

Interview content

Interview 1: 3 questions, unrelated to personal statement; Interview 2: personal statement, questions on objects

Best preparation

Past papers, Olympiad questions

Advice in hindsight

-

Final thoughts

Don't stress; do lots of PAT questions.

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: 8 hours (both on same day)

Length of interviews: 30 minutes each

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

In one of my interviews there was nothing related to my personal statement at all, and it was purely focussed on the questions they asked me to work through. There were two interviewers, and I had a pen and paper, and they gave me a problem and looked at how I went about trying to do it. I had about 3 questions in the half hour, and the interviewers weren’t particularly friendly, but I hadn’t expected them to be! They did give me some guidance in the questions, however, and pointed me in the correct direction if I got stuck!

For my second interview (at another college) there was a little discussion about one of the topics in my personal statement- it was based on checking I understood the theory I had mentioned. Following this there were a few questions centred around some object they brought in, like hand warmers and superconducting wires - talking about how I might make them and how I thought they worked, etc.! It was quite fun and interesting. There were also a few questions too.

How did you prepare?

I did some past papers- these were all easily accessible online.

I had a couple practice interviews before I applied, and I don’t think these were particularly helpful to me- I think the practice I did for the PAT test and various olympiads was more helpful as these sort of things help teach you how to approach more complicated puzzles and questions with the correct critical thinking.

What advice do you have for future applicants?

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

The interviews were very much the sort of thing I was expecting- sitting round a table and approaching problems. I don’t think I would do anything differently if I did them again- obviously it would be nice not to have got one of the questions completely wrong, but I couldn’t have practiced for that I don’t think! I think, looking back on it, the interviewers want to see that you can apply logical thinking to how you approach the problems- it’s not about what you know, etc., it’s about how you apply what you do know, and how you think about things.

My advice would definitely be to not stress too much, and to make sure you do a lot of PAT test questions- and to properly work through these fully! Don’t worry about trying to learn loads of content- it’s likely that this won’t help at all.