Materials Science @ St Catherine's, Oxford in 2017

Interview format

2x 45 min interviews, 6 hrs apart

Interview content

Interview 1: personal statement, theory, maths; Interview 2: maths, theory

Best preparation

PAT and Olympiad past papers

Advice in hindsight

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Final thoughts

Think aloud.

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: 6 hours

Length of interviews: 45 minutes each

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

My first interview began with many personal statement oriented questions to ease me in. Then over time they went deeper into some of the ideas/themes I had discussed in my statement. Afterwards they posed some difficult questions on theory, and were testing to see if I could apply myself by using the knowledge I possessed. When stuck they would prompt me and guide me to an answer. At the end I had to do a maths problem.

My second interview went straight into problem solving, beginning with ideas about formulas, graphing and other maths related stuff. Then they went into some tough theory where again they were testing my ability to apply myself.

In both interviews I was nervous, the second one more so, however you eventually get into a flow and the interview flies by. There was nothing wrong with saying 'I don’t know', if I didn’t know something then they would move onto a topic I knew more about.

How did you prepare?

I prepared by doing past papers of the PAT, as well as Physics Olympiad papers. I also went to a short course in London for 3 days where teachers helped prepare us for the PAT.

I read a lot of books and watched a lot of interview videos, and really none of it was amazing preparation for the real thing, but it was good enough.

What advice do you have for future applicants?

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

The advice I would give is to be confident and talk out loud when going through a thought process, this means they understand where you’re coming from and it also means they can correct you if you’re wrong so you don’t waste time.

In the end the interviewers are looking for people who suit their style of tutoring, so try and realize this is as much a process where they see how well you’d suit them as they would suit you. They aren’t testing your capacity of knowledge, but your capacity to apply yourself.