2 x 30-40 mins, MLAT
Poem pre-reading, annotations, questions about the poem, works mentioned in personal statement discussion, general questions about why this subject, course, college, spoke in the target language
Familiarise yourself with the texts mentioned in your personal statement
Make sure you know the works in your personal statement and some related works
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.
Test taken: Modern Languages Admissions Test (
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: I had a day or two between them
Length of interviews: Both were about 30-40min
Online interview: No
Language 1: I had 30 minutes to analyse a poem & annotate it. All in all an easy task, but during interview I felt incredibly nervous because there was so much to say, and the tutors would cut me off after about 7-10 seconds, so I felt like I didn’t get my points across. They were trying to find out the largest possible amount of information in the shortest time, so it felt very rushed and condensed and I felt that I answered sloppily. But I’m in, so guess it wasn’t too bad. We then went over around 4 of the 6ish works mentioned in my PS. I was asked general questions e.g. why this subject, course, college. We spoke in the target language. There were 2 interviewers in the room. One wrote for half the time and the other interviewed, then they switched around. The interview took place in the morning at a different college, so I made sure to stay around the college for about 30 mins before. Language 2: same structure (poem+annotations+questions about poem+works in personal statement) general questions e.g. why this subject, course, college). Interviewers were much more relaxed and friendlier. I was sitting on a sofa and it was the evening (6pm in December), so it felt much cosier, and given the fact that it was my second interview I was more confident/aware of what was going on. The interview lasted longer - ended up being about an hour, and the interviewers asked me about 2 of my works but went more in depth into the two of them and gave me longer to talk about them - didn’t cut me off at all. We also spoke in the target language but for a much longer time. They also asked less personal statement or poem questions - about what we studied in school. We went over my MLAT: they asked the questions that were on the test, but without telling me what I answered, so to see if I have made any language progress since then.
1) Familiarising myself with the texts I mentioned in my PS! Single most popular piece of advice I saw online, and it was a good one, cannot stress this enough. I was asked about character names, plot details on texts that I knew well in terms of the broader philosophical ideas & themes, and it made for quite an awkward situation where I couldn’t remember an important secondary character’s name. 2) Memorising answers or specific to general Qs - why this course, why this college, why Oxford. In my case, a big one was why apply to a language you are a native speaker of. These questions are almost guaranteed, so get to know the course outline, some specific modules or
Practice papers online, going over the French texts I’ve read & put in my personal statement to get into the language more, movies for the same reason
Make sure you know the works in your personal statement and some related works - whether it be criticism, articles, or another work by the same author / from the same period of time If you don’t know something - say ‘I don’t know this, but I know...’