4x 15-30 min interviews, over 2 days
Interview 1: personal statement, French conversation about sources; Interview 2: pre-reading, personal statement, conversation in French; Interview 3: interest in languages; Interview 4: literature questions, conversation in French.
Practice papers; grammar revision.
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Going through past papers with teachers; rereading personal statement; remember interviewers aren't out to get you!
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:
Number of interviews: 4
Skype interview: No
Spread: 1 interview on the first day; 3 almost consecutively on the second day.
Length of interviews: 15-30 minutes each
My first interview began with a discussion about several books mentioned on my personal statement before shifting to a discussion in French about some newspaper clips.
In the second interview, I was given a piece of text to annotate in the library for around 15 minutes. This text and my analysis of it formed the basis of the first part of this interview. The discussion then moved towards a few books mentioned on my personal statement. The interview concluded with a brief conversation in French. During this interview I felt at greater ease than before and came away feeling slightly better about my prospects than I had after the previous one.
My third interview took place not all that long after the second one. This was a more general languages interview than the French-focused previous two. I came away feeling as though it hadn't gone as well as the previous one.
My final interview occurred shortly after the third and was by far the quickest. It lasted about 15 minutes and I was asked for various opinions on literature before ending with a brief conversation in French. At this point I'd become a little less worried, though I was rather tired!
I did some practice papers and grammar revision before the test.
Using past papers and
As many do, I discovered that interviewers are not out to get you so much as give you a chance to show how you formulate arguments!