4x 30-45 min interviews
Interview 1: academic writing about music; Interview 2: scores; Interviews 3 and 4: text given beforehand, scores given during interview
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Be prepared to discuss new things; know the basics; practise analysing academic texts; know your essays and personal statement.
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.
Number of interviews: 4
Skype interview: No
Time between each interview ranged from a couple of hours to a couple of days
Length of interviews: 30-45 minutes each
I had two interviews at my college, where each interview had a different focus.
The first was entirely based on a piece of academic writing about music, about 2 pages long. They asked me first to just describe the passage and then they asked me follow up questions and we discussed and argued different points about the writing.
The second was based on two scores, one classical string quintet and one modern string trio. They asked me again to just describe overall the scores, and then we went into details about analysis. We also then went on to talk about historical performance, which led off my personal statement.
I then had another interview at Christ Church, where I was given another piece of text to read, slightly shorter, which I was then asked questions about in the interview. We followed up with discussion on topics related to the text, and then I was given a score of a Schubert Lied in the interview and they just asked me to analyse it. I then had an audition which was about 5-10 minutes long, where I performed a piece and they asked a couple of short questions, just about the background of the music (I played a renaissance piece) and composer, and about the instrument I was playing on.
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Be prepared to discuss things that you’ve never really thought about before. It’s not about things you know.
Obviously make sure you know some basics about the subject you’re applying for across the subject. It’s best to have a broad range of knowledge, then super specific knowledge about certain topics.
Practise reading academic texts and trying to pick them apart to find the arguments, not revising facts and specific topics.
Also make sure you know about the essays you’ve submitted and about anything you’ve mentioned on your personal statement. But don’t stress because even if they ask you something you don’t know it’s absolutely fine and normal. They aren’t trying to catch you out - they’re just pushing you to see what you can do.