Asian And Middle Eastern Studies @ Wadham, Oxford in 2015

Interview format

4x 40 min interviews, over 3 days

Interview content

Interview 1: text given beforehand, personal statement; Interview 2: visual soruces given beforehand; Interview 3: personal statement; Interview 4: submitted written work

Best preparation

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Advice in hindsight

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Final thoughts

Reread books mentioned on personal statement; reread written work; read more books; had practice interview with teacher. Think about how you could have improved your answers after each interview.

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

Number of interviews: 4

Skype interview: No

Interview spread: 2 one day, then 1 each of the next two days

Length of interviews: 40 minutes each

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

The first interview focused on a piece of text that I was given shortly before the interview and the books I'd said that I'd read in my personal statement.

The second interview focused on visual sources that I was given during the interview.

The third interview focused on other aspects of my personal statement that had not yet been mentioned.

The fourth and final interview looked at the written work I submitted as part of the application process.

How did you prepare?

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What advice do you have for future applicants?

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

I prepared for the interview by rereading the books that I had mentioned in my personal statement, going over the written work that I had submitted, reading some more books related to my subject and doing a mock interview with my school teacher. I think that the mock interview with my teacher was probably the most useful preparation I did as it helped me to get used to an interview style environment (though the actual interviews were nothing like it). Reading more books about my subject helped me to relax and forget about the stress of interviews, though I don't think I used much content from them in the interviews themselves.

If I were to go back and do it again, I'd pay more attention to areas which I felt went badly in each interview and come up with better responses before going into the next interview, so that if I got asked a similar question I would be able to answer more effectively.