Asian And Middle Eastern Studies @ Wadham, Oxford in 2016

Interview format

2 x interviews (30 mins), over 2 days

Interview content

Interview 1: text given beforehand, personal statement; Interview 2: comparing sources, personal statement.

Best preparation

Be able to speak relatively confidently about everything on personal statement

Advice in hindsight

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Final thoughts

Worry less about interviews.

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: 2

Skype interview: No

Interviews spread over 2 days

Length of interviews: 30 minutes each

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

(This was for Chinese, by the way.)

For my first interview, I was given half an hour beforehand to look at a poem or an article (both were in English) and make notes about it, ready to discuss in the interview. I chose the poem. The first 15 minutes of the interview was focussed on literary analysis of the poem. I thought this went badly, but in hindsight, it may have been better than I thought. Then we discussed things I had talked about in my personal statement.

In my second interview, I was given two different scientific diagrams, one which was obviously Western, and the other obviously "Eastern". They wanted us to discuss why these two diagrams were different from one another, and why that might be. Again, I also discussed things on my personal statement.

How did you prepare?

Naturally, make sure you can relatively confidently speak about everything you discussed on your personal statement.

I had a mock interview at my sixth form, but because the process for applying to Chinese is less well-known, it didn't really come into much use and definitely didn't reflect the real interviews.

What advice do you have for future applicants?

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

In hindsight, I would have worried less about my interviews. I was convinced that I had not gotten in, and somehow I did!