Psychology (Experimental) @ St Catherine's, Oxford in 2015

Interview format

2x 1 hr interviews (one with 30 min reading time)

Interview content

Interview 1: areas of interest, diagrams; Interview 2: discussion-based questions, pre-reading

Best preparation

Talk through example questions with family and friends

Advice in hindsight

-

Final thoughts

Difficult to know exactly what tutors are looking for

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

Test taken: TSA

Number of interviews: 2

Skype interview: No

Length of interviews: about 1 hour each (+ 30 min reading time at LMH)

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

In my first interview I was asked about two diagrams, one relating to biology and the other to experimental design evaluation. There was very little discussion of my personal statement beyond maybe 1 introduction question about my areas of interest in the subject. I found the first half of this interview very stressful as one of my interviewers made a comment along the lines of 'Oh, you have studied biology, haven't you?' after I struggled on a topic I'd never studied before. Luckily I think my second interviewer (who went on to be my tutor) saw I was getting upset and stepped in, moving me onto the second half of the interview which I did a lot better on as it didn't seem to require me to know things that I hadn't been taught and are quite complicated to derive for oneself. Admittedly, I left the interview and instantly burst into tears, thinking it went horribly and that I would never get in, but clearly I did at least something right.

My second interview was a lot more even. It was a variety of discussion based questions around different topics in my subject, which seemed more to look for how I thought about things outside of my comfort zone. There was some pre-reading which I wasn't actually told about originally, which was irritating, but not many questions were really asked about this beyond some more experimental design evaluation. I was more relaxed in this one but also didn't think it went very well when I had left.

How did you prepare?

I used practice papers, a book of questions, and some help from my school going through particular question styles I didn't do well on.

Most of my preparation was fairly useless because my school had encouraged us a lot to really know our personal statements and I'm pretty sure I was only asked once about it in each interview.

The best bit of preparation I did was looking up previous questions and example questions and talking those through with family and friends to get practice of talking through my thoughts on a topic in a clear way, which did help in the interview itself.

My main piece of advice is to do mock interviews if at all possible, especially with unfamiliar people, to get used to the situation and practise being able to not be phased by any negative / critical comments.

What advice do you have for future applicants?

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

I understand some of what my tutor was looking for as I actually asked her since, but it's still quite vague, in terms of looking for clarity of thought and originality of evaluation, which aren't very well defined things to look for.