Oxbridge Interviews

There is plenty of myths about Oxbridge interview. Once I have heard about this interview at Oxford. A student entered a room and sat down in front of a professor. The professor opened up his newspapers and said: “You have got 5 minutes to persuade me to stop reading these newspapers and commence the interview”. The student took out a lighter and set the newspapers on fire. Here comes different story. There was an interviewing room with two doors. One door lead to a waiting room and the other door to a cleaner's cupboard. A student who just finished his interview forgot which door he came from, so he just chose one. It turned out to be the wrong door – he entered the cupboard. The student was so stressed that he thought that walking out from the cupboard through the room would make him look stupid in front of the professors, so he stayed in there for the next five hours. I do not know if these stories describe something that indeed happened, but one is clear – interviews do tend to be very stressful.

One of the reasons for that is because everye one says something different. In my understanding, the main point of the interview is to see the student's thinking. Therefore, just try to be yourself, think out loud and ask if you don't understand the question. Interview is abut how you think (under stress) so if you cannot change the way you think, you cannot prepare for the interview (that is good! - less stress).

Interviews and additional test are different for each subject and for each college. I applied for Engineering at Jesus College. I had two interviews –  Mathematics, Physics and TSA (Thinking Skills Assessment). At that time, I was studying A levels at New Hall School in the UK so logistic was simple compared to other European students.

Before my interview (Friday 15th December 2011) I went through my personal statement again and read notes from the book I mentioned in my personal statement. I revised  what I had learned in Mathematics and Physics. I also prepared my answer to the questions “Why Cambridge, why Jesus College, why Engineering” and looked up the interviewers online. I wanted to be ready for 100%. This was not necessary but it made me feel calmer. On the big day, I got up early in the morning and left the school with my friend who had an interview on the same day. When we reached Cambridge, we wished each other good luck and separated, as we were having interviews at different colleges.

Soon after that, I reached Jesus College Marshall Room: a room where all the interviewees were waiting. It was very entertaining how everyone – me including – was stressed. We were just sitting in the room, looking around and getting better at ignoring the awkward silence. Finally, time for my first interview - Mathematics. A Jesus student walked me to room J4 and told me to wait there. So I did. Very soon, a door to the interviewing room opened and a bearded old gentleman showed me to a little room, he gave me a printout and told me that I have 20 minutes to work through as many problems as I can. We would discuss it at the interview. I did not hesitate and started working through.  Most of the problems were actually very standard – I expected all of them to be super difficult, but most of them were pretty much things I had done in the past. In the interview, we quickly skipped the problems I finished with ease and we focused on questions I had not attempted. The interviewers were very nice. Sooner than I expected, the interview finished. Overall, I had a good feeling.

Next was my Physics interview. A very friendly looking Dr. G Parks opened the for me door – my current Director of Studies – and I entered the interviewing room. I did not have such a nice feeling from the other interviewer. He had very wild hair. From his look I got the feeling that I had better leave because I am delaying him from his crazy experiments. I ignored my feelings and stayed. The fist question “What is the difference between a trebuchet and a ballista” was followed by “Which one is more accurate?” I was delighted – I love catapults. (when I talked about my interview to other people, I did not always mentioned that I wrote about catapults on my personal statement so for them it must have seen as if interviewers  ask utterly unrelated bizarre questions). Next, I was given an equation relating a height of fluid in a container to its outflow. The answer was just to integrate and it took them some time to make me realise this – I felt very stupid. They asked me if there is something about the fluid which influences the flow rate. I felt super smart  answering just in one word: “viscosity”. Then, I was given a strange wagon on a string. If one pulled the string, the wagon moved in the opposite direction. They placed it on an inclined plane and asked me to tell me something about the mechanism inside without looking in the wagon. I started mumbling about gears and springs and after a while I was told to stop. Finally, they drew a picture of a car with wheels and asked me to draw forces acting on it. The only tricky part, I think, was that the frictional force acting on the wheels was in the direction of motion of the car (had it been the other way it would have been speeding up the tyres). The interview finished and I had bad feelings.

Finally, time for TSA. Some parts of it were very familiar for me because they were similar to Critical Thinking, for example, there was a short argument and one was suppose to find the main conclusion, assumption etc. Other questions were more about logic thinking and problem solving. Overall, it was not easy but easier than the interviews. In the evening, I met up my friend and we travelled back together happy that the day was over.

People say that it is good if you are struggling because if you are not, it probably means they are giving you too easy questions because they think you are not good. According to this, you are doing well if you struggle with 2+2=4. Therefore, I prefer to take a positive approach. If you are struggling – that is great, they are giving you tough questions! If you are not struggling – that is great, you are tackling hard questions with ease!

To summarize: If you are having an Oxbridge interview, relax and try to enjoy it – the questions they ask you are very interesting!

The figure shows tracks left by a bicycle. Which curve belongs to the front tire? Which direction was the bike going to? (email to pavel.koh@seznam.cz)