Tutors will understand that you may be nervous and will try to put you at your ease. They want you to feel able to be yourself in the interview, and to allow you to demonstrate your skills and abilities. They will probably ask you a few simple questions to begin with: perhaps about something in your personal statement or why you have applied for a particular course. They will then move on to questions about your subject. Depending on what is relevant for the course you are applying for, you may be given a text, a poem, a graph, or an object, and then asked to answer questions and comment on it. You may be given these before the interview, and will be advised if there is anything in particular on which you need to focus. Tutors may also refer to any written work that you were asked to submit.
Questions may be about the subjects that you are currently studying at school or college. However, you will also be offered opportunities to show whether you have read around the subject and to demonstrate your knowledge and interest beyond your school or college syllabus.
Normally, what they are expecting you to do is to take all of the knowledge and the skills that you have got from your current studies and apply it to a situation that is different and show flexibility of thought by taking those things that you already know or you already know how to do and applying them onto something that you might be unfamiliar with. They want to see your ability to think independently and to engage with new ideas beyond the scope of your school or college syllabus.
These interviews are academic conversations within the subject that you want to study. A good deal of the teaching at these universities takes place in small classes or tutorials, and your interviewers – who may be your future tutors – are assessing your ability to study, think and learn in this way.
They are also looking for enthusiasm with engaging with new ideas. They are looking for those students who can apply their existing knowledge to new ideas, new concepts, new ways of thinking about things. Tutors are not really looking for a final answer. It is about how you get towards your answer, they are looking at the way you think rather than coming up with the absolutely kind of correct, final answer because most questions in interviews do not necessarily have that final, correct answer.
How to prepare for this interview?
Refresh your memory about anything you have sent in to the university in advance. Whether that is a piece of written work, your personal statement, etc. make sure that you are really familiar with them.
Also, think about the super-curricular activities that you have mentioned in your personal statement and all the things that you have been following up with in the interim between writing your personal statement and your interview in December time. This will be really helpful preparation.
Revise, almost as if this is going to be an exam, as this might be helpful preparation in terms of you feeling secure on the subject knowledge that you have.
Discuss your academic work or your interests in your subject with someone who is a subject specialist. Please bear in mind that a general interview isn't necessarily going to be a helpful preparation for this, but subject-specific discussions about your subject is going to be very useful.
You can use lots of the resources that the universities have shared in their websites. At Oxford they offer several resources for almost every subject. They have questions that have been asked at interviews before or are indicative of the kinds of questions that they would ask in those subject interviews for you to be able to have a look at and see how you might approach these. Both universities also have videos about interviews which are worth analyzing.
And lastly, don't worry about what to wear. You should be thinking about your academic side of things rather than what you will wear. It really, really doesn't matter to the tutors. You should wear clothes that are comfortable and that will put you in an academic frame of mind.
Note: Please remember to check, beforehand, the university policies related to where and when these interviews take place (and specific deadlines according to these).
University of Cambridge
To find more information about interviews at the University of Cambridge, please visit:
University of Oxford
To find more information about interviews (what to expect, how to prepare, sample questions and practicalities) at the University of Oxford, please visit:
Sources:
http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/ (accessed on the 7 June 2020)
https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/applying (accessed on the 7 June 2020)