'We aren’t trying to wrong-foot them': The truth about the Oxbridge interview

Should it be illegal to drive straight through a red traffic light in the middle of the night on an empty road? Tricky one, I know. If you can’t answer that, try this: why do you think older siblings tend to score higher on IQ tests than younger siblings? Pass again? All right, last one – what do we lose if we only read a foreign work of literature in translation?

If those problems seem boggling enough written down in a newspaper ­– especially this far from the puzzles page – just imagine how daunting they must sound in their usual form: barked by an esteemed Oxbridge don in his or her oak-panelled study, and aimed squarely at the terrified prospective undergraduate sitting opposite them. 

Last week, ahead of the deadline for new applications, the University of Oxford released its annual selection of sample questions tutors might ask candidates in the institution’s infamously fiendish interviews. In making the questions – which included the quandaries above – and their solutions public, the university hopes the nerve-wracking idea of ‘the Oxford interview’ will be demystified.

The good news is that there aren’t ever really wrong answers to any of the questions. Or right ones, for that matter. Instead, candidates are marked on how they approach the problem using the knowledge they already possess, and whether they can articulate their thought process before reaching a conclusion. In the case of the red light question above, then, it is not the student’s knowledge of traffic laws that is being tested, but how convincingly they create a foolproof argument. 

“We’re always looking for students who are excited by the possibility of tackling the problems of their subjects,” says Dr Andrew Bell, a medieval historian and senior tutor at University College, Oxford, who estimates he’s given more than 1500 candidate interviews over his career. “We aren’t trying to wrong-foot them or throw them curveballs. We know that pupils from certain schools will be well used to one-on-one discussions like that, but others might have never spoken to an adult about general academic matters before. We hope the questions are giving them a new challenge and allowing them to think creatively.”

Dr Andrew Spencer, admissions tutor at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge

Very few universities interview candidates these days, and everybody who knows Oxbridge’s process has heard the legends: the one about the boy who, when the tutor said “Surprise me”, set fire to a newspaper; or the one about the don who hurled a rugby ball at candidates as soon as they entered the room. If you caught it, you were in, if you threw it straight back, you got a scholarship. Both institutions insist they’re known as ‘legends’ for a reason.

“The interview is really just one part of the application process, but we understand it is the most distinct part of the Oxbridge admissions process, so people place an importance and pressure on it that isn’t necessarily accurate. If it was all on the interview, we’d have very different students,” Dr Bell says. 

Still, ask most alumni of Oxford or Cambridge about their interview experience, and they’ll have a story to tell. One colleague recalls his English Literature interview at Oxford included the head-scratcher: “Is truth a cliché we use metaphor to escape?” 

“One I like to ask most of my humanities candidates is simply, ‘Define a community,’” says Dr Andrew Spencer, admissions tutor at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. “It’s a nice one, because we hear about communities all the time in newspapers and history books, but we don’t think about what it means. Is it racial? Religious? Geographical? How small is the smallest possible community? What is the strongest community? It leads to all sorts of interesting follow-ups, and I’ve not once heard a solid definition.”

Prospective scientists at the university, meanwhile, might be asked how many Mars bars one would need to eat to have enough energy to climb Mount Everest. 

“My colleague who asks that doesn’t have the foggiest what the answer is,” Dr Spencer admits, “but the student is really being asked to consider, out loud, the factors in play. We want to hear their thinking, which reveals how teachable they might be.”

In the age of online advice forums and social media, word gets around future candidates (and their eagle-eyed school teachers) overnight, meaning admissions tutors are encouraged to update their question arsenal every few months. But preparation, Dr Spencer says, is near futile.

“We just want people to be themselves. We aren’t ever looking for a certain type of person, we don’t expect people to be flawless, and, as a vague rule, people who think they did well didn’t really, and vice versa,” he says. “The first thing candidates do after an interview is get in the car and have their parents ask, ‘How did it go?’ If the answer is, ‘I honestly don’t know’, in all likelihood you’ve done pretty well.”