School
Gate blog: Maximise your chances of getting into Cambridge
Bona Boraliu, a clever, outspoken 19-year-old from London, was furious last
year when she wasn’t offered a place to read politics, philosophy and
economics at Oxford University. She was an A-grade student from a grammar
school, and had a glittering CV – so what went wrong?
“Almost certainly the interview,” says Boraliu, who had applied to Worcester
College. “I was really annoyed. They threw something at me in a hot, stuffy,
book-lined room that I hadn’t been taught in my economics course. I hadn’t
been coached for an interview and I hadn’t been prepared to discuss
something as obscure as game theory. Should a university place really depend
on an hour’s chat?”
By Wednesday, about 30,000 sixth-formers will have applied to study at Oxford
and Cambridge next year. Like medical schools, our most ancient universities
demand applications by October 15 – three months before they are due in for
any other degree course. And they insist on interviewing every candidate
under consideration.
The advice that Boraliu, now a second-year government and politics student at
the London School of Economics, offers to teenagers facing university
interviews this autumn is “to practise”. Getting through the interview, she
says, “is not a test of intelligence”.
It’s a view shared by Anna Nagle, a mother of four who helped her twin
daughters secure places at medical school by holding mock interviews at
home. She would rise at the crack of dawn to peruse websites where would-be
medics shared their interview experiences – and then hurl questions daily at
her girls. One of the questions asked at a real interview, she recalls, was:
“If your mother was tied to a railway track next to a crashed bus full of
children, and a train was approaching, who would you save first?”
Her efforts paid off, yet many parents remain baffled by the whole process.
What should their teenagers expect – and how should they prepare?
There is an old story about the admissions ritual at Peterhouse, Cambridge.
When a candidate entered the room, the story goes, someone would kick a
rugby ball towards him. If he caught it, he was in; if he drop-kicked it
back, he won a scholarship. No one suggests that happens now, but tales
still circulate about baffling questions posed by dons . So You Want to Go
to Oxbridge? Tell Me About a Banana . . ., a book that purports to open up
the admissions procedure by listing “typical” questions, has merely added to
the mystique by claiming that one candidate was asked: “What is the most
interesting thing about a squirrel?” And what on earth is the right answer
to: “If ancient history was a shape, what shape might it be?”
Next week, in an attempt to standardise its admissions procedure, Oxford will
announce that all dons are to be put through training sessions to remind
them how to interview fairly and well. The online courses will feature
videotaped interviews between dons and candidates – and parents and
teenagers will also be able to log in.
“There is a lot of mystique about what an interview is going to be like,” says
Mike Nicholson, Oxford’s admissions spokesman. “Hopefully, this will take
away the smoke and mirrors and show kids that there are no tricks involved.”
Mark Wormald, a biochemist and Corpus Christi fellow who has been quizzing
students for 20 years, is one of the dons who has agreed to be filmed. He
hopes the video interviews will help dons – especially new lecturers – as
well as students. “They are as scared as the candidates,” he says. “A lot of
them are petrified they will make a mistake – that the wrong people will get
in and the right people won’t.” Does he ever ask questions such as: “Tell me
about a banana?” Well, he says hesitantly, such questions only seem daft
because they’re taken out of context. Wormald’s view is that the interview
is best approached as a mini-tutorial – those hour-long one-to-one weekly
chats in which dons push undergraduates to think about topics in new ways.
That’s why dons are so reluctant to jettison interviews. “They can tell us who
will make our life easy and who will make it difficult when we teach them,”
he says. “It’s like being a car mechanic: you need a tool kit. If you don’t
have the tools, you can’t perform at interview at all. But if you have them
at a good basic level, we will see whether you can use them to think about
problems you haven’t [encountered] before.” Sometimes, he reveals, teenagers
can break down in tears. How does he cope? “I say to them: if you want to
cry for another five minutes, you can. If you want to ask questions, you
can. Sometimes they go away, have a cup of coffee and come back.”
Is the training course for 1,600 staff a recognition that, in the past, some
dons may have chosen the wrong students or behaved inappropriately? Not at
all, says Nicholson, who was working at Essex University when Essex
schoolgirl Tracy Playle fled her Cambridge interview in tears after bring
humiliated by a don who mocked her accent. Playle went on to get a
first-class degree from Warwick. The Trinity College don, Eric Griffiths,
was barred from doing admissions interviews.
Nicholson also denies that the training is primarily focused on persuading
dons to accept more state-school applicants. Oxford was famously criticised
by Gordon Brown a few years ago for operating an “old boy network” when it
turned away Laura Spence, a clever Tyneside comprehensive schoolgirl. And
the university still gets an annual kicking from left-wing MPs when it
publishes statistics showing that half its places are scooped up by
privately educated sixth formers, even though they make up only 7% of the
school-age population. Nonetheless, part of the new training does invite
dons to reflect on these statistics, and on the state-private school
breakdown for their particular college.
Are university interviews subjective, unfair and about as much help in
choosing the right candidates as spinning a coin? That was certainly the
view of Steven Schwartz, the former vice-chancel-lor of Brunel University,
who was asked by ministers to look into the subject – and concluded that
interviews should be scrapped.
Bearing this in mind, I ask Wormald whether he has ever got it wrong. “Oh,
yes,” he says cheerfully. “We take four people a year at this college for
biochemistry, and every three years or so I think: aah, here is one person
that we didn’t evaluate properly. But there are no perfect systems.”
To watch the filmed interviews, visit the Oxford Learning Institute website
at http://courses.learning.ox.ac.uk/login/index.php
Tutors want students who enjoy learning, thinking for themselves. I was asked to evaluate a sonnet in my interview. I'd studied 2 poems in my life, neither one a sonnet. I told them so. They didn't bin me for not knowing metre. They wanted to see me respond to literature, not parrot out a-b-a-b etc.
Marie, London, UK
I got an offer without all A-grades; Oxford and Cambridge are very privileged in their ability to interview each candidate individually, and make a decision based on a more personal impression. It's something I'm very thankful for.
Stephanie, Manchester,
I know plenty of people who have top 'A' level grades with absolutely nothing about them. And I know of a young man currently at Oxford whose interviewer practically gave him the answer to a particularly difficult question. Because he's a phenomenal individual on a personal as well as academic level
Anneliese Gordon, Altrincham, Cheshire
An interview isn't about just repeating what's in the A-Level text books.
After interview I got into Oxford DESPITE my relative lack of A-grades (+ not much family help), because "I could think", according to my tutor.
What happened to Tracy Playle was well out of order though.
Liz, London,
It seems like there's a terrible misconception that there is somehow a 'right' answer- particularly in the Humanities. If you're enthusiastic about your subject, then you'll have read a great deal about -and around- it. The tutor will spot your enthusiasm. More importantly, they'll see curiousity.
James O'Connor, Cambridge,
If all you want to do is parrot what you've read in a text book, you shouldn't apply to Oxbridge.
'A' grade A-Levels don't prove you're Oxbridge material; if you've been refused a place, it's probably because you mindlessly regurgitate other people's ideas.
sarah, london,
There's no magic answer. Stay calm. You're NOT expected to know everything, just to demonstrate an ability to think. Don't go in with rigid ideas of what they'll ask, as you'll be thrown by unexpected qs. Sadly, it comes down to whether the interviewer likes you, which is just luck of the draw.
Liz Edwards, London, UK
Oh, and if you can't cope with an interview, you'd never survive a tutorial.
Charlotte H, Birmingham,
Perhaps, Sally, when universities that don't interview produce as many high calibre students as Oxbridge, then people will begin to look elsewhere. But no other universities in the UK dominate across the board for excellence, in teaching, results, and research, as Oxbridge.
Charlotte H, Birmingham,
if one believes that one deserves admission to an elite institution then one assumes that one's intellect can be pushed to its reasonable limits. Sally from Glasgow seems to have missed the point. the Oxbridge interview is about as far from hoop jumping and standardisation as you can get.
Chendu, London,
No Sally, you miss the point. There is no correct answer often, they want to see if you can think (many who apply are spoonfed to get the grades). So there are no rules, no special hoops, and they would most certainly prefer to have their 'boats rocked' ... this makes it a fairer system.
Patricia, Oslo,
Game theory is neither obscure, nor should obscure questions not be asked in interviews. You should be pushed to your limits, as you would in a real tute so the tutors can see your innate intelligence, reasoning powers and potential.
Kate, Oxford,
How is game theory an obscure part of economics? I work for a volunteer service where we review 100s of PSs per month for free, and game theory comes up in a good number of economics statements. There's no secret to university interviews (Oxbridge or not) - just be yourself and see if they like you.
Bianca S, Paris, France
In other words, what they want is people like them who know the hoops to jump through and how high to jump and who won't rock the boat. WHEN will people start voting with their feet and refusing to play this stupid game? Just apply elsewhere and let Oxbridge fossilise!
Sally Wilkins, Glasgow,