I've spoken to quite a few people now, who all report that some of their interveiwers had been hostile, aggressive, unecessarily intimidating or at very least off putting by rasing their eyebrows or rolling their eyes to even the most sensible points.
Why do they do this? They're hardly going to get an accurate idea of how someone would really perform in a supervision by being deliberately off putting and rude. This definately is not the way for getting the best out of people (which is what is claimed on the website). Is this just their way, as quite a few of my teachers have said, or driving out hoards of applicants who for whatever reason they've decided they don't want even before the interview?
At my college, hardly anyone goes to Cambridge (one person did last year out of 600), and yet it is one of the best sixth forms in the county. Last year, there were a few absolutely outstanding students, as I imagine is true of many colleges, who got rejected after having these sort of experiences at interview. (It's all very well saying they just don't have the room to offer every outstanding student a place, but not every student who does get an offer is outstanding; the average GCSE and AS results of accepted applicants are surprisingly low) I'm not suggesting that interveiwers are biased towards particular schools of course, but certainly they seem to be determined not to let some people in. I probably am completely wrong about this, I've only had a limited experience of the system; but from what I've seen of people at my school, this cetainly seems to be the case.