Question to current students re. Interview Preparation

Hi,
Hopefully I will have an interview soon. Just wondering what successful applicants did in the 2/3 weeks before interview? Did you read any new material, prepare for suspected questions etc?

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

Reply 1

Arrogant Git

Nope. I did precisely no preparation. Not sure if that's particularly advisable though.

Reply 2

cpchem

14

albolton

Hi,
Hopefully I will have an interview soon. Just wondering what successful applicants did in the 2/3 weeks before interview? Did you read any new material, prepare for suspected questions etc?

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

Erm... much the same as I did the rest of the time.

Reply 3

Satan's Whiskers

I just read lots of Latin :smile:

Reply 4

Mook

9

Re-read a book I had vaguely mentioned in my personal statement, went back over some of the background knowledge for the topic of my submitted essay and generally just tried to keep reading newspapers, relevant magazines etc. Nothing too stressful, but just enough so that I felt like I was doing something vaguely proactive, although it didn't really make any difference in the long run as none of the stuff I had covered came up in interview.

Reply 5

Craghyrax

17

Arrogant Git

Nope. I did precisely no preparation. Not sure if that's particularly advisable though.

Reply 6

The_Lonely_Goatherd

20

Re-read my personal statement and essays, did some work for the interview tests and tried (and failed) to read a book :smile:

Reply 7

turgon

11

I think arts students probably prepare less for their interviews than the science ones, who would have to make sure they know their A level stuff inside out as well as read/do questions beyond their syllabus.

Reply 8

Miam!

I did loads of preparation, and I felt it really paid off... But it would be useful to know what you want to study in order to give you advice.

I read or re-read the books on my PS and did some research and thinking about them, as if I'd been planning an essay about each of them. I tried to phrase answers to the most obvious questions ( "why Cambridge/subject" ) by writing stuff down, because I am terrible at expressing my thoughts under pressure. I tried to anticipate the questions I would be asked by looking at my PS, wrote example questions down and thought about answers, and also did a lot of general thinking about my subject and phrasing of important ideas without seeking to answer any particular question. Then I did a lot of language revision but they didn't asked me any questions to test my Japanese. The point is, predicting the questions I'd be asked and knowing everything on my PS worked very well, as about 75% of the questions I had "seen coming" and researched in some way. Maybe I just got extremely lucky though, as some of my coursemate's interviews were hardly PS-based at all and they were just asked very random question (eg. "[quote from Confucius] - can you explain that?", when it is obvious than most 17 year-olds with an interest in Japan/Japanese won't be massively clued up on the Chinese classics)

Reply 9

lavalse

10

I agree with Miam! if you do focused preparation it can be very useful.

I do Arabic and Spanish but I spent a lot of time preparing for the MML interview because to be honest it felt like I'd been preparing for my arabic interview my whole life. but basically for the MML interview i read tons of literature and spent the couple of weeks before my interview coming up with interpretations of it all and clarifying my thoughts. it was probably the most useful thing i'd done because in the interview they questioned me about a book and i would never have been able to say what i said if i hadn't been reading on the topic that weekend!

oh and i also did a couple of mocks interviews with my friends, we just grilled each other. it was quite good really, and both of the friends i did that with are in cambridge now too.

Reply 10

dadude

Im applying for engineering and would appreciate any advice/stories from successful applicants.

Reply 11

SouthernFreerider

12

well im currently preparing for maths but just doing as much maths as possible at STEP standard.

unlike some subject where you probably dont need yo prepare that much, in maths especially i can see this preparation being very useful.

Reply 12

ebam_uk

20

dadude

Im applying for engineering and would appreciate any advice/stories from successful applicants.

revise pure maths, mechanics, electronics and a bit of physics - knowing your a level syllabus like AS + some A2 would really be helpful. Also have a passion for engineering!

Reply 13

deltafiore

2

For Oxford I had to teach myself a lot of stuff about physics and math because the UK focuses a bit more on stuff that the US doesn't in physics, and I hadn't learned some methods of integration which I thought I might end up needing (incidentally I didn't need to know any of it). But my interview was a day before my physics aptitude exam so the studying I did for the exam kind of worked for the exam and the interview.

Reply 14

*pitseleh*

20

I re-read the books on my Personal Statement, that was all. No mock interviews or anything.

Reply 15

AAKhan07

I am fairly certain that no one has recieved confirmation of interviews yet but I'm just wondering what people are doing to prepare for the Physics interviews on 14th-17th December at Oxford?

Reply 16

QuantumTheory

12

Smoking weed, getting drunk, going to raves....

In other news, how about rereading your PS, reading around the subject, and ahead of your textbook, learning about the LHC and other high profile Physics projects in the news.

Reply 17

AAKhan07

QuantumTheory

Smoking weed, getting drunk, going to raves....

In other news, how about rereading your PS, reading around the subject, and ahead of your textbook, learning about the LHC and other high profile Physics projects in the news.

:/
I wasn't really asking for advice, just curious how other people are approaching it. But since you mention it, I've read around 7 books on quantum mechanics (my future career hopefully), know a fair bit about the LHC, have already read all of this year's physics material (can do the Mod. 4 test for AQA now) but I think reading around the subject is not very important right now.

My teacher's have good knowledge of what Oxford Physics interviews are like and they remind us that the Physics questions will be effectively 100% problem-solving. It is very rare that more than 5 minutes will be spent talking about subjects you have read around in your spare time. That's why I've been focussing on problem-solving. I've done all the Physics AEA past papers and some BPhO Paper 2s and I'm just pressing on with past papers right now.

If anyone wants my advice, I say practise problem-solving in Physics.
Anyone want to share their strategy for Interview preperation?

Reply 18

superkam

I dont know why but i feel the need to learn every formula and constant ive ever used in maths, further maths, mechanics or physics so you could try that

Reply 19

frost3dbutts

7

I'm not sure what approach to take. For human geography it's not very technical all the time - I mean except for models and stuff - so I don't think I need to know things concretely (although I do most of my reading based on human parts, I never mentioned physical in my PS either). Then for physical it can all get a bit technical - so I suppose they'll expect me to know complicated things? If they start grilling me on purely physical things I'll just die right there. more comfortable with interactions between hum/phys.

Blah. Any input?

Question to current students re. Interview Preparation

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