Oxford MAT 2013/2014

Well, "little" isn't a very specific word. Maybe the ratio of the weight placed on grades and scores to that on the interview is 3:1. That can also be described as "little", but it's not negligible by any standard. (DISCLAIMER: Just a random example, I don't know anything specific!) In any case, St John's is the only college which states that explicitly on their maths webpage.

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Hmmm- fine. Im tired of reading into it so much- just gonna give the interview my all- nothing else I can do.
I really hope my interview is 45 mins as opposed to yours.

Do you think it's possible that they didn't go hardcore because the interview wouldn't matter to them much anyway?

Yes, St. John's has been the only college (that I know of) that has actually stated little weight is given to the interview. However, all colleges in Oxford pretty much use the same policies (otherwise your chances would be better off applying to a certain college, something Oxford actively try to avoid happening, and it'll can cause a nightmare for pooling) so you can be pretty sure that all colleges give 'little' weight to the interview (whatever 'little' means - it's about the least quantitative word I've heard all week ). However, it must be said, for the majority of applicants that 'little' weight given to the interview is probably the difference between an offer and a rejection. I think the biggest factor is the Skype/telephone interview, it's considerably more difficult conducting the type of interviews you'd have in person, over the phone. Just because 'little' weight is given to the interview, that isn't really an excuse to give more laid-back interviews, that makes 'little' sense really (especially for pooling purposes, if the interview scores that St. John's post are based on an easier interview it becomes difficult for other colleges to 'standardise'.)

I think this is all a bit misleading. Interviews matter -- if they didn't we wouldn't waste all of our time arranging them (and you try to work out the combinatorics of all the different interview times at different colleges with hundreds of applicants), getting our tutors to give up four days of their time (which they could be using to do research), and making people travel from (potentially) all over the world. Never mind the cost of providing accommodation and food to thousands of applicants.

Performance at MAT and interview is often correlated (that's why we think it's a good test). So someone who did very well on the test might not see the point of the interview (it might appear easy to them). However, if they'd totally messed up the interview? Completely different story. There have been multiple occasions where people who got exceedingly good scores on the MAT didn't get offered a place. Getting an excellent score on the MAT does not guarantee you a place, and vice versa getting a borderline score on the MAT doesn't guarantee you won't get a place. If you've been invited to interview, we think you could be offered a place.

As I've said elsewhere, the MAT does not test all the things we need it to test (no test is that good), which is why we use interviews. We want to get as much information about each candidate as possible, so that we can make the most informed decisions about who to offer a place to.

I understand. My interview just felt a little different from the descriptions I had read (shorter, without too many problems), plus I had that "little weight" statement in mind, so I began theorizing. Didn't mean to spread misinformation, I apologize.

Could anyone post the most really interesting equations of graphs for me to sketch- not polynomials please and not the usual ones please
Cant find any more

and

$y^2 = e^x (x^2 - 1)$

tex didn't come out too well but there's two for you

My approach was similar, I tried to find an invariant as well. It does look like a simple problem on invariants, doesn't it? But, umm, I failed.
Then I tried proving a lemma like this- starting from WW, if the set of configurations that we can reach by adding W's alone be X, and the set of all possible configurations that can be reached be Y, then X=Y. Proved this in a tedious manner, ugly casework. I'm not too happy with it, I'm not even sure if I messed up any details (that'd ruin the proof completely). But this lemma does trivialize the problem.

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I think I have a similar argument although by induction. I proved it works for the base cases for the number of black counters in 0,2,3 (mod 4) respectively since these are the only possible configurations stemming from two counters. And then from there its pretty ok.

What do you need to bring? No need to bring proof of identity?

So, there isn't really any need to bring anything at all?

Are you people coming in on Saturday (which my college recommended) or Sunday?

I was wondering about that too, but I'm guessing they asked us to email them a picture of ourselves for that exact purpose...

I'm coming on the Sunday, as my college (Merton) didn't say anything about Saturday. I just really, really hope my train isn't majorly (>1.5 hours) late

Hmmm? What picture? I wasnt told about this

Arriving on Sunday too in the afternoon

I don't think it applies to Maths or CS but on the document sourced from my college's site, it stated:

If you are applying for courses including English, Modern Languages, Law, Economics and Management, Material Sciences or Medicine please bring a passport-sized photo of yourself (two for Law.) Print your name on the back and hand it in at the registration desk in the Danson Room. (Tutors use these merely as an aide-memoire during later discussions.)

Although, this might not be the case for your college. Good luck on your interview(s) anyway!

Hmmm? What picture? I wasnt told about this

Arriving on Sunday too in the afternoon

When can we expect to receive the decision? I am very nervous and hope to see the decision soon.

I had my computer science Skype interview today. But I solved pretty much all problems in 15 minutes. Is that a bad sign? My friend at Oxford told me the tutors want to see what you cannot solve and then teach you that in the interview. So solving all the problems actually ruined my interview? I am kinda worried. Can anyone give me some suggestions? Thx.

8th January is D-Day. And I had a similar experience, I had a phone interview and also got through my set of questions in under 15 minutes. The entire interview was for about 20 minutes. I don't think we can read much into that. A friend of mine had a couple of phone/Skype interviews for physics and they were about 20 minutes long as well.

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