History Interviews@Oxford

Can anybody who has taken the interview at oxford for History remember what questions they were asked? I'm applying to Christ Church next year.

If you apply to an oversubscribed college are you statistically less likely to get accepted than if you apply to the less popular ones?

THanks alot
Chris

Reply 1

kildare

AboveMyChamberD

Yea I can, should this be in the uni forum though?

Reply 2

kildare

Yea I can, should this be in the uni forum though?

yes that is correct

Reply 3

AboveMyChamberD

let's assume I dont know what you're talking aboot

Reply 4

kildare

I've attached to interview feedback form I did for my school.

Oxbridgefeedback2003[1].doc24.6KB

Reply 5

peach_archers

Helloooo,
Ok I cant remember all of the questions but here are a few of them:

(INTERVIEW 1)
1st few related to the essay's I sent in:

What do you think Hitler's most important aim in Mein Kampf was?

Why did female employment in Germany actually increase despite measures to aboish women from the work place?

What was Hitler's biggest strategic mistake between 1939 and 1941?

Relating to my personal statement

You say you enjoy world war one poetry, can we really learn from it and how reliable is it?

What are the main similarities between WW1 poems?

There were a few more but cant remember (I was so nervous and had a really bad fluey/cold so my ears were blocked and half the time was spent sniffing!)

(INTERVIEW 2) - Before the interviews we were all sent an email telling us to prepare a personal discussion.

On the day we were told to arrive 15 minutes early (although I arrived 25 minutes early - they dont know hehe!) and had to read two sources one modern and one ancient). The one you are asked about depends on your personal discussion (as there was one ancient specialising tutor and one modern specialising tutor taking the interview) because my topic was modern (The Cuban Missile Crisis) I got given the ancient source which I really enjoyed, it wasn't an interrogation session just a 'chatty' discusson.

The second part of the interview was very different, I had prepared reams on the Cuban Missile Crisis only to find the tutor deciding to ask questions 'around' the topic i.e the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain and Khrushchev's role in Russia. Whilst I did know litle bits about this I was nowhere as confident as I could have been if discussing my prepared topic!

Overall the questions are designed to test you and push you to your limits, I felt they were not overly challenging but under the pressure of 3 people blasting questions at you they are quite hard to get your head around and you need to be sharp! (P.s dont take my word for all of this I got rejected yet am determined to reapply!)

As for applying for an under subscribed college DON'T you may think it is under subscribed from the prospectus (last year figures) but alot of people go by this hence the reason this year Exeter had 297 people trying for Law for about 10 places! (The year before the ratio had been about 1:2). My advice would be to go for the one you like or if you don't mind then go by a middle subscribed college as a lot of people go for the previous years under subscribed colleges and also quite a few very confident people go for the high colleges (in the norrington table).

Anyway hope this helps,
Good luck with it all,
Kat!