The Student Room Group

Scary interview stories - are any of them true?

I've been reading some scary, odd and random occurences happening in interviews for Oxbridge such as:

"there's an old story going round, about a guy who went for an interview at oxford. he sat down, ans the interviewer asked him, "you see this brick? i want you to through it through that window." the guy looks really confused, but when the request is repeated, he stands up, and lobs the brick out of the window. "you stupid moron!!" shouts the interviewer, " why didn't you open the window first?" the guy did not get into oxford"

"my friends sister got an interview at Cambridge and she said they threw a toy sheep at her in the middle of her answer to see how she would react. She must have done ok coz she got in."

and

My friend applied to Oxford to do english. During the interview they asked him to give a definition of a poem. He gave a definition then one of the interviewers went 'pah, junior level!'

Has anyone had anything like this happen to them? Have you got any stories of your own?

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1
nope, most probably untrue
Reply 2
They go round every year. They're all rubbish. I was nearly conned by a 'friend' of mine who assured me that her brother had in fact had the rugby ball treatment: she was so straight-faced about it all - and after all she was a friend of mine and talking about her brother, not a friend of a friend - that I nearly fell for it. But if you think about it for a minute - if they actually tried any of that for real do you think for a minute that someone wouldn't ring the papers? They got ridiculed enough the other year for some of the questions they ask - which taken out of context often do sound daft but usually have an important point to make. If they actually chucked rugby balls at people or asked them to throw bricks out of windows they'd get ripped to pieces by the press.

You do still get the odd supervisor who's a bit acerbic (usually they're older ones, from what I've seen and heard!) and so there's a possibility that the odd interviewer might be a bit funny, but I should think the college would cotton on to any problems fairly quickly and gently remove them from such duties... it's in their interest not to scare off potential students, after all!
Reply 3
I helped out with interviewing training at cambridge this year, basically pretending to be a potential applicant and i can say that regardless of what happened in the past they are making sure that interviewers make sure that the questions asked allow for a full assesment of the candidate. They are not trying to trip you up/catch you out or anything else. And anyway if you do have a bad interview experience everyone else applying will do as well.
Reply 4
You guys are missing the old classic- burning newspaper...

Student walks into the room to find interviewer with a copy of times, from behind the paper he said "Surprise me" so the student gets out a lighter and set the news paper alight... needless to say- he got in...

True story! I heard from my friend who promised that it happaned to his friend's brother's friend's sister's friend's boyfriend's brother's friend who applied to [oxford/cambridge] to study [X]...[Y] years ago...

:biggrin: :biggrin: :biggrin:
there are some stupid questions asked- i know because my physics tutor has studied post grad at both oxford and cambridge and he was telling me some of the stories.

another person told me about someone being given a tennis ball and asking them to eat it

they replied saying "well peel it then", and they got in i fink
Reply 6
Apparently those weird things happen more to cam applicants than oxford... oh yea according to my teacher you guys also get "grilled" more...

lol enjoy
Reply 7
Traum
Apparently those weird things happen more to cam applicants than oxford... oh yea according to my teacher you guys also get "grilled" more...

lol enjoy

wahaayyy thnx :cool:
Traum
Apparently those weird things happen more to cam applicants than oxford... oh yea according to my teacher you guys also get "grilled" more...

lol enjoy


for some reason i dont really know anyone applying to oxford, but i know about 12 who've applied to cam :confused:
Reply 9
lol, why do you think i changed from cam to ox at the last minute? Muwahaha~

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futureaussiecto
for some reason i dont really know anyone applying to oxford, but i know about 12 who've applied to cam :confused:


maybe your school is just more cam-orientated?

We never had anyone into cam before, but 1 person (a huge no...i know:biggrin:) went to ox 2 years ago...
Reply 10
A bunch of the freshers i've met said they had interviewers who sat at opposite sides of the room so they couldn't look at them both at once and fired lots of questions. I think a lot of them can be eccentric and so forth.

I must have been lucky, or just less unlucky than some. My interviewers sat behind a desk with a distinct absence of fruit, rugby balls, newspapers or anything apart from my application forms and personal statement.
Reply 11
I got 'do birds have faces?' randomly tossed up half way through an interview, but it's philosophy, you expect that kind of stuff. Would have liked the opportunity to set fire to something. Would have put me at ease.
How do birds not have faces?

Traum
You guys are missing the old classic- burning newspaper...
I heard it from my friend's brother than a guy at his school set fire to the interviewer's tie when given that question.
ya.. DO BIRDS HAVE FACES?
what did you answer calvin?
Reply 14
Immortal Wombat
How do birds not have faces?

I heard it from my friend's brother than a guy at his school set fire to the interviewer's tie when given that question.


how do they even go so close to the interviewer w/o them noticing the candidate's arsonist intentions? :p: i mean, if you were the interviewer, you won't want your tie nor your copy of the times to be on fire.
Reply 15
I don't think that any of this can be true...I hope.I mean we are not going to be special agents who have to have an answer in any kind of situation...or is Cambridge in fact a MI5 headquarter?!
Reply 16
Jucus
I mean we are not going to be special agents who have to have an answer in any kind of situation...or is Cambridge in fact a MI5 headquarter?!


SHHHHH!
Reply 17
Calvin
I got 'do birds have faces?' .


Interesting...

If a face is the soft tissue on the anterior surface of the skull, then
it is trivial that birds do have faces.

On the other hand,
if one uses the functional description that a face is a mobile structure that expresses emotion, then birds dont have faces.

But on the other hand,
birds can be said to express emotion with their bodies and wings ( position, movements, fluttering ) in which case their face can be said to be the entire surface of their body. After all, why be anthropocentric ?

On the other hand ( I am really stretching now :biggrin: ), a face can be considered a mirror of the human consciousness. The answer to the question then revolves around the issue of whether or not birds are conscious. This then opens up a whole can of worms and permits a discussion of the nature of consciousness....
Reply 18
Hehe, you'd be in for sure I think.

I think I said something like, "clearly is going to depend on what a face is. I'm prety sure you couldn't give a specific definition so I think it going to depend on whether they possess a certian number of important features we would normally expect faces to have, noses, ear, mouth, eyes, etc or at least something that looks the same or has the same role. So on the whole they would yes."
And he said: 'hmm'
Reply 19
Immortal Wombat
How do birds not have faces?

I heard it from my friend's brother than a guy at his school set fire to the interviewer's tie when given that question.


There are many variations... :biggrin: :biggrin: :biggrin:

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Calvin
Hehe, you'd be in for sure I think.

I think I said something like, "clearly is going to depend on what a face is. I'm prety sure you couldn't give a specific definition so I think it going to depend on whether they possess a certian number of important features we would normally expect faces to have, noses, ear, mouth, eyes, etc or at least something that looks the same or has the same role. So on the whole they would yes."
And he said: 'hmm'


and what was that for (biology?) :p: