Untrained interviewers

gbdb222: Is your suggestion that oral interviews are a bad way of picking candidates seing as they will eventually be graded on written exams?
Or are you suggesting that academics are poor at picking the best candidates?

If the first I would suggest that the point of education is to create an intelligent and motivated individual, not a person who does well at exams, so the complaint should be against the exam papers used to grade finals students, not the interview process.

If the second I would disagree for essentially the same reason. The point of education is to produce motivated, intelligent individuals. At Oxbridge particularly the teaching is mainly done by supervisions, which consist of one on one chats with students. In many ways practically identical to an interview procedure, they may have no formal training but most will have in the region of 5-10 years of practical experience supervising before they are interviewing, so I'd say they are exceptionally well trained for the interview procedure. They've been working with students for years, and know what sort of people excell, both in supervisions and eventually in finals.

I agree with everything that's been said here, and just want to add a personal slant...

I'm an incredibly introverted person, to the extent that some people do find me quite difficult to teach, since I don't speak much, and I'm very underconfident in my own ability. My interviewers managed to bring me out of myself so that I could talk freely and enthusiastically about my subject - something which my teachers at school thought would be my downfall. I was, in fact, told at school that the interview would probably make me cry, and that it'd probably be as far as I got in the application process. So, in response to the OP, the interviewers generally do know what they're doing.

Many academics are unsuited temperamentally to interviewing - too introverted, too interested in their own specialisation.

None of the interviewers have had any formal training.

There is no assessment of the interview process.

There are no checks on the bias/prejudices of the interviewers.

There is no formal guidance on what they should be looking for.

Interviewing as a technique is unlikely to sort out the best academically-gifted candidates. Rather, it is likely to select extroverted, confident candidates ale to express themselves well orally, rather than on paper. Some candidates may be passionate about the subject, but unable to expres this orally. Others may be uninterested in the subject, but convincing liars. The interviewers are unlikely to be able to differentiate.

Looking at this optimistically, many (hopefully most) interviewers are trying to do their best, with the best intentions, whilst sorely lacking the required skills. Looking at it pessimistically, some interviewers are bored and uninterested, resenting the whole process and awarding places arbitrarily. Others enjoy wielding power and regard college places as their personal fiefdom.

Each place at Cambridge costs the public purse thousands of Pounds a year. The method of allocating those places lacks transparency, accountability and consistency.

I have clearly stirred up a hornet's nest, here! My background is that I was interviewed at Cambridge over 30 years ago (and won an open scholarship), and I have worked as an academic for part of my career, so I have seen the admissions process from both sides, albeit some of it a long time ago.

I should have stated my thesis more fully at the outset. My point is that degrees are awarded on the basis of written exams, and oral interviews are not necessarily a good guide to the final degree result. There is little research on this, of course.

Unfortunately, so many candidates now score straight As at A level that A levels are not a good guide. Cambridge has introduced various ad hoc tests, such as TSA, but these are not central to the admissions process. Consequently, interviews have received far more weight in recent years than they deserve. Cambridge should reintroduce its admissions examination and rely on that for the competitive entrance procedure. If it is necessary to weight the scores because some candidates have not been as well prepared as others, then that can be done. The result will be a transparent, consistent admissions procedure that correlates well with the undergraduate examination procedure. Obviously not perfect, but better than the present system.