Why was the interview rate so low for Oxford this year?

In general Oxford do interview less than Cambridge (no idea why, frankly I think that probably causes them to lose quite a lot of talent)

My understanding is that the faculties aim to interview 3-3.5 applicants for each place. That means oversubscribed subjects must be whittled down to reasonable numbers, which is why a lot of people can get rejected without an interview. Unless your school has a sizeable number of Oxford applicants, claiming a change of policy on the basis of a few people is somewhat tenuous. Especially since they might have applied for very competitive subjects like E&M, PPE and Medicine, which routinely reject many candidates pre-interview

Whether Cambridge's idea of interviewing everybody who stands a chance (however weak) of getting an offer is necessarily superior is questionable though. It might well be, but who knows. Maybe from Oxford's experience, the vast majority of offers go to candidates who have performed above a certain threshold on pre-interview tests/ based on their UCAS application? Hence their preference to weed out more people at an earlier stage.

Yeah, that is what I was saying.

They don't really interview weak applicants. The threshold to be interviewed is gaining 85% UMS. They don't interview everyone either, it's more like 80% of applicants... at Oxford it's just a fair bit less than that. Also, pre-interview tests are often quite a poor way to find the best applicants, statistically. I can just imagine there's a few people who miss out when they could have gained a place had they been given a chance at interview.

What statistics do you have that show pre-interview tests are poor at selecting the best applicants?

There's this article, though it only deals with the TSA for Engineering and the BMAT for Medicine/VetMed (at Cambridge): http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/admissions/research/docs/prefective_effectiveness_of_metrics_in_admission.pdf

Pretty sure something like the MAT/PAT would have a high correlation to degree success.

Is it just the fact they're interviewing the same applicants per place but more applications are coming in?

I can't speak for every subject, but for Computer Science this year it was roughly 40%, when usually they interview over half.

I can't speak for every subject, but for Computer Science this year it was roughly 40%, when usually they interview over half.

Of all applicants?
And do you know if it was the same proportion of interviewees that got a place? (E.g. 1 in 3)

I'm not an applicant myself, but all my friends at school(and in my opinion, they all had a very good PS) were rejected pre-interview. I was also speaking to pupils from other school, and they said that more Oxford applicants were rejected then any year before. Cambridge applicants seemed to have no problem.
I'm just curious!

pre-interview tests are often quite a poor way to find the best applicants, statistically. I can just imagine there's a few people who miss out when they could have gained a place had they been given a chance at interview

Pretty close. This year for Computer Science we had 237 applications, interviewed 97 and made 30 offers, so 31% of interviewees got an offer. Last year the figures were 146, 81, 28 and 35% respectively.

Pretty close. This year for Computer Science we had 237 applications, interviewed 97 and made 30 offers, so 31% of interviewees got an offer. Last year the figures were 146, 81, 28 and 35% respectively.

That's a huge jump! Has there been a serious outreach effort over the last year? Did this just come out of the blue?

That's a huge jump! Has there been a serious outreach effort over the last year? Did this just come out of the blue?

Just as a follow up to that; you interviewed a smaller proportion of applicants. Was the quality of the larger applicant pool diluted or did you raise the bar for interview?