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Unconditional offer without interview?

If I already have my grades and am applying to Oxbridge while on a gap year, do they still need an interview or can I get an unconditional offer without it, just based on the grades? Does anyone know? Thanks :smile:

Reply 1

ignaz

when i applied as an individual (i dont know if you would apply through your school or as an individual), I could enter my grades manually and they invited me for an interview and they gave me an unconditional offer and so far they didnt ask for my orginal certificates.

Keeping in mind that I could have entered fake grades it would be pretty stupid to not interview someone and give him/her a place barely on some electronicly processed numbers...

so far so good, you can still fake the grades and go to the interview in december and eat and sleep for free for 4 days in oxford;-)

good luck

st

Reply 2

dragons_circle

Oxbridge will always require interviews (note plural). They do not give offers without interview.

Reply 3

Alan Smithee

dragons_circle

Oxbridge will always require interviews (note plural). They do not give offers without interview.

I reckon someone will prove you wrong in here.. :p:

Reply 4

CamSPSer

I believe they amy give offers to foreign students without interivew(s).
if you are post applying though they will ask you to come to interivew, so don't plan a gap year in Outer Mongolia

Reply 5

yorkshirelass

14

ignaz

when i applied as an individual (i dont know if you would apply through your school or as an individual), I could enter my grades manually and they invited me for an interview and they gave me an unconditional offer and so far they didnt ask for my orginal certificates.

Keeping in mind that I could have entered fake grades it would be pretty stupid to not interview someone and give him/her a place barely on some electronicly processed numbers...

so far so good, you can still fake the grades and go to the interview in december and eat and sleep for free for 4 days in oxford;-)

good luck

st

So you think people should con Oxford into giving them a free holiday? This wouldn't work for a number of reasons:
a) Reference. Everyone needs one, even if you applied as an individual, don't you? You'd have to find a teacher who was willing to partake in a scam.
b) Getting the interview in the first place. Lots of people get straight out rejected if they're unlucky or if they don't have a good reference or written work or test. Faking the written work would be difficult. If you're not Oxbridge material, then you might find it difficult to work out what sort of standard to plagiarise - it's much easier to gauge the level beneath you than above you and suspicions might just be raised if you unknowingly submitted post-grad standard work. If you required a written test at your school then you'd have to send someone else in your place and somehow not raise suspicion with staff.
c) It's not free since you have to pay £15 to UCAS and £10 to Oxford (I don't know about Cambridge) and waste a substantial amount of time setting this all up.
d) If you were intelligent enough to carry out this task and get away with it, then you're probably intelligent enough to be a genuine candidate anyway.

Reply 6

kizer

15

Probably some IMO squad leader already knew the Trinity tutors and got in without interview.

But in 99.999% of cases you will need to undergo at least one interview, and sometimes several.

Dragons_Circle - are you implying everyone has at least two interviews? That's not true.

Reply 7

dragons_circle

Most people I know seem to have had at least 2, Oxford since nearly everyone has interviews at multiple colleges and Cambridge have multiple interviews. Perhaps the odd department here and there has only 1, but the vast majority would have more than 1.

Reply 8

kizer

15

Not sure about vast majority. For PPE, several colleges only have one interview because there are so many applicants.

Reply 9

dragons_circle

Vast majority of Oxbridge applicants overall.

Reply 10

HannahZ

4

As far as I know places are not offered on the basis of grades alone. For a very large number of courses you are either required to sit extra tests or send in examples of your work, or both. The vast majority of applicants are interviewed unless they have already been rejected for poor grades, poor test results or poor submitted written work. The only exceptions to this I believe are some foreign students who live too far from an interview centre which sometimes applies to some Asian students. As far as I know, European students are normally expected to come to interview.

Reply 11

Willa

11

Jigglypuff

Haha a phone interview would not have been good for me.
Interviewer: 'What do you think of this argument'
Me: 'Erm...PLEASE HOLD THE LINE.'

Anyway, what is to stop you from googling stuff?

an acceptable response time

Reply 12

Nutter

16

Jigglypuff

Haha a phone interview would not have been good for me.
Interviewer: 'What do you think of this argument'
Me: 'Erm...PLEASE HOLD THE LINE.'

Anyway, what is to stop you from googling stuff?

An acceptable response time as mentioned by the previous poster, but in the first place, because the questions they ask during interviews cannot be answered by Google. These questions are less factual-based than face-to-face interviews and involve more of your ability to critically analyse issues, or provide your opinions on a wide range of topics of discussions. You will have to compare/contrast, offer alternatives/suggestions, and essentially think on your feet instead of referring to your notes in front of you.

I should know - I had a phone interview last year.

Reply 13

Nutter

16

Also note that they WILL require at least one face-to-face interview for most international applicants as well regardless of subject, unless you live in a very remote region of the world, in which case they will arrange for a phone interview, failing which a decision will be made on other aspects of your application. Of course, you would need to have an excellent application form/PS/reference for them to accept you since they're taking the risk of not interviewing you.

Reply 14

samba

6

It would be EXTREMELY rare I imagine. My mates brother went to oxford to do physics having just turned 15. He's now starting a PhD having just turned 18 :/ They required an interview from him, despite reports of genius etc etc.

Reply 15

CamSPSer

You have to have a quiet keyboard be a fast typer and then hope they don't probe to deep.

Reply 16

Nutter

16

Jigglypuff

Yeah, most of my interview questions would have been ungooglerable anyway. I do think there were one or two that looking on google might have helped with though. 'What do you think of X argument put forward by Y?' (would google X and Y with 'criticisms'). Not that I'd condone this kind of cheating though :p:

And by the time you actually figure that one out, they'd slam the phone on you for blatant cheating. :p:

Especially if they can hear the keyboard tapping in the background!

Reply 17

Tonheuru

Or you could just think about it without using google :P I mean, lets face it, if you need to google all the time for a mere interview, how are you actually going to cope with the work that you'd need to do when you got in?