If you’re thinking of applying, then this is a useful and illuminating article, which demystifies some aspects of an application and interview process that has often struck outsiders (as well as many insiders) as confusing and opaque.
Extract:
It’s a life-changing roll call. As the admissions tutor reads out names, the men and women gathered around the table reply crisply to each one: “Yep … yep … yep.” Each “yep” is actually a no. It’s a rejection of a candidate who has applied for a place at the University of Cambridge.
The weakest of the field have already been sifted out; up to a fifth of applications are declined before the interview stage. Now the tutors are gathered to consider the results of those interviews. Five women and seven men are gathered at a table, in a light-filled, rectangular room at Churchill College to discuss admissions to study natural sciences.
The easy ones go first. These are the candidates whose academic track record is – by Cambridge standards – marginal, and whose performance at interview has been disappointing. As one candidate’s name is read out, one of the academics notes that he got an interview score of two, out of a possible 10. “Oh dear,” says Richard Partington, the senior admissions tutor, who sits at the head of the table. Next to Partington is a steel trolley with the applicants’ files.
Then, they get down to business…
Source: The Guardian
Personal recollection: I interviewed at Pembroke, Cambridge in 1998, and went up in 1999. Having been to a state grammar school with virtually no record at the time of sending people to Oxbridge, I didn’t receive a great amount of guidance about the best way to approach the application/interview process. We did a mock interview with some teachers from the local public school, which I recall being a humiliating failure. Someone told me that the only wrong answer to a Cambridge interview question was ‘I don’t know’. That, pretty much, was that.
My tactics were therefore improvised. I knew I wanted to read History, and decided to apply to Pembroke because, when flicking through the university prospectus, I saw that the admissions tutor was an historian. His number was published in the prospectus, so I telephoned one afternoon, introduced myself and asked a long list of questions about what life at Pembroke was like, how the teaching worked, and whether it was the sort of place I’d fit in.
After that I went to an open day, saw the same admissions tutor and buttonholed him for another long conversation about history and the college, etc.
Subsequently, when I was called for interview, there were three sessions scheduled, each of about 20 minutes in length, one-on-one. The first two interviews were structured around discussing historical essays I’d written in school; but one of them, which started on something like the Weimar Republic, went off-track and we ended up discussing Kurt Cobain and the musical influence of Nirvana on the grunge scene.
The third interview was with the admissions tutor. It was the end of the day. I remember - although this may be fanciful - him emitting a groan when I walked into the room. We talked a bit about college and history and studying, then at the end of the interview he said he wasn’t going to ask me if I had any questions, as I’d asked quite enough previously, and he was keen to get things wrapped up so he could get off to play tennis.
On New Year’s Eve 1998 I received an offer.
Moral: I don’t know that there is a moral here, other than to say that in my case a measure of enthusiastic, precocious lobbying probably helped. Looking back, I suppose that another admissions tutor would have found it all wildly irritating, and life would have turned out differently.
(Sidebar: When I got up to Cambridge I was fortunate enough to be taught a bit by Richard Partington, who appears in the piece I linked to, above. Besides being, evidently, an open-minded and progressive admissions tutor at Churchill college, he is also a very brilliant medievalist, who knows more about Edward III than anyone else.)
My experience of the Oxbridge application procedure is somewhat different. But then, I’ve applied three times in total, and each of those contrasted markedly, too.
First time around I was 17, at a public school, and rather upset not to be included in the clique of students appointed by teachers for pre-interview grooming. I hadn’t been predicted the full complement of A-Grades and, I dunno, I liked fun a bit too much. Not to be deterred, I decided to apply off my own back regardless, opting to take the examination route (now abolished), with Oriel College, Oxford as my first choice.
To everyone’s surprise I passed the English test and was called for interview - actually two interviews which took place over two days. The first was easygoing and went fairly well, I thought; the second was more akin to the stuff of Oxbridge cliche, with a Junior Research Fellow asking the direct questions while a Professor read the paper and drank sherry beside me. Oddly unintimidated by this, I gave it a good go, managed not to flinch, then left in positive spirits.
I received the inevitable rejection letter a couple of months later, sad and yet buoyed by the manner in which it was written. They had been very impressed; I had missed out by the smallest margins; they had written to my headmaster to praise my performance.
With this my mind was set. I would get three As at A-Level in the banks and then reapply for the next year, by which time acceptance would be forgone conclusion. At least, that was the plan. I did, in fact, get my three As, so it started well. Then I set about a lobbying process, not dissimilar from the one Dan describes above. I remember writing to the Professor of English at Magdalen, saying that I would love the chance to meet, chat and take in the college. This approach didn’t favour me quite as well, however. Six weeks after hearing nothing I received a pathetically (drunkenly?) scrawled memo saying, “Come and have a look round when you want. It’s a free country…” The writing was on wall, if not quite on the paper: I reapplied and was instantly rejected without interview, explanation or feedback.
I ended up reading English at Exeter where the teaching was nothing short of brilliant. I loved my course, enjoyed my work and struck up great bonds with a number of tutors. After three happy years there I left to work in the City, a stopgap during which time I hoped to earn and save lots of money, then go to journalism school. My thoughts returned to Oxford, however, when a prospectus arrived through the post. From then on I would spend long commutes reading through post-grad course descriptions and scanning pictures of manicured lawns and dreamy spires etc etc. On a whim I wrote a letter to an old Exeter tutor, an Oxford alumnus himself, and asked him what he thought about me applying to do an MPhil in Renaissance Literature. He replied saying that he though it was a brilliant idea, that he would happily be my referee, and that he had no doubt I would be accepted. Two months later, with little fanfare and no interview, I was.
My feelings, then, about the Oxbridge system are ambivalent. It would seem that on two occasions chutzpah and contacts made an impact. Merit, on the other hand, clearly wasn’t enough.
Ironically, I dropped out of my place at Merton College after just three months. I wasn’t happy, I felt I had lost my academic ‘form’, but more than that, I knew that staying would be more a case of preserving pride than benefitting my career in the long run. Maybe it was a case of right place, wrong time. Deep down I suspect that after all the foreplay, just getting in was enough.