Inside the Oxford interview
Imagine you’re 18 years old and sitting in probably the first formal interview you’ve ever had. Your place at Oxford is on the line, and you’re barely able to control your nerves. Then, out of the blue, you get a question:
Is violence always political?
Can archaeology ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ the Bible?
If you could invent a new musical instrument, what kind of sound would it make?
If the punishment for parking on double yellow lines were death, and therefore nobody did it, would that be a just and effective law?
How do you respond? And would such an unexpected question throw you off enough to prevent you from making it through what the Guardian calls ‘the fraught 20 minutes in an office that can change the course of a life’?
Happily, that’s not how it really happens in admissions interviews at Oxford (for starters, everyone gets more than one shot). ‘Tell me about the books you mentioned in your personal statement,’ ‘let’s discuss this problem set,’ or ‘why do you want to study psychology?’ might be more standard opening questions.
The supposed strangeness of the Oxford admissions interview has long featured in media mythology surrounding the University’s selection process. This has been helped along in no small part by commercial tutoring companies whose business models thrive on the misconception that you are at a disadvantage in the Oxford selection process unless you pay to learn certain secrets that admissions tutors don’t want revealed. Releasing ‘weird Oxford interview questions’ to the media was for many years a savvy way to get publicity and drum up business. The companies could profit from the anxieties of aspirational students and parents by suggesting their academic ambitions were at the mercy of a process designed to trip them up.
It was a myth to the liking of journalists eager for tales of the unexpected from Oxbridge. The interview process became a shorthand for all that was wrong with social mobility in Britain. ‘Here’s what the gatekeepers of the establishment don’t want you to know’ makes a good story; ‘Oxford admission is really straightforward, just look at the published selection criteria’ is less sexy. When it comes to institutions with the history and symbolic associations of Oxford, outrage and aspiration play well in equal measure. ‘There is immense appetite for this type of story here,’ as one education correspondent insisted. That’s why the University’s News and Information Office decided to gazump the tutorial colleges and release the questions ourselves.
And so it has been for nearly ten years now: the ‘tricky Oxford interview questions’ annual story has been reclaimed by the University as a way of tackling head-on some of the misconceptions about the interview process. This year, The Times reported the questions with the suggestion that getting into Oxford was ‘really rather simple,’ and even acknowledged the ‘folklore’ around the interview was something of a façade:
‘Indeed, a whole industry has sprung up that encourages sixth-formers and their parents to pay fees to tutoring agencies to learn how to navigate the Byzantine application process and mug up on answers to impossible questions.’
Coverage on the BBC website and the Guardian, meanwhile, highlighted comments by Oxford’s Undergraduate Admissions Director that the use of example questions was designed to ‘reassure candidates…rather than catch them out.’ The coverage of both the content and the intent behind the questions are a testament to education correspondents in an often highly critical media landscape when it comes to our admissions. It also doesn’t hurt that the media angle (ostensibly new insights into how to get into Oxford) aligns with our own priorities (disseminate sensible information about the real admissions process as widely as possible).
The point isn’t the questions themselves, though they generate the coverage - let’s admit it, most of us wouldn’t know how to begin designing a gravity dam for holding back water. More important to us is the opportunity it gives our dedicated admissions tutors to explain how a question that might seem bizarre to the average newspaper reader is a really useful part of a serious process of educational exploration and evaluation. At its core, the Oxford admissions system is designed to be both fair and rigorous in assessing students’ academic ability and potential. If even one teacher, parent, or student reads the story and understands more clearly what Oxford is really about, our efforts will have been worthwhile.
More about Oxford interview questions
This is part of the ‘Oxford and the media’ series
