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Higher education

Talk to other parents whose children are preparing for university on our Higher Education forum.

Oxford interviews and overnight stay

188 replies

bevelino · 16/11/2015 22:44

DD has applied to Oxford university and if she is lucky enough to be offered an interview is worried she may have to stay at the college for up to 3 days by herself. Please could someone let me know how this works? DD has suggested that I travel with her and stay in a b&b so that she can meet me when she has finished her interview(s). Any advice would be gratefully received.

OP posts:
MrsUltra · 20/11/2015 15:40

Quite envious of those staying over..
DS has received an interview invite @ Oxford but for his subject all happens in one day, so no chance of staying over, which he would have liked...

HocusCrocus · 20/11/2015 18:17

Ds's school were most insistent to him as per Molio's post that he should read no significance into being invited to a second college or not (non - medic applicant). Whether he could stop himself doing it or not - quite different.

Good luck to DS MrsU.

mountainstoat · 20/11/2015 18:25

I'm glad the main tutor guy interviewing DS didn't know that two years later DS would stagger into a tutorial hung over to the back teeth, dash into the tutors private loo and throw up...

Molio · 20/11/2015 19:09

Well he knows the significance now Hocus Grin. Which was the other college, out of curiosity?

Molio · 20/11/2015 19:13

And yes, sorry - good luck to your DS MrsU, but it does seem a bit thin, no overnight stay.

mateysmum · 20/11/2015 19:24

DS still waiting to hear (his cousin got 3 days notice, then aced it last year).

Back before the dawn of time, I loved my interview days. Met people I'm still in touch with now.

OP, yes there might be a bit of hanging around, but your DD can explore Oxford - v easy to navigate on foot and there'll be lots of other people in the same position who'll want to share experiences and chat. It's all part of the experience.

Molio · 20/11/2015 19:29

No history people will have heard yet though mateysmum, as I'm sure you know. Anytime between tomorrow and the monday after next! Wine (received wisdom is that invites don't arrive on Saturdays, but they can, and do).

HocusCrocus · 20/11/2015 19:40

Molio, he actually wasn't invited for another interview. A friend of his was invited elsewhere (same subject) and ended up at the 2nd College. The reason the school said not to speculate (cue DS speculating Grin ) was that as well as any 1st College being over applied to , there was also as you say some checks and balances re quality of any college's applicants.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 20/11/2015 20:28

Gosh, that time again! I look back nostalgically but this year Phoebe on The Archers is waiting to hear if she's got an interview for PPE (college unnamed), so I feel as if I have a tiny horse in the race. Grin

FWIW, four years ago my son had interviews at two colleges. He got an offer from the second college, which wasn't the one he'd applied to, but by a weird coincidence had been his second choice when he was trying to decide where to apply. He was very, very happy there.

mateysmum · 20/11/2015 21:18

molio ..wish I hadn't checked back now! I wasn't expecting to have heard yet, but didn't realise it could be over the next day or two. DS was prepared for it not to be till beginning of Dec. If he gets an interview and I'm not that confident he will, he has to arrive on Tuesday and potentially stay till Friday!

MrsKayJay · 20/11/2015 21:36

Well, whoever has kids going to interviews - tell them NOT do what I did (this might "out" me to people who know me).

I was from a very non-public school bg, was totally terrified by the other applicants and students, and (because I was nervous) misread the form which said something like 4.30pm Monday, 10.30am Monday, 3pm Tuesday.

I scanned through as people around me were nattering about things like their laptops and cars (total different world from me), saw the 10.30 Monday one as a Tuesday morning one and promptly missed it. They kindly rearranged it but I felt that everyone thought I was stupid, got so, so flustered by it, and grew homesick like crazy. Didn't understand where to get food, ate a lot of sweets from a corner shop. Did not do well at all in the interview, God only knows what they thought.

Also earplugs. My vivid memory is sitting in a tiny little crappy bedroom with someone next door playing Daniel Bedingfield's "gotta get through this" on repeat. I actually sometimes get flashbacks

Molio · 20/11/2015 21:48

Well the corner shop sweets sound good MrsKayJay (clutching at straws....).

mateysmum the vast majority of history invites will come out towards the end of next week so you can probably not be too tense until then. Easy for an outsider to say!

iwantgin · 20/11/2015 22:12

Shamelessly place marking here.

DS has applied for Physics next year. I suppose interview dates will be sent out soon?

Fingers crossed.

hefzi · 21/11/2015 00:37

Just a quick reassurance for nervous DC: not only are you sometimes interviewed by multiple colleges for standardisation, but if, at your first interview, you impress the interviewers' sufficiently, it occasionally happens as part of a bragging process - so definitely not a bad sign at all!

MrsUltra · 21/11/2015 17:44

it occasionally happens as part of a bragging process - so definitely not a bad sign at all!
Yes, exactly - 'look what we've bagged!' Grin

raspberryrippleicecream · 22/11/2015 00:28

Place marking too

Molio · 22/11/2015 08:29

hefzi but I bet the vast majority of the kids who subsequently get offers come out from the interviews thinking:

  1. I only had one set of interviews (ignoring the sciences here :)), therefore I'm almost certainly in the bottom cut, because one or all or part of one of my interviews was rubbish.
  2. I was sent to another college because my own college doesn't want me and it's absurd to suggest I might be worth bragging about or even used for standardization, because one or all or part of one of my interviews was rubbish.

The hardest case I had to deal with was with the daughter who left the final interview room, closed the thick ancient door, but even through that heard the three tutors erupt immediately with gales of laughter. My wait (she wasn't waiting, she 'knew' a rejection was coming) wasn't helped by the fact that it was the year of the snow, and letters were going out but not getting through for days and days and more days. Trying to find explanations for the mirth was tricky indeed!

RhodaBull · 22/11/2015 17:05

So - one interview you are either definitely in or definitely out, and two interviews you are maybe still hanging on in there? Confused

The second interview must be highly stressful knowing you've got to nail it.

HocusCrocus · 22/11/2015 17:20

Rhoda , I may have been misleading. DS had two interviews, what I meant was that he wasn't called to an interview at a second college, which some are (and into which you read nothing Smile ) .

MrsUltra · 22/11/2015 17:21

When we attended an open day in Oxford this summer, at one college (end of the day, hot day) there were only me and one other parent at the 'meet the admission tutor' session, so had a great chat with her.
She said - oversubscribed colleges had their extra applicants 'randomly allocated elsewhere by the computer' so that interviewers we not aware ( unless told by the applicant Grin) if they had opted for that college.
She also said not to try to second guess how many or where the interviews were held. She said that if you had a wobble in the first interview and not in the second, the first would be put down to nerves. If you had the same - eg same point of reasoning' difficult=y in the second/third etc that might be an area of weakness that interviewers considered could be addressed, or not. She said - the more interview the better, because you have a chance to show more of your best attributes.
DS is pleased that his chosen college is interviewing him, but been told by us and the school (so he is sick of us all patronising him Grin) that he might - if he gets a place - still be offered a different one. The course is his dream course, so he wld be delighted to be fortunate enough to get an offer from any college, and wld work his socks off to meet that potential offer...

AtiaoftheJulii · 22/11/2015 17:25

No, people can have an interview at a second college and still get offered a place at their first choice! Or somewhere entirely, or an open place (find out on results day). Basically, there are many permutations, and it's fruitless to try to draw any conclusions tbh.

AtiaoftheJulii · 22/11/2015 17:27

(The "no" was to Rhoda, I wasn't disagreeing with anything Hocus or MrsUltra said! Congrats to your ds on his interview, MrsUltra Smile )

MrsUltra · 22/11/2015 17:29

And what was interesting to me (sorry if it bores everyone else!) is that when we went for that day, I had a pretty fixed idea (unvoiced to DS of course) of which college I thought would be best. We went separately to the colleges offering his course, and at the end of the day wrote down which college we liked best. Both spookily had the same college (not considered before) which is the one he has now applied to. I suspect our criteria were different, but in retrospect the previously unconsidered college stood out way above the more obvious ones.
(Just hoping this may be of some use to next years applicants' mums lurking here Grin)

Molio · 22/11/2015 18:47

Rhoda as Atia says there are a number of reasons for being sent to another college but yes, it's certain that if you only have interviews at your college of choice/ allocation then you're either definitely in or definitely out. However as lots of parents will tell you, those who thought they were definitely out turn out to have been definitely in!

lewknorturn · 24/11/2015 16:26

In my subject (I'm a tutor in one of the big arts subjects -- name changed because I don't want this information to seem specific) we would never waste another college's time during a very hectic process by sending a candidate over whom we'd already decided to place. Undergraduate interviews aren't something we use to 'brag' about our own college, and I find that notion odd.

The process in my subject goes like this: we make up a list of candidates to interview and at the end of the first day we send home the people we've decided to take (i.e. people who were so impressive we want to make an offer without seeing the rest of the pool) and ones who were so weak that we can't imagine they have any chance of a place at Oxford. (If someone lives so far away that they need to stay for logistical reasons that's obviously fine.) Everyone else stays overnight and gets a second and possibly third interview over the next two or three days at another college. Getting a second interview implies a candidate is still very much in the running both at the original college and at Oxford generally, but also that they haven't impressed us so much that we've snagged them. (The only exception would be for people at the end of the list, who might have a second interview before their first, to make sure we don't give them less of an opportunity to get in.)

I think candidates who do stay up often have a pretty good time, and are noticeably more relaxed in later interviews. We do not monitor what they do outside the interview context at all -- there is no mechanism for us to capture feedback, and we aren't interested. (Outside burning down the college buildings, stealing the candlesticks...!)

It'a a good idea for candidates to keep checking the list posted in the college they applied to to tell them about subsequent interviews -- it is always a bit depressing when people miss them or are late/ unable to find the second college etc. Everything happens fast and chaotically, so they need to be organised. Get a map of Oxford, work out walking distances etc.

On a more personal note, now I'm thinking about interviews. Please, please tell your DSs and DDs not to pre-prepare a spiel about their interest in the subject / Oxford which they then mechanically start on (sometimes from nerves) despite the interviewer going in a different direction. It wastes a lot of time and it costs potentially strong candidates places, because we aren't able to engage them properly with the question in hand, which is intended to be something that no one has thought about before! (Of course, one or two people always have but we are trying as hard as possible to be fair to candidates from a very wide range of backgrounds). And my other bugbear: if the interviewer corrects you on a point of fact, go with it they're intending to be helpful, and to promote further discussion. There is nothing good about feistily defending an error (e.g. a misunderstanding of a technical term or rare word in a document), though I think candidates sometimes do this in a misguided attempt to show they can 'stick to their guns'.

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