Oxbridge aspirants part 4......Hold onto your nerves interviews ahead....!

[TangoWhiskyAlphaTango]

Part 4 - A friendly supportive thread for those with DC applying to Oxbridge, its an arduous process to say the least. I suspect we will need some handholding and alcohol for the couple of weeks ahead as our dc have their interviews. For those still waiting to hear I hope news comes soon

I think that a bit of blindsiding is an excellent idea.
My DC is applying in one of the better odds subjects, but I don't expect them to get in (partly because it seems much tougher to get a deferred offer) and have been very upfront with them about that, from the start up to now. That there is a small possibility they might get an offer, and otherwise they can see it as a learning experience / practice for next time if there is a next time.
DC has had some real disappointments in the past and gets it I think. You try even if the odds are against you, because if you don't try then you definitely don't get the opportunity you'd like to have. But you're then not surprised if it doesn't happen. Go into it with your eyes open. Mind you, it would have helped if the decision to apply had been made before rather than after the summer holidays, in terms of preparation time.

To be honest if a candidate experiences challenge during an interview I think it's a good thing. Oxbridge is supposed to be a challenging learning environment and students need to get be up for that. The point at which a student feels challenged is going to be different for all so you'd hope the interviewer would push them to that point.

I guess in some interviews the candidate is so clearly brilliant they won't be challenged though..

I was quite surprised by some of DD questions in her second interview. Hope I am not giving too much away but she was asked about her other A-levels and they went into discussion about these. She did manage to draw political issues out from both subjects but not the probing questions she was expecting.

@goodbyestranger

A number of Classics I (overwhelmingly independent school)applicants in DD4's interviewing year were very cross when they were asked along with the Classics II (overwhelmingly state school) applicants to pull apart an incredibly obscure English poem from the turn of the 18th century. They said it was very unfair when they had come prepared to discuss extended essays on Homer etc and could have done that very well.

You’ve got it a bit the wrong way round here. The entire point is to ask questions they can’t have prepared for, and to test their ability to read unseen material. If they were asked questions they had obviously prepared for, then that would favour the applicants from more privileged schools.

If there is a disparity in educational privilege, then this knowledge is applied to the answers, and the applicant profile overall, not the questions.

The best way to get rid of coached answers that are shaped by school background is to give applicants a task that privileged schools can’t prepare for. I can assure you that state candidates are equally able to cope with this - often a lot more so - than independent school ones.

I think that was the point Goodbye was making, @foxgoosefinch

Ah, then apologies @goodbyestranger that I misread it! Not enough coffee today obviously 🤣

DD has just had a (relatively) dreadful end of term report. It is possible that it is because one of her teachers expected her to have caught up with all the work from being off with Covid in less than a week, but it has certainly put the fear in her. Hopefully her slightly overly self confident air of the last month or so will be replaced with a focus and drive to do well in her mocks - which aren't till February.

I need to calm down and improve my own attitude though. I am just shocked to get one slightly less than brilliant grade, since she's always excelled.

And breathe.

DD had an awful second-college interview. Tech issues meant she couldn’t see the interviewers, though they could see her. She really felt the lack of visual prompts, nods etc, and seems to have dried up and not said much.

Disappointing after what she thought were decent interviews last week. Good luck to everyone still going through the process.

Poor DD has to leave the house at 5.30 am tomorrow to go to an interview at Newcastle. Since it’s music, she also has to take her instrument to do an audition. She’s tired and very unenthusiastic. I just hope she doesn’t catch covid to add to the excitement…

Phew, ds's interviews for CompSci are over and he appears to have survived the experience. He relived the interviews in detail with me and it was lovely to see him so energised.

I'm sure that huge numbers of students would do very well at Oxbridge, including every child on this thread, and they just have to pick. From what I can pick up from ds's report I would still say an offer is unlikely. But hey - we'll deal when that happens. Very proud of him and relieved he didn't find it demotivating.

foxgoosefinch JulesJules is exactly correct.

DD4 had no issue with the Classics I kids getting the hump, nor did I, when she told me.

Interesting debate about being blindsided by unexpected tasks in the Classics interview. I do get why it’s done, but it is tough on the kids. Indeed, it sounds a lot like what happened at DDs language interview.

In other news, she received a phone call today from the college, to ask if she’d consider a different subject combination to the one she’s applied for. We’re taking it as a good sign that she is not a definite no yet . Will hopefully give her the motivation to start revising for mocks too.

The unexpected tasks are to see how they think - there are no right and wrong answers. Preprepared answers (which are often vey coached at some schools) are useless to us in getting to see what an applicant can really do, so there will usually be a mixture of questions, some on the applicants’ interests from the personal statement; some a bit left field to see what they can come up with when given new information.

I notice upthread there was some talk of applicants “defending their opinion” - we’re not actually that interested in that: we’re often more interested in how they can synthesise new information and change their opinions as a result, so there is no need for candidates to to feel either that they have to stick doggedly to something they have said in an essay or personal statement; or to feel things have gone wrong if they didn’t.

We aren’t looking for specific answers; we’re looking for what happens in the train of thought/discussion. So a candidate - even in the sciences - can make mistakes or get things “wrong”, yet still be a very impressive, takeable candidate.

It’s the process not the answer that we’re interested in, so sometimes an interview that the candidate feels has gone “wrong” has, from the interviewer’s perspective, gone very right. You really cannot tell from how the candidate feels about it how it has gone!

It seems as if some candidates want the same questions for everyone, and for advance notification. In which case names might as well be drawn from a hat. Which does seem to be the desire of some….

@PermanentTemporary- glad that your son has had a positive experience re interviews. Whatever the outcome the whole oxbridge process will not have been wasted!

I absolutely wouldn’t expect the same questions for everyone, or indeed advance notice. In fact, quite the opposite. DD took positively that the interviewers did seem to have thought about what they wanted to ask her specifically. I can also see the huge value in the process of unusual unseen tasks. But they should be relevant surely to the skills and knowledge required for the subject in question? I confess I don’t know enough about Classics so can’t assess whether a task one would normally expect in an Eng Lit interview is appropriate or not in this context.

Completely appropriate MFLMum, in terms of analysing and interpreting literature, so central to the study of Classics.

Finally DD has had an offer - Aberdeen for Law with English law (I think). Her safety choice. Incredibly nice for her to finally get one!

I think the thing about treating candidates differently in interviews is all to the good - it is seeking the same piece of information about all of them, which is to assess the level at which they can think fast and deeply. If a candidate has been hugely prepped by their school, it makes sense to throw something at them that they will not have encountered, but should have the skills to tackle. If a candidate has had no interview prep at all, they can test those skills in a more predictable way.

I see it a bit like people walking along a wall - if you are on a very wide wall, someone will need to push a bit harder, and take you a bit more by surprise to test your balance than someone who is balancing on a tightrope.

Great news terrifiedandworried - does she want to qualify as a lawyer? In England or Scotland?

Good luck to your DD @Pantjog - I went to Newcastle and loved it so much I never left. D1 says she and her friends were slightly resentful that they already lived here as it's such a great place to come and be a student.

Great news @TerrifiedandWorried - time for a name change??

Very good news @TerrifiedandWorried . I have friends who went to Aberdeen and they definitely enjoyed the experience 😊

I just wanted to come on and say that I posted something a couple of weeks ago which turns out to have been wrong. I said that DD ( 1st year large-ish central C college to which she was pooled) had mainly met students from London/South East and mainly from indies. This turns out to be incorrect and she tells me that she has met people from all over the world but particularly all parts of the UK including Scotland and that she has no idea where most people went to school (my misperception was because a couple of her friends were at relatively well known independent schools) but she assumes most of them are from state schools.
I just wanted to clear it up in case anyone was worrying.
Good luck to all of your children and have a break from it all over Christmas!