Oxbridge 2024 Entry Part 4

[Lightsabre]

New thread as our dc start the rollercoaster ride of interviews.

I would love to know how they even mark these things.

"oh it was so bad"....

Feeling a bit deflated for DS2. He really enjoyed his first interview yesterday and felt he had a chance to show some good stuff but today's seemed to go very differently. Even from the exert, as it wasn't madly inspring or chewy and the whole tone of the interview felt very different. Leaden, rather school-based. Says he spent the entire thing in a banked-down panic mode and was just utterly pedestrian. Hey ho.

In the college bar. It all kicks off for DS in an hour 😬

Congrats to all those who have come out of interviews confident, and condolences to those who haven't. As others have said, their opinions aren't always truly reflective of the outcome!

Has anyone's DC had a modern languages (preferably spanish) interview yet? DDs first one is tomorrow and she's rather confident apart from having a bit of a wobble about the spoken spanish part- could anyone tell me how long this section lasted for their DC? Thanks so much!

When mine applied a few years back (both Cambridge) someone posted the form the interviewers use (it was either in here or TSR)? It seemed that they take an average of all the scores given by various tutors / PHD students in the interviews. I thought this was odd as, for some people, this might mean an average of 4 scores, for others 2 (as some people just had one interview with 2 tutors). The average interview scores was out if 10, with '10' being 'definitely offer', '9 / 8' being 'worth / probably worth an offer' and '7' being 'possibly worth an offer' and so on. I'll see if I can find the form. Not sure if they still use it?

@catmomof3 if you are interested there do seem to be interview scoring guides in the admission manuals (a previous PPE one is freely available online with parts redacted as a FOI response). Assume maybe there are for other subjects too? You can also see when you look at interview scores from FOI requests that the same candidate can get very different interview scores at different colleges which I think just shows how variable it all is in terms of say the questions asked. There are examples of students who have scored say a 9 in their first college interview and then a 5 at the second college interview (Oxford e&m).

First one done. ‘One of the interviewers wiped the floor with me, but I kept going’ Oh well….🤞 round 2 tomorrow…!

Sorry to hear that some of your DC feel that their interview didn't go well/feel deflated. Fingers crossed for them, that they have done better than they thought. It's so tough for our teenagers, worse than most application processes that adults go through!

@notfeelingcreative I will have a little google later and see what I can find. This kind of stuff always interests me.

DD just finished her second interview and she said it wasn't too bad. So now we wait and see if she gets called for another interview elsewhere if not then we wait till January.

If it's if any interest, this is the form (well, Cambridge were using this in 2020 at least) -

If it's any comfort, DD was accepted by the college that gave her the 'god it was awful' interview, after two 'I think that went quite well!' interviews from a different college.

That's cheering :-).

Loving all these stories of terrible interviews leading to offers! 🙂

Hard though it is, I REALLY wouldn't read too much into how well or badly they think they did - DS's cohort were a real mixed bag of confident ones who didn't get offers and those who thought they'd crashed and burned, who did....and there were some real surprises!

Once they are done, I would just try to forget about it until offer day (and it's horrible that C have to wait for a couple more weeks than O!), but hopefully you can all try and enjoy Christmas and New Year before the offers start rolling in...!

It's usually a ratio of 2:1 (though some colleges might have slightly different ratios, all the colleges do things slightly differently).

One of the reasons for having STEP at the end is that candidates who have not covered a lot of maths before interview can spend the 6 months afterwards preparing for STEP (for which there is free support!) and get the chance to show what they can do then!

A few years back dd thought her interviews went OK, her average score was 9 and she had higher than average scores in the written tests too, plus perfect grades blah blah, was pooled but didn't get an offer. Ultimately if you apply for a competitive subject nothing seems guaranteed, so little point worrying either way! She's happy elsewhere now and on course to get a first without vast effort - definitely a pro to the non Oxbridge path. DC2 just announced they to apply next year for a very obscure but super competitive course, I am not looking forward to it one bit. Good luck to all dc out there

Todays interview was about the 10 pages of an article she was sent earlier. Solely that. Lasted about 25 min.

With the STEP, cynical me suspects that the STEP is used to rank the candidates who probably all have 3/4 A stars and then cream off the top applicants rather than putting a huge amount of weight on how, all the on paper, high achieving Maths students do at interview. I personally think the STEP pass mark is set by the ranking and places at Cambridge, rather than how well people did on the exam (so students, rather than not getting in as they haven't done well enough, the threshold moving so the right number get places).

I wonder what the proportion of Oxford versus Cambridge Maths applicants there are this year, DS know of several Oxford Maths applicants but only one Cambridge one. This is amongst state school applicants from local schools. I think the post A level cull is brutal. At least with Oxford, students know if they get an offer in January, if they get the A level grades they will have a place, even though their changes at the outset are a single figure percentage.

STEP definitely feels like the biggest hurdle for my DS if he receives an offer. He’s in his interview now.

I hope it goes well @Redhotchillipeppers ,

DS had his History interview. It was purely based on a source. He found it difficult. There was nothing at all asked about his written work or things mentioned in PS.

Does this seem odd? Looking at last years admissions report, very few went for a 2nd History interview. So if this is the case, there won’t be a chance for them to base their judgement on anything apart from what he said about the source. I know colleges ask different questions etc, but isn’t everyone supposed to get a chance to be asked about a topic they know from their submitted essay or PS? I get that the source is very important, but I wonder how equally testing interviews are. If you have a couple of interviews, it’s not so bad, but if you only get one and feel it was purely about one very narrow thing, it doesn’t feel entirely fair. Feeling a bit sad for DS.

Step feels like a big challenge here too, even more so after other son didn't get to interview stage at O and the mat is said to be easier than step! Positive is they have much longer to prepare and they will be in exam mode with their A'levels.

DS felt it went okay - he said he got to the answers they wanted but it took a lot of prompting to get him there. The interviewers were nice. He says he did as well as he could but he doubts 2/3 to 3/4 of other interviews went worse. The tech failed. He has another interview tomorrow and then at least he’s done. He’s got an offer he’s excited about and feels the Imperial interview went well.

DD just finished her second interview, she said it went well despite the pre-reading being a bit more complicated but she said she enjoyed it. She's happy with how she performed and I'm just proud of her being able to get this far.

I guess she'll hear by Thursday if she will be interviewed elsewhere.