I think there’s more admin involved than we could imagine. Quite possibly the last few places are debated well into next week and then people are heading off for Christmas. UCAS have to be informed and before they send out offers/rejections, the analysis of each college and faculty has to be carried out and out together. I imagine it’s a frenetic rush to meet that deadline, with Christmas in the middle.
Re how 2nd interviews are issued and used, I think it probably changes a bit each year and is different between faculties and is also still being tweaked in relation to Teams interviews instead of real-life at Oxford. If you really root around on college websites you can often track down admissions reports for most subjects - sometimes they are 2 or 3 years old and sometimes you can find the one from last year, with very specific info about no.s of 1st and 2nd interviews and data about what the requirements in the admissions tests were to be shortlisted for interview, average scores of those shortlisted and average scores of those actually offered, and the same about scores given for interviews. In subjects I’ve looked at, last year it seemed that 1st interviews put the majority into ‘accept’ or ‘reject’ categories and less maybe 15% in these subjects were called for 2nd interviews at other colleges to pin down who would get the final and marginal places. Some of the 2nd college interviews will be for standardisation, but actually that’s likely to be few of them.
Each year is a bit different. In the last couple of years, GCSEs have not been contextualised to be used in shortlisting, due to Covid grades, according to reports. But this year’s cohort have done GCSE exams so could have been factored in. Different weights are given to any admissions tests, written work that had to be submitted and GCSEs. Many subjects only seem to look at the written work after shortlisting, but then use it to help rank candidates. Before they are interviewed they are already ranked. Those at the top have a better chance if an offer. Those at the bottom will have do extremely extremely well to beat the top ranking ones and get offers. Some will, but most of these candidates won’t. If you ask for feedback about interviews after the offers/rejections come out, it might become clear that before the interview you were already in a very strong or weaker position. Only then will it be clear quite how different elements were weighted and when they were used in ranking at the different stages this year.
A factor this year is also the disruption of some admissions tests and some being abandoned or some which were still used having to be given less weight when schools and colleges filed reports about technical problems during the admissions tests. I know this isn’t about interviews, but those admissions tests where used,do play role in final ranking. They will be looking to make sure people are not disadvantaged so it is likely these will be given less weight this year or certainly for affected candidates.
I’ve heard it said that the interviews are for confirming what is already mostly decided. In the majority of cases, those ranked high before interview will get places and those at the bottom won’t. The most movement up and down is likely in the middling ranked students who by shining rise into the accepted category or by nit doing quite so well lose out to others who do better.
It’s not perfect but it seems logical to me and unlike other universities which are often purely deciding based on predicted grades and little more than that, at least there are a range of evidences being considered. They’ve all done so well ti get to the stage where they statistically had roughly a 1 in 3 chance, even if actually their starting ranking means it’s probably less than that. And in the end they are all up against the best of the best and most can’t have a place.