Oxbridge Entrance Questions

[JaneyPal]

I thought it might be interesting and potentially useful to upcoming applicants to reminisce on the interview questions we had for Oxbridge entrance.

Here goes the most memorable of mine;

Do animals think?

How do you measure the success of a political voting system?

If a Martian drops money across the country, does inflation go up?

Convince me you are real and not just in my dreams? (Not in the biblical sense!)

As you might guess, I had applied for Philosophy, Politics and Economics.......

What did you answer?

As I recall, essentially;

Yes
Waffled
Yes
And, with repsect, you convince me you are not in mine first.........

:o

Are you allowed to think for ages about your answers first?

I think that taking some time to think and compose an answer is part of what they are looking for.

These are clearly not questions with a straight forward answer and that's point - can you think on your feet and set out a coherent view, almost regardless of the 'correctness' of the response.

The whole thing lasted under 30 mins.

I don't remember much of the 3 interviews, here's the questions I can remember:

How would you define intelligence?

What was the last book you read? (I lied on that)

I think they may have asked what sort of school I went to.

That's all.

I can remember the entrance exam questions though with much more clarity. They're fixed in my mind but that's irrelevant now.

Which is better, technological or liberal education?

Would Gandhi have been a recidivist?

Should the Church of England accept woman priests according to the bible?

I think I would need a week to come up with answers I was satisfied with.

What did you answer Fennel?

Mine involved asking me about my education:

• you've done Highers [Scottish certs.]rather than A levels, tell us how those work

• what made you decide to do Latin and Greek?

• you've done a thesis for your English Sixth Year Studies [another Scottish thing, like A level +] - tell us about it [I'd done an extended essay on Victorian morality books for children, like Christie's Old Organ - thesis was called "Pity the Poor in their Proper Place"]

• what authors are you particularly interested in reading? (I remember ranting about Hardy's "plastic women")

My recollection is that they were interested in people who could convincingly show that they were interested in what they claimed to be interested in. Which I've never had a problem with!

I think my interviewers were looking for people who could argue with enthusiasm on any subject without preparation.

On intelligence, I said, the ability to make use of the knowledge you have in a new situation.

On book, I had actually just read something embarrassing like a Joanna Trollope, but I read loads of heavy literature too, but I didn't want to sound as though I was choosing Balzac or Dostoevsky to impress, so I said a John le Carre, which set the interviewer off on bit of a daydream about Alec Guiness in the TV version. Which I hadn't seen so that ended that line of conversation rather.

I was asked about alternative sources of energy(this was 1975). I managed to waffle about fusion, geothermal, solar, and for some curious reason, the rotation of the earth. No idea how we would extract that.

I was obviously ahead of my time. 35 years on, we're not much further forward with any of them.

Therest of the interview is now a merciful blank.

Cambridge Interviewer - WHat do you think about Rupert Murdochs role in the media

ME - Who is Rupert Murdoch?

graduated 3 years later