Interviews

This page is all about preparing for your Oxbridge interviews. This includes practice questions and what to do on the day of your interview.

Format

The first thing that I'd like to talk about is the format of the interviews. While each college may have a slightly different interview style, in the end they all focus on just asking math questions. There are some idiosyncrasies for every college. For example, Selwyn, Cambridge may ask questions from your personal statement. Gonville and Caius, Cambridge give you an option on the topics of one of your interviews. Some colleges have one interview, some have two interviews. Typically, universities don't care too much about your personal statement and care much more about your predicted grades etc. Even though this is true, it is still important to check for your college's interview style on their website to see how exactly it works.

The most standard format is having two interviews either on the same day or separate days depending on where you applied. At most, you may be asked how your trip was however they will not ask questions such as "What makes you a better applicant than others".

The interview is aimed to be purely mathematical and the interviewers are almost certainly going to go straight into asking questions.

The questions can be both multi-part or single part. If a question is a multi-part question, it is usually the case that they want you to see or acknowledge something that you're going to have to use in a later part of the question.

Pre-interview exams

At Oxford, you are required to take the MAT before your interviews. More on this can be found on the MAT page.

At Cambridge, some colleges such as Trinity, require you to take a pre-interview assessment

General advice

This section will constitute to what to do both before and during your interview.

Before interview

• Do not prepare for general interview questions such as 'why are you studying mathematics'; they don't care
• Do many interview style problems and practise talking through your process
• Buy a graphics/drawing tablet early on and practise writing on it if you haven't already
• Unless you're applying Caius or similar, there is a very small chance that you will need anything harder than AS mathematics. Do not practise on higher level problems as they will not come up.
• It's easy to get nervous during your interview. If it is possible, do as many mock interviews as possible with friends or teachers

During interview

• Your interviewers want to help you. If you're struggling, ask for a hint. You don't want to cluelessly stay on one question the whole interview
• Talk about everything you're doing. Your interviewers want to see how you think and see potential in you. They want to bring out the best.
• Your interviewers know you're nervous, do not feel pressured to answer right away. Take a moment to look at the question and think about what you can do

After interview!

• You made it through your interview! Now work on relaxing
• Work on distracting yourself from Oxbridge. You've finished your interviews, now the worst thing you can do is dwell on them
• If you are applying to Cambridge, you may wish to start working on STEP

One thing that is often forgotten is that whether or not you make it to Oxbridge in the end, your university does not define you. Often people think that if you don't make it to Oxbridge then there's no point anymore, but that's not true. Obviously, most people want to make it to Oxbridge, but other universities also have a lot to offer. I, for one, fell on the last hurdle with STEP and ended up at Durham yet I'm content with it. I was distraught at first, but sometimes you need to ask yourself why you're applying to Oxbridge for mathematics.

Resources

Waleed doc

TBO (problems)

TBO (solutions)

Interview questions set 1

Interview questions set 2

Interview questions set 3

Interview questions set 4

Interview questions set 5

Interview questions set 6

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The Waleed doc was created by Waleed

Interview questions sets 1-6 were made by Siddarth Berera, Daniel Roebuck and Neelu Saraswatibhatla. Github can be found here