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Oxford academics warning of Brexit ‘disaster’

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Oxford

A “hard Brexit” would be the “biggest disaster” to have hit the UK’s universities for many years, a university head told MPs.

Alistair Fitt, vice chancellor of Oxford Brookes, was giving evidence to the Education Select Committee, holding a special away-day session at the University of Oxford.

With the elegant panorama of Pembroke College behind them, the MPs wanted to find out what would be the impact of Brexit on the UK’s university sector.

You would be hard-pressed to find any sector in the country more opposed to Brexit than higher education.

So it was probably no surprise that the MPs heard an unrelenting message that leaving the EU was a grim prospect for higher education and research.

‘Culturally allergic’

University organisations, which usually put much effort and ingenuity into not really being for or against anything in public, took to open campaigning for a Remain vote.

Universities, bastions of liberal thinking, intensely international in their outlook and staffing, seemed culturally allergic to Brexit.

Cambridge
Image captionCambridge University has seen a 14% drop in EU applications for this autumn

And the referendum result hangs over them like they’ve fought and lost a civil war.

Professor Catherine Barnard from the University of Cambridge told MPs that her own university had seen a 14% drop in applications this year from EU students.

The university had asked why potential students had turned down a chance to study at Cambridge – and she said among the reasons were fears over an “anti-immigrant sentiment” and uncertainty over the future of the UK’s involvement in international research.

Prof Barnard warned that talented mathematicians at Cambridge from countries such as Hungary, Poland and Romania would take their sought-after skills elsewhere.

The committee of MPs heard warnings that in some elite research institutions in the UK, vital to the national infrastructure, as many as two thirds of the staff were EU nationals from outside the UK.

Would they hang around and see if they were still wanted after Brexit? Or would research rivals in Germany or China snap them up to the detriment of the UK economy?

‘Manchester Utd problem’

Showing how seriously they take this, Oxford University has appointed its own head of Brexit strategy.

So you could say that at least Brexit has already created one extra job.

But this new postholder, Professor Alistair Buchan, saw leaving the EU as threatening to relegate the UK’s universities behind their global competition.

Oxford has been ranked as the world’s top university, but Prof Buchan said that in 1970s the UK’s universities did not have that top status. This had been built through the EU years and growing networks of international partnerships.

He described Brexit for universities as the “Manchester United problem”.

Why would any football team with international ambitions deliberately want to restrict its access both to better talent and to bigger markets?

Research funding

There were warnings about the financial impact of losing European research funding.

The UK’s universities are among the biggest winners from Horizon 2020 research network, bringing more than £2bn into the higher education sector.

This is no small-bière, with some individual universities worrying about the loss of hundreds of millions.

If the UK is to stay ahead in research, Dr Anne Corbett of the LSE said the UK government had to be ready for some “serious funding”.

Professor Stephanie Haywood, president of the Engineering Professors’ Council, warned that losing access to EU students would make skills shortages in engineering even worse.

But could there be an upside in higher tuition fees?

If EU students are designated as overseas students after Brexit, UK universities could charge them much higher fees.

But such a tuition fee windfall depends on those students not staying at home or going somewhere else.

Prof Barnard raised the example of those talented eastern European mathematicians.

Would they really be able to pay £17,000 or so a year? Or would it mean that universities in the UK would have pay for scholarships rather than see them go elsewhere?

Unanswered questions

Committee chairman Neil Carmichael pushed his witnesses for more evidence and facts.

But what came back most often was even more questions. What’s going to happen to the EU staff in UK universities? What will be the visa system for students?

What will happen to the intricate networks of European research? How much will the UK government be willing to cover for any lost income?

And of course, so far, these are unknowns being piled up on unknowables.

But as another European refugee scientist, Albert Einstein, once said: “If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research.”

[Source:- BBC]

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Education

Oxford University to launch first online ‘Mooc’ course

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Oxford University

Oxford University has announced its first “massive open online course” – or so-called Mooc – in a partnership with a US online university network.

These free online courses have grown in popularity with hundreds of universities and millions of students.

But until now Oxford has not offered such Mooc courses.

It is going to run an economics course partnered with online platform edX, set up by Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The emergence of Mooc courses in recent years has been a major phenomenon in higher education, particularly in the United States.

Their supporters argued that putting courses online would make them more accessible and affordable – while sceptics doubted that teaching and the exchange of ideas in seminars could be replicated on the internet.

They also warned of the high drop-out rate from Moocs and that students were unlikely to get a full degree.

‘Beyond the classrooms of Oxford’

Oxford has offered many resources online, including through the iTunes U service and also its department for continuing education.

But until now it has not engaged in the type of Mooc courses offered by the big online networks, such as edX and Coursera in the US and FutureLearn in the UK.

These provide free mini-courses, which can be accessed by students anywhere in the world.

Oxford has now announced that it will begin enrolling students for a course starting in February 2017 called “From Poverty to Prosperity: Understanding Economic Development”.

It will be part of the edX online platform, which has nine million registered students and runs more than 900 online courses from universities including Harvard, MIT, Berkeley in the US, Peking in China and Sorbonne in France as well as Edinburgh and Imperial College London in the UK.

The course will examine the role that governments play in boosting economic development and will be led by Sir Paul Collier, professor of economics and public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government.

What is a Mooc?

In 2012, the New York Times declared that this was “the Year of the Mooc” – suggesting that the internet would revolutionise higher education in the way that the digital world had shaken up business and the media.

Moocs – or massive open online courses – were intended to tackle some of the big challenges in higher education, such as the high cost of fees and that universities remained out of reach for people who could not spare years out of work.

They would be free and everything would be delivered online, so that large numbers of students, anywhere in the world, could be reached by a single course.

Hundreds of universities began to experiment with these short online courses, which are often delivered through online platforms, such as edX, Coursera and Futurelearn.

These courses have attracted millions of students, but so far they’ve been very unlikely to give students any formal qualification.

There might be a certificate to show a student has completed the course, but these are not degrees. You can’t take a Mooc and say you’re a graduate of that university.

But since the dawn of the Moocs there has been an expectation that these online courses from top universities could develop into fully-fledged degree courses.

So far this has been a cautious process. Leading universities are offering some fully online postgraduate courses and there have been experiments with Moocs being used as credits counting towards degrees.

But there has been less enthusiasm to offer fully online undergraduate courses, with concerns about how you could teach and supervise over the internet.

Of course distance learning specialists, such as the Open University, have been doing this for years.

There has been some scepticism about how traditional universities could move online.

But the arrival of the University of Oxford will be seen as adding to the credibility of the Mooc movement.

Ngaire Woods, Blavatnik’s dean, said the online course would be “an effective way to expand access to knowledge beyond the classrooms of Oxford”.

Prof Woods said the school was dedicated to improving government and that depended on “better educated public officials, teachers, entrepreneurs, journalists and citizens”.

The head of the Coursera online network, which has more than 20 million students, recently predicted that within five years many top universities would be offering fully accredited undergraduate degrees taught entirely online.

[Source:- BBC]

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News Update

‘Post-truth’ declared word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Donald Trump

Oxford Dictionaries has declared “post-truth” as its 2016 international word of the year, reflecting what it called a “highly-charged” political 12 months.

It is defined as an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals.

Its selection follows June’s Brexit vote and the US presidential election.

Oxford Dictionaries’ Casper Grathwohl said post-truth could become “one of the defining words of our time”.

Post-truth, which has become associated with the phrase “post-truth politics”, was chosen ahead of other political terms, including “Brexiteer” and “alt-right”.

It was chosen from a shortlist selected to reflect the social, cultural, political, economic, and technological trends and events of 2016.

‘Distrust of facts’

Oxford Dictionaries says post-truth is thought to have been first used in 1992.

However, it says the frequency of its usage increased by 2,000% in 2016 compared with last year, coinciding with the EU referendum and the campaign for the White House in the US.

Mr Grathwohl said: “Fuelled by the rise of social media as a news source and a growing distrust of facts offered up by the establishment, post-truth as a concept has been finding its linguistic footing for some time,” he said.

“We first saw the frequency really spike this year in June with buzz over the Brexit vote and again in July when Donald Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination.

“Given that usage of the term hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down, I wouldn’t be surprised if post-truth becomes one of the defining words of our time.”

Last year, Oxford Dictionaries chose a “pictograph” as its word of the year for the first time ever.

It said the “face with tears of joy emoji” best represented “the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015”.

The 2016 shortlist

  • Adulting – The practice of behaving in a way characteristic of a responsible adult, especially the accomplishment of mundane but necessary tasks
  • Alt-right – An ideological grouping associated with extreme conservative or reactionary viewpoints, characterized by a rejection of mainstream politics and by the use of online media to disseminate deliberately controversial content
  • Brexiteer – A person who is in favour of the UK withdrawing from the European Union
  • Chatbot – A computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially over the internet
  • Coulrophobia – Extreme or irrational fear of clowns
  • Glass cliff – Used with reference to a situation in which a woman or member of a minority group ascends to a leadership position in challenging circumstances where the risk of failure is high
  • Hygge – A quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being, regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture
  • Latinx – A person of Latin American origin or descent, used as a gender-neutral or non-binary alternative to Latino or Latina
  • Woke – Originally in African-American usage meaning alert to injustice in society, especially racism          [Source:- BBC]
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Education

How to pass the Oxford interview

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Helen Swift

It’s the university application season – with the first wave of deadlines, including Oxford and Cambridge, coming this week.

The anxious process will have seen teenagers visiting university open days and worrying about personal statements on their application forms.

For some of the most competitive courses there are also interviews.

Oxford, keen to demystify its admissions process, has published the type of questions students might face.

“Interviews will be an entirely new experience for most students, and we know many prospective applicants are already worried about being in an unfamiliar place and being questioned by people they have not met,” says director of admissions Samina Khan.

In an attempt to make it less intimidating the university has produced a video explaining how the interview works.

And it has published some sample questions – and suggestions for how students might have answered.

  • What makes a novel or play “political”?

This was a question for a French course. Interviewer Helen Swift, from St Hilda’s College, said:

“This is the sort of question that could emerge from a student’s personal statement, where, in speaking about their engagement with literature and culture of the language they want to study, they state a keen interest in works (such as a novel, play or film) that are “political”.

“We might start off by discussing the specific work that they cite (something that isn’t included in their A-level syllabus), so they have chance to start off on something concrete and familiar, asking, for instance, “in what ways?”, “why?”, “why might someone not enjoy it for the same reason?”.

“We’d then look to test the extent of their intellectual curiosity and capacities for critical engagement by broadening the questioning out to be more conceptually orientated and invite them to make comparisons between things that they’ve read/seen (in whatever language).

“So, in posing the overall question, ‘What makes this political?’ we’d want the candidate to start thinking about what one means in applying the label: what aspects of a work does it evoke? Is it a judgement about content or style? Could it be seen in and of itself a value judgement? How useful is it as a label?

“What if we said that all art is, in fact, political? What about cases where an author denies that their work is political, but critics assert that it is – is it purely a question of subjective interpretation?

“A strong candidate would show ready willingness and very good ability to engage and develop their ideas in conversation. It would be perfectly fine for someone to change their mind in the course of the discussion or come up with a thought that contradicted something they’d said before – we want people to think flexibly and be willing to consider different perspectives…

“Undoubtedly, the candidate would need to take a moment to think in the middle of all that – we expect that “ermmm”, “ah”, “oh”, “well” will feature in someone’s responses!”

  • About one in four deaths in the UK is due to some form of cancer, yet in the Philippines the figure is only around one in 10. What factors might underlie this difference?

This was a question for medicine. Interviewer Chris Norbury, from Queen’s College, said:

“This is a typically open question, with no single ‘correct’ answer, which aims to stimulate the sort of discussion that might be encountered in a tutorial teaching session.

“The discussion could take any one of a number of directions, according to the candidate’s interests. Some candidates will ask useful clarifying questions, such as, ‘Where do these data come from, and how reliable are they?’ or “What is the average life expectancy in these parts of the world?”

“Some candidates will seize on the idea that various aspects of the typical lifestyle in the UK are inherently unhealthy, which can make for an interesting discussion in itself. Others, especially if they appreciate that life expectancy in the Philippines is substantially lower than in the UK, will realise that other causes of death are more common in the developing world, and that this is the major factor that gives rise to the difference alluded to in the question.

“This probes selection criteria including problem-solving, critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, communication skills, ability to listen and compatibility with the tutorial format.”

  • What exactly do you think is involved in blaming someone?

This was a question for philosophy, politics and economics, and interviewer Ian Phillips, from St Anne’s College, said:

“Questions like this help draw out a candidate’s ability to think carefully and precisely about a familiar concept, evaluating proposals, coming up with counter-examples, disentangling considerations, and being creative in proposing alternative approaches.

“Obviously the notion of blame is an important one in moral theory but insofar as blame is an emotional attitude it also brings in issues in the philosophy of mind. Debates about the nature of blame are going on right now in philosophy so the question is also partly a prompt for doing some philosophy together – which is exactly what we hope to achieve in a tutorial.

“With a question like this we’re not looking for a right answer but instead whether the candidate can be creative in coming up with examples and suggestions, and can think critically and carefully through their implications…

“Good interviews will often generate all kinds of interesting and revealing discussions that show a candidate’s ability for analytical thought: for example about self-blame, cases of blame where the blamer knew the blamed had done nothing wrong, and indeed cases of blaming something inanimate (such as a faulty printer or phone).”

  • Imagine a ladder leaning against a vertical wall with its feet on the ground. The middle rung of the ladder has been painted a different colour on the side, so that we can see it when we look at the ladder from the side on. What shape does that middle rung trace out as the ladder falls to the floor?

This was a question for maths and interviewer Rebecca Cotton-Barratt, from Christ Church, said:

“This question tests whether you can do what mathematicians do, which is to abstract away all the unimportant information and use mathematics to represent what’s going on.

“I’d initially ask the candidate what shape they think will be formed, and then ask them how they can test this hypothesis. They might initially try sketching the ladder at different stages – this is fine, but ultimately what we want is something that we can generalise and that is accurate (you can’t be sure that your drawing is that accurate, particularly when you’re making a sketch on a whiteboard and don’t have a ruler).

“So eventually they will fall back on maths, and try to model the situation using equations. If they get stuck we would ask them what shape the ladder makes with the wall and floor, and they’ll eventually spot that at each stage the ladder is forming a right-angled triangle.

“Some might then immediately leap to Pythagoras’ Theorem and use that to find the answer (which is that it forms a quarter circle centred on the point where the floor meets the wall).”

  • A large study appears to show that older siblings consistently score higher than younger siblings on IQ tests. Why would this be?

This was a question for experimental psychology. Interviewer Kate Watkins of St Anne’s College said:

“This is a question that really asks students to think about lots of different aspects of psychology, and we guide students when discussing it to think about both scientific factors such as maternal age (mothers are older when younger siblings are born – could that play a role?) and observational analysis about how birth order might affect behaviour and therefore performance on IQ tests.

“It’s a great question because students begin from the point they are most comfortable with, and we gradually add more information to see how they respond: for example, noting that for example the pattern holds true even taking into account things like maternal age.

“This can lead them to think about what the dynamics of being an older sibling might be that produce such an effect – they might suggest that having more undivided parental attention in the years before a sibling comes along makes a difference, for example.

“Then we introduce the further proviso that the effect isn’t observable in only children – there is something particular to being an older sibling that produces it. Eventually most students arrive at the conclusion that being an older sibling and having to teach a younger sibling certain skills and types of knowledge benefits their own cognitive skills (learning things twice, in effect).

“But there isn’t really a “right” answer and we are always interested to hear new explanations that we haven’t heard before.”

[Source:- BBC]

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Education

Oxford head rejects sponsoring schools

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Louise Richardson

The head of Oxford University has rejected calls from the government to sponsor schools.

Louise Richardson says Oxford was “very good” as a university, but had “no experience” of running schools.

The call for universities to help set up schools was part of the proposals to expand grammar schools.

But Prof Richardson said to become involved in the government’s plans for changing schools would be a “distraction from our core mission”.

The government’s Green Paper on grammar schools proposes that universities should have to either sponsor a school or help set up a new school – otherwise they would not be able to charge higher tuition fees.

About 60 universities, including Birmingham and King’s College London, already sponsor or support schools – and the government argues that the expertise of universities should be harnessed to improve schools and drive social mobility.

But Oxford vice-chancellor Prof Richardson said that her university should focus on what it knew best, which was delivering higher education.

Oxford was named as the best in the world in global rankings published on Wednesday.

“We’re very good at running a university. But we have no experience of running schools, so I think it would be a distraction,” said Prof Richardson.

“We’re deeply sympathetic to the idea of social mobility through education – and we have extensive relationships with schools.”

But she said it was “insulting” to head teachers and school leaders to think that universities could step in and do a better job of running schools.

The university revealed earlier this year that it would be admitting the highest proportion of state school students for at least 40 years.

This followed spending of £6m per year on outreach projects with schools, encouraging state school pupils to apply.

But Prof Richardson said that such work was separate from running a school and that the university should not take on activities that would “distract our time, energy and resources”.

The Oxford vice-chancellor also argued for the importance of free speech and for allowing university students to hear views they might find “objectionable”.

And she said she opposed both the government’s Prevent anti-extremism strategy and students who wanted to have “safe spaces”, where views they found offensive would not be allowed, on campus.

A Department for Education spokeswoman said: “There are already some excellent examples of universities sponsoring schools – they have expertise that can really help improve our education system, and it’s in their own interests to improve attainment in schools.

“With 1.25 million children in underperforming schools, we have put forward new proposals, asking how our world-leading higher education sector can help make more good school places available.

[Source:- BBC]

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Education

Oxford University to have ‘most state school students for decades’

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Oxford University’s intake of new students this autumn will have the highest proportion of state school pupils for at least 40 years.

The university has offered 59.2% of places to pupils from state schools, up from 55.6% of places taken last year.

Top universities have faced calls to be open to youngsters from all backgrounds and to support social mobility.

Dr Samina Khan, head of undergraduate admissions at Oxford, said they took diversity “incredibly seriously”.

The Independent Schools Councils estimates the independent sector educatesaround 6.5% of school children in the UK – with about 93% of all pupils educated in state schools.

Oxford

The final figures for acceptances remain unconfirmed, but university officials expect the highest intake from the state sector for decades.

The university says directly comparable admissions figures go back to 1990 – and the 2016 level of state school entries will be higher than any year since then.

State students at Oxford timeline

  • 2016: 59.2% of offers to state schools
  • 2010: 55.4% of students from state schools
  • 2005: 51.4% of students from state schools
  • 2000: 51.9% of students from state schools
  • 1995: 48.1% of students from state schools

Admissions statistics for the 1980s were gathered differently but were below this latest increase for state school students.

House of Commons library figures for the 1970s show state school admissions at Oxford consistently below 50% – and in 1961 there were 34% of Oxford entrants from state schools.

Prime Minister Theresa May and her predecessor David Cameron – both Oxford-educated – have called for greater efforts for universities to promote social mobility.

Mr Cameron earlier this year attacked top universities for doing too little to attract talented youngsters from poorer backgrounds and from ethnic minorities.

Oxford, rejecting criticism that it is socially exclusive as well as academically selective, has invested heavily in outreach projects, spending more than £6m per year.

These have been designed to encourage applications from a wider range of backgrounds and to challenge pre-conceptions about elitism.

Last year, the university and its colleges took part in 3,000 outreach activities involving 3,400 schools, which it says is a 40% increase on 2011.

Dr Khan, in charge of undergraduate admissions, says the increase in state school entries shows its effort to attract applications from under-represented groups were now “bearing fruit”.

Among the projects encouraging applications from state schools is the Liverpool to Oxbridge Collaborative.

“I’m very aware that the best known private schools do a lot of work to prepare their most academic students to apply for Oxford and Cambridge,” said former education minister, Stephen Twigg.

“So the reason we set up the Liverpool to Oxbridge Collaborative is to give young people in secondary schools in my constituency in Liverpool the same chance.

“There are some pre-conceptions about what the place is like,” says Mr Twigg.

“A lot of young people still think, particularly if they come from a working class background and a state school, that they will feel out of place.”

The project arranges visits by sixth formers to Oxford and Cambridge to try to demystify the application process.

Mr Twigg accompanied a group from Liverpool visiting St Peter’s College and he described his own “trepidation” when he left his comprehensive school to become a student at Oxford more than 30 years ago.

“I was extremely nervous. I spent the summer of 1985 wondering if I’d made a mistake, because no-one else from my school was going.”

St Peter’s College has its own school liaison officer, Lucy Dixon, who says she is keen to break down any “misconceptions” that pupils might have about applying.

“We’re very keen to make sure that no matter where you’re from or whatever your background you have all the information you need.

“Students think they have to have all A*s at GCSE. They don’t realise that we use a lot of contextual data in our admissions, to see how they’ve done compared with their school’s average.”

But in terms of public perception, Oxford and Cambridge have struggled to disentangle the idea of academic excellence from social elitism.

Debates about Oxbridge admissions are often really about class, rather than who is top of the class.

Ms Dixon’s own story shows the intimidating cultural divide that can exist for some young applicants.

She went on to study at Cambridge, but describes going to a Cambridge open day on her own, where she had “left by the morning because I got scared”.

“I went to one college, I thought ‘What am I doing here?’ I felt a bit nervous. I got back on a train to west Wales. Six hours there, six hours back.”

Students taking part in the St Peter’s College trip described their preconceptions.

Most of their parents had not gone to university – and there had been apprehensions about Oxford’s image.

“The architecture makes you think it’s a high class kind of place,” said one of the teenagers.

They said meeting students and staff at Oxford had helped to make the university seem more accessible and they had not found it “snobby”.

The Liverpool students seemed confident of a level-playing field.

“It’s not about what school you went to, it’s about how much you want to do something.”

And while Oxford’s image might once have been associated with Brideshead Revisited, these teenagers described it as looking like the more approachable Hogwarts.

[Source:- BBC]

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Education

Getting into Oxbridge: How to tackle the questions during Oxford and Cambridge University admissions interviews

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

oxford-uni-getty.jpg

Oxbridge interviews are frequently the source of intriguing stories. You’ll frequently hear tales of students who were asked seemingly obscure questions like, “Why do we have two nostrils but only one mouth?”, or impossibly difficult ones such as, “How many grains of sand are there in the world?”

If taken in context, both of these are very fair Oxbridge interview questions. The first would naturally lead to a discussion concerning the evolution of sensory organs and the pros and cons of having multiple mouths, for example, reduced risk of infections versus the inability to eat and speak simultaneously.

The latter question would test a candidate’s ability to breakdown an initially very large problem into more bite-sized chunks in order to manage it, like the surface area of the Earth, percentage of the Earth covered by land, percentage of land covered by sand, and average depth of sand and so on.

7 things students wish they’d known about Oxbridge admissions

Oxbridge interviews are not about testing your knowledge. Instead, they are about testing what you can do with the knowledge you already possess. Remember, once you’re at university, you will rapidly assimilate a great deal of new information, so much so that you will start to wonder what all the fuss over A-levels was all about.

This is the main reason why it’s not particularly useful for interviewers to ask purely knowledge based questions such as, “What is the normal plasma concentration of magnesium?” Knowledge of isolated facts is neither necessary nor sufficient for a successful Oxbridge interview. Instead, it is the application of some basic facts to novel situation that is the hallmark of success.

One of the best ways to demonstrate this is to outline my own interview experiences at Cambridge when I applied to study medicine several years ago.

Interview one

This was my first science interview and the interviewer was delighted when he found out I studied physics at A2. His opening question was: “What have you read recently?” I explained I’d been reading about the new drug Rosuvastatin – a statin that was being recommended for everyone above a certain age, regardless of their actual cholesterol levels. The follow up questions were what you would expect: “How do statins work?” and “What are the risks/benefits of giving them to everyone?” Basically, ensure you know the basics of any topic you voluntarily bring up.

This then led to a discussion on how I would convince someone this drug was useful for them, followed by how I would convince someone blue light was more damaging than red. I struggled with this for a while, bouncing ideas back and forth, with each of them sequentially shot down, until I finally stumbled onto Einstein’s E=hf. This led to a discussion about why the sky is blue and sunsets can be a myriad of colours. All of this culminated in the classic: “What colour is the Sun in reality?” (Hint – it’s not yellow, orange, or red). This is the question tabloids would take out of context to make the interview seem like an array of bizarre questions when, in fact, this was perfectly reasonable giving the preceding questions.

This interview serves as a perfect example of a non-scripted interview i.e. one where the interviewer was happy to bounce ideas between us, forcing me to think about concepts in ways I never had before. I’m certain that, if I had offered a different answer to the initial question about my reading, the discussion would have gone along a significantly different route.

Interview two

My second interview was more scripted; the interviewer had a pre-set agenda with corresponding questions that he wanted to discuss. Given this person is known to ask the same interview questions annually, I’ve refrained from including specifics in order to not spoil the plot for everyone and to unfairly put future applicants at an advantage – or disadvantage.

After going through my BMAT essay very briefly, he asked me to draw a graph on his whiteboard. This was no easy task. I spent 15 minutes struggling with this graph due to its unusual axis. Like many candidates, I made the mistake of learning about excessively complex topics like the complement membrane attack complex and ignored much core A-level topics like human physiology. This meant I wasn’t completely sure about a basic fact that was required for the graph. This was a tough interview and, at the end of it, I was certain I had flunked. This was compounded by the fact other candidates were bragging about how they had got the correct graph in only 30 seconds.

When you’re in the waiting room with the other candidates, it may appear many of them are far smarter than you and know a lot more. Again, remember the entire point of an interview is to assess your ability to apply knowledge.

People get nervous and unconfident while waiting for interviews. One of the ways they try to feel more secure is by exerting their intellectual superiority. In this example, the students who tended to arrive at the answer very quickly were unsuccessful. This is likely because they had previous knowledge of the question from their school or through extra reading. Although this allowed them to get the correct answer quickly, they were unable to explain the intermediate steps that led them to it i.e. they knew the topic but didn’t understand it.

5 key learning points

As you can see, I made lots of errors in my interview preparation. Please learn from them. Good students learn from their mistakes, but great students learn from others’ mistakes, so:

  1. Don’t be put off by what other candidates say in the waiting room. Focus on yourself – you are all that matters. If you want to be in the zone, then I would recommend taking some headphones and your favourite music
  2. Don’t read up on multiple advanced topics in-depth. Choose one topic and know it well. Focus the rest of your time on your core A-level syllabus. You are not expected to know about the features of transverse myelitis, but you will be expected to be able to rattle off a list of ten cellular organelles
  3. Don’t worry about being asked seemingly irrelevant questions you’ll often hear about in the media. These are taken out of context. Focus on being able to answer the common questions, such as, “Why this college?”
  4. Don’t lose heart if your interviews appear to have gone poorly. If anything, this can actually be a good sign as it shows the interviewer pushed you to your limits rather than giving up on you as you clearly weren’t Oxbridge material
  5. Above all, don’t give up. When you’re presented with complex scenarios, go back to the absolute basics and try to work things out using first principles. By doing this and thinking out loud, you allow the interviewer to see your logical train of thought so that they can help you when you become stuck.                                                     [Source:- independent]
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