Guest post by Tabi Brewster

‘Tis the the season for Oxford interviews, which has prospective undergraduates from all walks preparing to undergo this challenging exercise. I enquired with a former English student of mine, Tabi Brewster, about her experience of this amorphous process. The Oxford interview is designed to see if students are equipped for the rigours of Oxford tutorials - the demanding seminar style of learning featured at the University. As such, the interview can take any shape and go in any direction, and students must be prepared to explore unseen materials and to respond to exacting questions on topics loosely and closely linked to their personal statements. Tabi is now reading English Language and Literature at Pembroke College, Oxford, and had these thoughts for students about how to prepare and what to expect.

From what my tutors have said, the interviews this year are going to take quite a different format to the ones we had as they are online, but I imagine the questions themselves will be similar.

My main advice is just to expect questions you don’t know the answers to. Don’t panic if they ask you something and you have no idea what they’re talking about; take your time, and make sure to explain your thinking out loud as you go. They will be able to push your ideas and give you hints if you take the time to articulate your thoughts – but they can’t do this if you’re just sitting in silence!

I had two interviews across three days. My first one was half on my personal statement and half on two surprise unseen texts: a speech from the early 1800s and one of Shakespeare's sonnets. These were definitely testing for the language side of the course, and they asked me mostly grammatical and technical-style questions. My other interview was mostly based on comparing two poems which I had 30 minutes of prep time for, but they also asked me more about my personal statement too.

Questions about my personal statement were very broad, and I was asked simply to ‘expand on’ some comments I had made in my statement. To prepare for this, I would recommend taking a copy of your statement, and swapping every full stop for a question mark. This will really encourage you to dig deeper into what you have said, and take your ideas further. Think of what you would want to say if you were asked to justify any ideas you put down, but most importantly, talk about what interests you. One of the main qualities they are looking for is passion for their subject, and this will only come across if you are genuinely excited by what you’re discussing.

Make sure you’re up to speed on the books you’ve put in your statement! They will ask you about them, and probably encourage you to think about them in ways you have not considered before. For example, in my personal statement, I included Thackeray’s Vanity Fair in a section I wrote about female protagonists, yet the question I was asked was about how Thackeray’s illustrations influenced his writing! As I said before, the questions will be pretty niche, and I know it’s probably the most frustrating advice ever, but you just have to try and expect the unexpected.

Think of it as a back-and-forth, conversational exchange than an interview. In my experience, the interview was not so much an ‘interview’, but more of a conversation, mimicking the tutorials I have now. The tutors will spring off ideas that you have, there’s no script or set questions, so don’t be afraid to discuss thoughts as they arrive, and shape the conversation to your own strengths. Take advantage of the vaguer questions they ask you, for example my interview began with ‘You said in your statement that ____. Could you tell me more about that?’ These questions are a golden opportunity to talk about what you’re genuinely interested in.

As well as vague questions, be prepared for very specific questions, too. In the interview about my personal statement (which I thought was an absolute disaster from start to finish..!), I was very much thrown off because halfway through I was given a poem and an extract from a speech to read and discuss, with no prep time. This definitely made me panic because I had read everywhere online etc that I would have one interview with unseen extracts, and one on my personal statement, so I wasn’t expecting to do both in one go! I was asked some very bizarre questions (e.g. ‘can you tell me what you think the verb ‘to husband’ means here?’ ‘what’s the subject of the verb in this line?’ etc). They are meant to be challenging, and meant to encourage you to ‘think outside the box’. So if you get thrown a few curveballs, try not to panic, think out loud, and don’t be afraid to ask them to elaborate if you don’t know!

My second interview focused on two poems, which I was given 30 minutes of prep time for. I was asked to focus on one poem specifically, but also consider them in comparison to each other. For text-based questions, I would probably approach it by firstly identifying any poetic devices which seem interesting to you, but it’s really important to think about how and why these are used, as that will be the first thing they ask you as soon as you pick up on any features. Don’t be afraid to draw comparisons with other texts you’ve studied and read too.

Also, with the unseens, while it’s important to make sure you have lots of ideas, think of the ideas you begin the interview with as starting points. By the end of the interview, you will probably have a completely different set of ideas to the ones you started off with, and that’s exactly what’s meant to happen - and happens for me every week after I leave my tutorials.

If this advise seems all over the place, that’s quite an accurate reflection of the interview itself! Just remember to stay calm, talk through your thoughts as you go, and try not to research too much into what possible questions you could get or what format your interview will be, because it’s different every year and between every college, so it will only alarm you more if you over-research it and then the format and style are different from what you were expecting.

Finally, remember that getting an interview is an amazing achievement in itself and you have just as much of a chance as anyone else of getting in once you’ve got this far. Good luck!

Tabi Brewster, English Language and Literature, Pembroke College, Oxford