Interview Preparation - what does it mean?

Morning All!

Many of you will have had the mysterious words "Interview Preparation" on your letters. I have had lots of queries as to what that means. Do we put you in a little room to sweat? Suggest warm-up exercises for your brain? Take you to the College bar?

No, none of the above! Here is the definitive guide.

The first thing to remember is that an interview is a little like a supervision (the type of one-to-one or two-to-one teaching we do at Cambridge and, coincidentally, at Oxford). It's helpful for us to see how you deal with new information and that might be written or spoken. The spoken is dealt with in interview but the written is harder to incorporate so we use interview preparation time.

During this time, you are given the following:

In subjects like engineering or Natsci P - a problem sheet. No calculators or assistance are allowed but do remember a pen (or ask the porters for one)
In subjects like English or History - a piece of literature or an historical source or two to consider
In languages - a piece of prose in the language you are about to interview for (obviously we don't do this for ab initio languages!)
In law - a passage of prose to consider with maybe some questions at the bottom which will be discussed in interview.

You usally have 30 minutes (in engineering 45) in a room on your own or on a chair outside the interview room to have a think about what's on the paper and to make notes. BRING A PEN!!!

I really can't give you any more detail than that but I can say it's quite and advantage to have these exercises as you know what the interview will start with (or what part of it will be about) and have time to calm down and marshal your thoughts. You won't be expected to be expert in the passage or problem sheet by the end of the half hour but can hopefully make some sort of intelligent comment on it.

If your subject doesn't have interview preparation time, please don't worry about it! You are at no disadvantage. They've just decided to interview in a different way.