Advice for Oxbridge Interviews (Cambridge Student)

hey friends and welcome back to another video if you're new here my name's ray and i'm a second year cambridge student physics in this video i'll be talking about how i prepared for my cambridge interview in the december 2018 and what advice i have for people doing interviews at oxford cambridge this video will be mostly based on my experience studying stem subjects but hopefully some humanity students can learn a few things from me too no matter what subject you do i would highly recommend having a look at the free website called inside uni it has a huge free library of hundreds of interview experiences written by current students across a range of subjects at oxford and cambridge also have a look at the youtube playlist in the description it has videos of many cambridge and oxford colleges and tutors offering interview advice my advice is based on much of their advice so feel free to skip this video entirely and watch theirs but carry on watching if you want a student perspective on their advice anyways timestamps and links to any specific resources i mentioned will be in the description below so do check those out during the video

firstly the most important thing to do in interviews is speak your thoughts out loud as much as possible if you don't already i recommend that you practice speaking your thoughts out loud with any further subject-related questions or problems you tackle until you interview ideally you want to make this into habits so by the time you do have your interviews you don't have to force yourself to speak out loud and you end up doing it naturally the reason for this is that interviews are designed to emulate what cambridge supervision or an oxford tutorial is like during the supervision slash tutorial you sit down with an academic and work on some tough problems with them during this you may take on their hints and suggestions to complete the problem whilst also learning something new but to ensure you're making the most of the supervision slash tutorial you have to vocalize your thoughts so the academic knows what you're thinking and can lead you into the right direction therefore since interviews are meant to emulate that environment you should also recognize your thoughts by speaking out loud when doing the difficult problems that they present to you can see many examples of this being done in videos which i have links in the description below on that note the interview will start easy and gradually become more challenging the interviews aren't interested in seeing how far you get but interested in seeing what you do when you get to a point where when you don't know how to answer the question so easily at that point it allows them to assess your ability to speak out loud and respond to any hints or suggestions they give you and ultimately assess your teachability at that point in the case of physics and maps you can continue to make good progress towards a solution by drawing a good large diagram and writing any relevant equations or stating any assumptions you're making remember that reasoning well a wrong answer for many subjects can be just as good as giving them the correct answer if not better and sometimes the problems are designed such that there are many answers depending on what you consider ultimately to ensure i did not forget to speak out loud and defaulted to thinking in silence it was important to me to turn speaking out loud into a habit leading up to interviews personally i did this by working through some problems in some problem solving books whilst realizing my thoughts to myself in my room or sometimes working collaboratively with friends and by the time the interviews came around i didn't even have to think about vocalizing my thoughts because i just started to do it naturally like with anything the more you practice the better you will get and the easier it becomes so i would recommend for almost all the difficult questions you do between now and interview you try to speak out loud secondly try

not to jump straight into a problem and work with the first thing that comes to mind as it may not end well don't try to rush and ask for clarification to ensure you're understanding the question properly before you begin it is easy to become certificate turn the first thing that comes to mind and completely discard everything else but try to take a moment to think uh out loud of course the interviews are designed to assess your teachability and by making sure you understand the situation presented to yourself be asking yourself questions is good you can even ask them can i think about this for a minute then proceed to think out loud and often they will be happy for you to do this and sometimes they're overjoyed because many students they're interviewing and don't stop to think it's fine to have mind blocks and ask for something simple you may have forgotten like an equation or even admit you were wrong and light up some new evidence by saying uh something like apologies i take that back i forgot to consider x or y this leads on to my third piece of

advice which is don't be afraid to ask for help the interviews on expecting you to produce complete solutions by yourself they're more interested in seeing what you do when you get to a point where you don't know the answer because after all the interview is meant to emulate a supervision uh slash tutorial so it's meant to be an interactive learning experience where you can ask for uh hints or direction they may offer you an alternative viewpoint to consider which will make you reconsider your entire argument or some aspects of it remember that the main thing they're assessing is whether or not they can teach you and whether or not you can benefit from the personal one-on-one or one or two teaching systems that oxford and cambridge have in place in my case i had to have some direction during my interviews and the interviews for that i responded well to it and could work well within the supervision slash tutorial system so it gave me a good interview score whereas those who sit and struggle in silence will struggle to work well under the system so uh do ask for small hints or some direction if you find yourself stuck on the opposite end of the spectrum do not take out as a bad sign if the interviewer cuts you off you could have said something brilliant and they would have still had to cut you off because they can now check the box they needed to it is really hard to tell how well you're doing so try not to overthink in a moment i have known plenty of applicants who said that interviews went great book or rejected and others who said that interviews were awful and were accepted on that note i would

suggest reframing your attitude from this is an interview where i have to answer every question perfectly to let me take this as an opportunity to work on some fun problems with an academic and learn something new this change in mindset can help you stay more relaxed have a clearer mind and be able to share the ideas you want in the interview which ultimately leads you to performing better and this goes back to my previous point i'm not being afraid to ask for help during your interviews try to demonstrate your genuine interest in the subject and your willingness to learn if you enjoy the interview it is likely they will enjoy teaching you whilst they may not seem like it the interviewers are great people and want the best out of you just have to show it so be yourself have a smile and show your enthusiasm but remember you may not necessarily have enthusiastic interviews simply because they're tired of having to do dozens of interviews that week regardless of the outcome of the entity with an optimistic mindset you can look back at the experience more positively and think of it as a fun chance you had to work with an academic on some interesting problems at the end of the day there's only as much pressure as you put on yourself when i realized that i stopped worrying because i knew that it may be detrimental to my own performance so i went in the interview with the determination to enjoy and make the most of the experience and that works well for me

but that's basically from me if you want to see what other devices offer especially from cambridge and oxford and their constituent colleges then check out the playlist i created in the description below you will find a lot of similarity between what i've mentioned here and the playlist anyways if you find the video useful then leave a like if not leave a dislike and let me know why and if you have any questions about anything i mentioned then leave a comment down below and i'll try to get back to you but for now i'll see you next time