I've been sporadically checking the blog views from time to time and I've been so surprised at the increase in interest - thankyou to the people who've been sharing this blog around! One of these days I'll get round to promoting it myself, haha!
As you can see by the fact that all of those sentences are finished with exclamation marks - I'm a little stressed out. Good stress though! For those of you who haven't started uni yet (and for those of you that have I'm sure you can sympathise) there comes a point in the term, about 5 weeks in, where you burn out and reaaaally start looking forward to your holiday. Anyway, as I have about an hour free before I have to go, I thought I'd sit and write for a bit, and this might be a good time to actually write up my Oxford interview.
Right, as a quick disclaimer, I'm not going to go into too much detail about certain aspects of the interview, as for some facets of it they do ask if you could keep the information confidential (ie don't tell the other interviewees), and I'm not entirely sure as to how far that stretches, so in my best interests I just won't include it. :)
I applied to Oxford after getting stupidly down about my (very reasonable) AS results - I got all As but the UMS weren't high enough to apply for Cambridge (It's hard for me to look back on that as I honestly can't think why I got so upset about it now - Oxbridge schools don't teach clinical skills until Year 3 which I know now would not have suited me at ALL). I got all A*s at GCSE, and as Oxford look at your GCSE results rather than your AS results I thought I'd try my luck. As mentioned in a previous post, I took the BMAT, almost cried at its ridiculousness, thought I'd screwed it up and waited patiently for my rejection. However, to my (immense) surprise, the next month I got an invitation to be interviewed at Queen's College and Christchurch College by email (neither of which I had applied to - I picked a college at random). Obviously I was very excited, and went into interview prep overdrive. I'd never been to Oxford before, so when I got off the train from Newcastle (as detailed in a previous post) and took in the place as a whole I was so overwhelmed - it's a beautiful place.
My first interview was at Queen's, where all the interviewees stayed overnight, ate dinner, and got to know some current undergrads (to Oxford's credit, they really take care of you at interview!). If there are any aspiring Oxford medics out there, I would wholeheartedly suggest you apply to Queen's - it's gorgeous, informal and stupidly friendly - not like the stereotype at all (can't speak for Christchurch on that one ;) ).
I had two interviews at each college - so four interviews in total. My first interview at Queen's was fairly standard, yet terrifying, so much so that I honestly barely remember the first one - it's the second one that has stayed with me! The second interview was conducted in a large sitting room (the settings tend to be fairly informal) with a medic that had just graduated from Oxford and was now working as an F1, and a lecturer. From what I DO remember of the first interview, the questions had been pretty standard science questions, along the lines of 'How does blood flow around the heart' and suchlike. That was something I didn't expect at Oxford - out of 4 interviews I was only asked the standard 'What makes you want to study medicine' question once. Most of the questions revolved around my own science knowledge/getting me to make conclusions based on evidence. In that respect it was a really interesting experience - I learnt a lot of new things and had some really interesting debate. In that second interview, the lecturer began interviewing me first, and asked me to describe the process of protein synthesis in detail (which I did) and then asked me what I knew about the workings of a car engine. This question was designed to make me sweat (I hate physics, didn't do it for A-Level, and knew absolutely nothing about engines), and try to come to my own conclusions based on what limited knowledge I did have using a logical thought process. I knew this was Oxford's approach from what people had told me before interview, so I tried my best to vocalise my thought process, and babbled for a bit about pistons with the lecturer guiding me to the answer. Because this had gone well, I decided vocalising my thought process was a good idea, and decided to do it for the rest of the interview. However, in hindsight, this was a bad idea, as I must have sounded incredibly stilted and scripted rather than natural. The other interviewer (ex-student) must have picked up on this, because BOY did he ask me some interesting questions. I knew from the start that he wanted to test me, as he leaned back in his chair with a blank look on his face and fired question after question at me before I'd finished answering the previous one - if I trailed off on an answer he'd have another question for me. At a guess, I'd say the point of this was to see how well I could respond to surprise questions when I was completely unprepared. My two favourite questions that he asked me were 'Should prostitution be legalised?' and 'Is paedophilia a disease or a criminal offence?'. As you can see they were thought provoking questions, haha, and I tried to answer them as best as I could. I tried to consider arguments for and against for each question and come to as coherent a conclusion as I could muster, but it was difficult to gauge what they thought of me.
My last two interviews were at Christchurch, which was an experience in itself. Going from the small, cosy setting of Queen's to the massive, breathtaking halls of Christchurch was a bit of a shock; the Great Hall in the Harry Potter films is modelled on the Christchurch Great Hall so eating in there was surreal enough, haha! Before the interview myself and another aspiring medic were put in a room with the other people being interviewed that day (mainly PPE interviewees), and meeting them was like being taken through a roll-call of Oxbridge stereotypes; you had the boy from Eton in his corduroy trousers and sweater vest along with the rich American in a smart shirt who's applied to both Oxford and Cambridge, and the exotic Bruneian who's applied to Oxford, Cambridge, Yale and Harvard. Safe to say I felt a little intimidated. They were genuinely lovely though, and we played a word game (how typical, I know!) before I got called to interview.
Okay so I said I only had an hour - off to go surprise a friend at lunch! I'll get back to this post tonight - I have a looong bus journey to Leeds for a friend's birthday, so I'll finish it then! As always, thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings, and please please message me with any questions you might have, related or unrelated!
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Hello! Back to Christchurch - my first interview was in a room with three interviewers (both of my interviews there were with three people), who showed me a vague, basic line diagram of some sort of anatomical system, and guided me through a series of questions to reach a conclusion about what the system was for, and what organism it belonged to. It wasn't a system I'd ever heard of before - I could never have prepared for it. Oxford do this (I think) to judge your confidence in making decisions, and in your own logical thought process. My last interview was very different - it had all the hallmarks of a traditional 'Why is it you want to do Medicine' interview, asking probing questions about my work experience and my personal statement.
Overall, like I've said before, my experience was a very positive one, and I have no regrets at all about applying/getting rejected as it taught me the skills I needed to do well in my Bristol interview.
In terms of applying to Oxbridge for medicine, I'd say about half of my friends on my course did apply there, so it's a popular thing to do. To be honest though, I think a lot of people apply there for the name rather than the course, or just because they are considered very clever and it's the 'done thing' to do. Obviously it depends on the person, but unless the course is really something that suits you - I would save yourself the trouble, as you are much more likely to get in somewhere else, and as I learnt the hard way, you need to apply tactically.
As always, feel free to ask me anything - I hope this has been helpful!
Ciao for now,
Tash x
Tash x
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