A huge amount of mystery and misinformation surrounds the Oxford and Cambridge interview process. Interviews are a vital part of the Oxbridge application, and your performance can make or break your chances of receiving an offer.

In this guide, we’ll dispel the rumours and explain what really goes on at interview. How does it all work, what will you be asked, and how can you prepare?

Read on for advice from our Oxbridge application experts on how to ace the interview.

Why do Oxford and Cambridge interview?

Oxford and Cambridge each receive tens of thousands of highly qualified applicants every year. Many of these applications will be excellent on paper – candidates who have exceeded the entry requirements at A Level, IB or equivalent; who have written an excellent personal statement; have received an exemplary reference from their teacher and scored highly on any admissions tests.

The purpose of the interview is to help Oxbridge tell these outstanding applicants apart. There is only one place for every six or seven candidates and the universities have to whittle them down somehow. The interview is a sustained opportunity for Oxford and Cambridge to assess your viability as a prospective student in depth, to understand your strengths and probe your weaknesses. It is the final piece of data they will use to decide whether to offer you a place.

What percentage of Oxford and Cambridge applicants get an interview?

Oxford

Oxford interviews roughly 10,000 of the 23,000 applicants it receives ever year – a rate of 40-45%. This means that getting invited to interview at Oxford is a big achievement in itself – remember, only 5% of UK university applicants apply to Oxbridge in the first place – and shows that you are a well-qualified candidate.

Places are then offered to 3,700 students – so a little over a third of those who are interviewed are made an offer.

Cambridge

Cambridge doesn’t release official data on the number of students who get interviews. However, it’s estimated that the interview rate is a lot higher than Oxford: around 75-80% of applicants get a Cambridge interview. This perhaps indicates that Cambridge places a slightly higher weight on interview performance than Oxford – it is easier to make up for weaker A Level grades, say, with a truly excellent interview performance.

Places are then offered to about 25% of those who were interviewed.

Dates

When do Oxford and Cambridge interview offers come out?

Oxford and Cambridge both release their interview invitations in November or occasionally early December. You will usually be contacted by the college you applied to, or, if you submitted an open application, to the college which will be interviewing you.

When do Oxbridge interviews take place?

Interviews take place from early to mid-December. The date range is usually from around the 8^th to the 20^th December.

You should get at least a week’s notice before your interview – but this is not long! So it is highly advisable to begin preparing for your Oxbridge interview earlier – around the October application deadline will give you 6-8 weeks’ prep time.

When do you get your results?

Oxford and Cambridge results come out in January, so usually the month after your interview. Everything you need to know about offer days is in our full guides:

• Oxford results day
• Cambridge results day

How do the interviews work?

Who will you be interviewed by?

You will usually be interviewed by academics specialising in your subject, who are attached to the college you have applied to. It’s typical for there to be between one and three interviewers in each of your interviews.

At Oxford in particular, you may be interviewed by multiple colleges. You should receive at least a day’s notice before any additional interviews. Oxford does this:

1. So that colleges can assess the strength of candidates who have applied for other colleges. This helps them ensure that the quality of applicants who receive offers is consistent across colleges.
2. To consider applicants to make offers to as part of the pooling process.

As you can see, getting additional interviews isn’t necessarily a good or bad sign, so try not to read too much into it. Just put your best foot forward every time!

At Cambridge, you might also have a ‘general’ academic interview, not focused on your subject. This will still be with a fellow at your college, but they may not be a specialist in your subject. The interview might cover your interest in studying this subject, studying at Cambridge, and your plans after you graduate.

Finally, Cambridge operates a ‘winter pool’, in which strong candidates may be pooled to a different college if their original college of choice doesn’t have space for them. You may be invited for another interview in January at a second college if you are being considered for the winter pool.

Where do they take place?

All of Oxford’s interviews now take place online, via video call.

At Cambridge, most interviews are online. However, currently eight colleges interview for some or all their subjects in person (at least for UK applicants).

You will be informed as part of your invitation where and how your interview will be conducted, and what tech set-up you will need.

How long do they last?

Oxbridge interviews typically last 35-50 minutes each. This gives you time to go in-depth to a series of questions but, though interviews are intense, this length hopefully shouldn’t be too exhausting.

How many do you have?

Usually you will have at least two interviews at Oxford or Cambridge, each with a different academic / panel of academics. As explained above, you may have additional interviews for a variety of reasons, so it’s not uncommon to have three or four in total.

Oxbridge Interview Structure

Cambridge and Oxford interviews consist of a friendly, but challenging (!), academic conversation about the subject you’re applying for. They’re deliberately designed to be like a mini tutorial or supervision.

This is key to how you should approach them: the universities want to see that you are intelligent, passionate about your subject, and ‘teachable’ – so flexible in your thinking, able to reason through an unfamiliar problem, and good at taking direction from academics.

You can expect to be asked about your interest in the subject you’re applying for, anything you wrote in your personal statement, any written work you submitted, and what you’re studying at A Level, IB, or equivalent.

However, the tutors will want to stretch you beyond you comfort zone, so expect unfamiliar problems to come up! For arts and humanities subjects, you may be given a written text (a poem for English, say, or a historical source for History) either shortly before your interview or during it, and asked to comment on it and respond to questions in real time. For STEM subjects, you may be presented with a problem to solve or a graph or object to analyse.

Don’t worry if you don’t know the answer right away. During a degree at Oxbridge, you’ll come across many challenging questions that you can’t tackle immediately. The interviewers want to see how you respond to this situation: how do you approach a problem and think through it to the kinds of solution that might be possible? Make sure to articulate your thoughts out loud so they can follow along with your reasoning. They may step in if you get stuck, but again, that’s not necessarily a problem. They want to see if you can build on their guidance to get closer to the answer.

Oxford have a series of videos of example interviews for most major subjects, which is a really useful resource to familiarise yourself with how the interviews are structured and the kinds of questions asked. These will apply equally well to equivalent subjects at Cambridge.

You might also like to check out our Oxbridge interview questions, with sample questions based on real Oxbridge interviews and example answers written by our Oxbridge-graduate tutors.

How to Prepare for Oxford and Cambridge Interviews

First, make sure you’ve got the basics covered:

• Re-read your personal statement thoroughly. Make sure you remember what you wrote, and think about how you would develop the points you made or respond to challenges about the ideas you presented there.
• Re-read any written work you submitted and go through the same exercise.
• Reflect on any admissions test you took – what did you find interesting / easier / harder about it? If you spotted any major areas of weakness when taking the test, make sure to brush up on them before your interview.

Then it’s time to expand on this:

• Read beyond your school syllabus, perhaps building on what you covered in your personal statement. Look for extra academic articles and books on the subjects you touched on. Ask a teacher or tutor for further recommendations. The faculty websites at Oxford or Cambridge might also have suggested reading lists.
• Watch relevant recordings of lectures  / listen to podcasts by academics on your chosen subject.
• Remember to think critically about what you read, watch and listen to! Don’t just passively absorb it – analyse it, considering how it connects with or even conflicts with other material you’re aware of.
• For STEM subjects, practise problem-solving for questions at a difficulty beyond A Level. A teacher or tutor can set you challenging problems, or you can do more admissions test-style practice.

Refine your interview technique:

• Practise, practise, practise! Arrange mock interviews with a teacher or tutor and ask for feedback afterwards. Try to ensure they cover a variety of topics within your chosen subject.
• If nothing else, practise speaking out loud about your subject – tell a friend, parent, pet, or plant (no, really!). Getting used to articulating your thoughts is a key skill to improve before the interview.

Tips for the interview day

1. What to wear: anything that’s comfortable. You’re not being scored on your dress sense, so there’s no need to dress to the nines if it will be distracting you from giving your best in the interview.
2. Make sure you’ve got your tech in order for any online interviews, or for in-person ones that you know your route to the college and have a map of the room(s) they will take place in. Be ready with plenty of time to spare.
3. Have a bottle of water and pen and paper handy.
4. Be enthusiastic! Your interviewers love their subject and want to see that you do, too.
5. Don’t be afraid to ask for the question to be repeated, or even to ask for a steer if you’re stuck. As stated above, this is to be expected at some point in the interview. The interviewers are not expecting you to get the right answer to every question instantly; what they want to see is how you think through a problem.
6. Be polite, try not to be nervous, but don’t be over-confident! You have done very well to get an interview, and you should be proud of your achievements and confident in your abilities. However, if the interviewer suggests that you think about your answer another way, don’t dig your heels in and insist that you are right. They want to see that you are teachable and can take suggestions and run with them.

How can Dukes Plus help?

At Dukes Plus, we’ve been helping students get into Oxford and Cambridge since 1999. Our success rates are 3-4x higher than average.

We offer expert interview preparation from Oxbridge-graduate tutors. They know how the interviews work, what the admissions tutors are looking for, and how to prepare. They can guide your prep, give you mock interviews, and feed back to improve your performance.

Book a session today to see how our support can boost your chances of admission.

If you’re just getting started with your Oxbridge application, begin with an Oxbridge admissions consultation. We’ll walk you through the process, assess your strengths and areas for improvement, and set you on the path to success.

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