WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

The most crucial thing, if you’d like to study at Oxbridge, is to actually apply. Having down-loaded the extra forms and wrestled with their personal statement, many students therefore feel that once the October 15th deadline is behind them, they can relax. This is not quite true.

For a start, you can never know too much about your subject, so keep borrowing those books. If there is a standardised test, it’s also a good idea to start practising it. While this will not make you smarter, it will prevent you from feeling paralysed by an unfamiliar format. Most importantly, perhaps, it is time to start thinking about the interview. Don’t tell yourself that you will only do so if Oxbridge invites you up. Quite a few other universities these days choose their student partly on the basis of a chat.

The best preparation is to explain a subject-related problem to an adult who is not your parent or teacher. What you will get out of this is not a perfect solution, but a chance to think aloud. The ideal conversation partner is someone who has very little background knowledge. This will force you to put things clearly and to expand rather more than you would when asked a question in class.

Having worked out from this what your weak points are, you can now work on them by having more conversations and doing more reading. You might also like to do some interview related clothes shopping. Still unsure about the preparations you should make? Worried you might have aimed too high? Nervous about whether you will understand those academic questions? Then it’s time to look at the five short interview chapters in OXBRIDGE ENTRANCE: THE REAL RULES.