Avi

I figured from about the age of 16 that I wanted to apply to Oxford. I live quite near anyway so I knew the cit and I really liked it. Oxford's got a unique atmosphere which i thought would be an amazing place to live. Then the University's obviously got its reputation as one of the best in the world. Also, I heard about the PPE course and I figured these were subjects I'd be really happy to study. So it all kinda fell into place.

I had a couple of practice interviews with teachers at my school, but the main preparation I did was just reading outside of my A-levels: not necessarily academic books, but also things like Freakonomics, and following the news.

I had two interviews. The first was with the Economics tutors, although (quite surprisingly) there was no economics involved. They started off talking about politics (voting systems i think) and then they just asked me to demonstrate some Maths. I wasn't really ready for this so it didn't go brilliantly. My second interview was with the Politics and Philosophy tutors. Before I went in I was set a logic question, which I worked on for half an hour and then discussed in the interview. They also asked my opion on a few current political issues.

My admissions test was held when I arrived for interviews. There were sections for economics, reasoning, and also an exercise of just giving the definition of various words. It wasn't really something you could prepare for.

I remember having quite a good time when I came up for interviews. There was a guy from my form at school who was also there at the same time. We saw the city a bit, went to a museum, went pubbing one night, and also spent some time just meeting the other interviewees, hanging round the JCR etc.

I'd certainly advise anyone applying  for economics to brush up a bit on their maths as I've heard it's quite common to be asked about it. Also, for PPE it's important to be able to express your opinion and defend it in a discussion, so it's worth practising to get your confidence up.

I'm not sure exactly what I expected - I'd heard various stories of bizzare interviews that had happened to a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend (e.g. where a tutor just says 'impress me' so the interviewee pulls out a lighter and sets fire to the tutor's newspaper) - but I didn't believe them too much. I think everyone's experiece was pretty 'normal', just being asked about the subject, their opinions, interests, being set questions and so on. It is a bit gruelling because you are being put on the spot, but it's not as bad as you'd think. And outside of the interviews, the whole experience was quite fun.