Classics Interviews: the Next Month Broken Down (Expert Oxford & Cambridge Application Advice)
Part 1: priorities and preparation
Firstly, congratulations on getting to this stage! Challenging as it may be, the interview is a hugely rewarding experience. You’ll learn a huge amount from the interview—about the university, about the subject, about yourself—but with interviews a month away, it’s a daunting prospect. This blog gives you a primer in the main steps for preparation. Everyone has their own style, but these principles should steer you in the right direction.
What should I do first?
The number of things you might feel you need to prepare ahead of the interview can be daunting. If you haven’t done so already, start by making a detailed list of the kinds of preparation you want to have achieved by the time you start the interview. This will differ from person to person, but will almost certainly include:
Mock interview practice (make sure to practise both standard questions and questions on a text or image you’re given shortly before the interview)
Thinking in more detail about your written submissions and personal statement
Reading further texts
Re-reading key texts
Preparing answers to key questions
If you’ve received instructions from your chosen college about the format of the interview, pay close attention to these and tailor your preparation to the demands of the specific interview.
Once you have this list, you’ll be in a position to prioritise your interview preparation.
What material should I prepare?
It is obvious, but still worth saying, that you will never feel fully prepared for your interview. This is where prioritising is key. Think strategically about this. You’re very unlikely to be asked fact-specific questions about things you can’t reasonably be expected to know about. Such questions will either come from things you’ve volunteered yourself in the interview, things you’ve written about in your submission of written work, or things you’ve mentioned in your personal statement. The priority is to make sure you know these back to front.
It’s important to cast a critical gaze on the material you’ve already submitted. This can be a painful experience, especially as you spot typos or realise mistakes, but don’t panic if you find these. Interviewers view Oxbridge candidates as a work in progress; if you can show that you’ve developed even in the time since you submitted your application, that’s a strong indication that you’re a teachable student who would thrive on a tutorial-based teaching system. In practical terms, this means that it’s not a problem to come to the interview having changed your mind on a point you’ve argued in your personal statement or written submission. There’s a lot to be said for explaining what evidence, or re-interpretation of evidence, or change in approach, has made you change your mind. If your views are the same, however, that’s fine too. Anticipate possible objections. Run imaginary scenarios in your head. Be prepared to back up your assertions.
It’s also worth re-appraising the texts you’ve read in a more general manner. Ask yourself the big thematic questions—in a work of literature, we’re talking historical and political context, characterisation, structure, tone, depiction of time/space, how the text might be performed, etc. This is useful when you’re hit with a curveball question about the texts you’ve mentioned in the interview. Perhaps you’re having a perfectly comfortable discussion about a point you made in your written submission about the depiction of women and goddesses in the Aeneid, only to be hit with an unexpected and unrelated question: why does Aeneas never seem to speak in this poem? When you get these awkward questions, having thought about these basic questions will provide you with the material you can draw on (in this case, for instance, your thoughts on the characterisation of Aeneas will help you).
A further point: candidates often fall down at interview by making sweeping generalisations that sound attractive superficially but which can’t withstand any scrutiny. It’s good to have views, and it’s good to have ambitious views (if you have a developed and well-supported opinion on why the Roman Empire fell, for instance, that could be very impressive if properly expressed). On the other hand, you might offer a hopelessly general theory that starts to crumble once you throw three or four hard questions at it. To take an imaginary example, let’s you’ve theorised in your personal statement that structural features of the Greek language can be explained by reference to the physical topography of Greece, which influenced the way the language developed. If you make a claim like that, you need to be confident you’ve got serious evidence—and evidence that you’ve thoroughly scrutinised yourself—to support it. Always imagine the hard question that comes next, and ask yourself: would I have anything to say in response?
There’s value in reading more broadly. While there's something to be said for reading texts in the original, at this stage you'll get the most bang for your buck by reading texts in translation. Think about what the big gaps in your knowledge are: if you haven’t read any ancient history, you might want to dip into Herodotus. If you haven’t read any Homer or Virgil, this is the time to remedy that. If you’ve read no tragedies or Platonic dialogue, try a couple. Again, ask yourself the big thematic questions about these works and think about how you would answer them. It's not essential to write these down as this is a way of supporting your core areas of knowledge. Aside from giving you a general grasp of your subject, it will provide material for little connections, comparisons and references that you can pepper your answers with and make them sing. Don’t spend too long deciding what to read: the main thing is to read something, to do so critically, and to form views.
There’s a judgement call on how much you should balance the various elements here. There’s no magic formula, but a sensible approach to your priorities would be:
Re-familiarising yourself with things you mention in the material you’ve submitted is essential (this includes thinking more broadly about the texts you’ve mentioned).
Some mock interview practice is also essential, but you don’t need to do too much of this.
Some extra reading is strongly advisable, but to the extent that it doesn’t compromise (1) and (2).
Above all, have fun with this—done right, it can be the most enriching part of the whole process. And good luck!
This article was written by Tom (Oxford - Classics).
If you find this content useful, please visit Tom's profile for further information on applying to Oxbridge. Alternatively, book support now with Tom, using the form below.
Author: Tom - Oxford
BA/MPhil Classics
I’ve been lucky enough to study Classics at both Oxford and Cambridge. This means I’ve had experience of the admissions systems at both universities, as well as of the important differences in teaching and course structure.
