History @ Somerville, Oxford in 2020

Interview format

History Aptitude Test; 1x interview.

Interview content

Interview: personal statement, submitted work, unseen source.

Best preparation

Read up on books included in personal statement, mock interview.

Test preparation

Practised past papers.

Final thoughts

But they don’t expect you to be a degree-level student - just be an a-level student who can think and that’s all!!

Remember this advice isn't official. There is no guarantee it will reflect your experience because university applications can change between years. Check the official Cambridge and Oxford websites for more accurate information on this year's application format and the required tests.

Also, someone else's experience may not reflect your own. Most interviews are more like conversations than tests and like, any conversation, they are quite interactive.

Interview Format

Test taken: HAT
Number of interviews: 1

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

They definitely stuck to the themes in personal statement and submitted written work for the majority of the interview but did throw in some very different ways of thinking about these themes. They interrogated my argument in my submitted written work and asked me to explain why one of the books I had written about in my personal statement may have received criticism. They also gave me a painting from the 15th century to analyse which was probably one of the hardest parts but also very interesting - they didn’t mind that what I was saying wasn’t actually too accurate but were more interested in why I might think those things and what evidence I used.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

I made sure I had read all the books I included in my personal statement and googled the historians and reviews if I could find any so had a few notes about provenance and historiography etc. I found someone who had done a Somerville history interview to read my personal statement and she very kindly offered to do a mock interview over the phone which definitely was much harder than my actual one!

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

I used practise HAT papers from the Oxford University website and asked a teacher to look over one or two of them. I hadn’t written essays for over a year because I took a year out and had had Covid at the end of my last year of sixth form so was definitely very rusty.

What advice would you give to future applicants?

Read everything you put in your personal statement but these really don’t have to be long books - articles from newspapers, films etc. are just as interesting! Stay on top of deadlines because there are a lot of them - write a checklist of everything you need to do because it can seem overwhelming. Google the history tutors at the college to see what their specialisms are - there’s a good chance that if their specialism connects to something you have included in your written work or personal statement they will interview you - do even a tiny bit of research on what they tend to argue, what genre of history they best fit into etc! But they don’t expect you to be a degree-level student - just be an a-level student who can think and that’s all!!