Philosophy, Politics And Economics @ Hertford, Oxford in 2019

Interview format

4 x 20-30 min interviews and TSA

Interview content

Game theory, political theory, personal statement, and pre-interview test

Best preparation

Mock interviews, went over notes from books I had read and from my A-Level course, personal statement

Test preparation

Past papers

Final thoughts

Think aloud, there are no wrong answers and when throwing out ideas they can prompt you or tease its concepts.

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: Thinking Skills Assessment (TSA)
Number of interviews: 4
Time between interviews: 3 hours and then a day
Length of interviews: 20-30 mins I think
Online interview: No

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

For Economics, there was one about freakanomics, a game theory question, and then the rest was maths. For Politics, it was about the pre-interview test I did and some generic political theory questions and one discussion more about me and how I was self driven. For Philosophy, the questions came from personal statement and then pre-interview test, more asking why I answered some of them in a particular way and some where I corrected them. The pre-interview test was done on the first night of my stay in Oxford.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

Went over notes from books I had read and from my A-Level course, I also read through my personal statement and prepped potential answers this was helpful, I had two mock interviews which weren’t too useful as they didn’t match what they were actually like. Mum asked every question from a bank of past ones in front of the tv and practiced thinking on the spot, this was very helpful. Finally I watched political documentaries which were not very useful.

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

Past papers

What advice would you give to future applicants?

Think aloud, there are no wrong answers and when throwing out ideas they can prompt you or tease its concepts. It’s less about getting things right and more about how much they would want to teach you, so be flexible and willing to change depending on what critiques they offer. There’s no point being too nervous (obviously a little) as they are actually quite fun