UKH

The quality of replies to Postman Pat's studying physics thread prompts me to ask this: has anyone either done a Cambridge interview in recent years? Or perhaps had a child or other person they are close to do one? Or maybe even been the interviewer!?

Child 1.0 has his next week - computer science. He did the exam a few weeks ago and said it was desperate, so I think was surprised to get an interview - particularly because a few kids in his year who had applied there for other subjects got rejections after doing the exam for their subjects. He is doing an online Q&A before it today I believe, and his school while supporting Oxbridge applicants as best they can, seems to have only limited capacity (although more than the school where I teach!).

I presume, like the exam, they will try to ask questions that are hard to prepare to, so it's not simply old school tie that gets you in, but he was already mildly miffed that the exam is just maths. Is it likely he'll get asked computer science questions in his interview? He read the suggested books this summer, and is doing computer science at A level, he also has taught himself some other programming languages; so I think is more interested in computer science than pure maths (he is doing Maths and Further Maths at A Level). But I don't think he has much idea about what they will ask, and me and his mum definitely have no idea!

I don’t have much useful to say that is especially recent (I started in 2012 so was interviewed 2011), but I would encourage him not to be disheartened if he feels like he doesn’t know the answers to the questions they ask. I very much felt they were trying to assess how, not what, I thought (something which was corroborated when chatting later on). I was applying for natural sciences with the intention of essentially doing physics and geology. I ended up being interviewed by Peter Wothers, an organic chemist. I didn’t have a chemistry a level, nor even triple science at gcse. They didn’t seem to be bothered and merrily asked me chem questions. I just tried to provide clear answers based on on-the-spot logical reasoning. Based on that, I’d say don’t flap, be logical and show you have the ability to think a problem through and probe it’s different facets - ultimately, I’m not sure they care too much about “the right answer”.

Random thoughts rooted in not so recent years for the former.

• They want to see how someone thinks and how they will learn, not what they know.  Work with the interviewer to solve problems they pose.   Some questions could be on anything that involves logic and problem solving, don’t be put out by that.
   
• Computer Science is maths.  Computation is entirely mathematical, and is understood through a raft of mathematical theories.  Lots of CS departments are really more akin to “building stuff with computers” or “computer engineering” than the science of computation.  It might be worth J1.0 re visiting the module handbook to look at how the mix of mathematical theory vs real world application lies on the course.  There are some big differences in CS out their - bigger than in most fields.  If the exam hints at the course structure, their reaction to the exam might be a clue this isn’t the course for them.  I know nothing about CS at Cambridge.

Mine was even longer ago (20 years now, eek), and in Engineering, but basically I agree with what tjhare said. They aren't really about testing your academic knowledge, especially for a subject where you do a separate exam. They are about testing things that an exam can't. In addition to what he said, it's also worth coming across as a rounded individual. If/when they ask about interests outside computer science, your son shouldn't be afraid to talk a bit about climbing or whatever else it is he does. (but, obviously, he should also tell them he has taught himself two programming languages in his own time.)

Oh and I thought I'd failed. I think most of my contemporaries did, at least those from 'normal' schools. So tell him not to panic if he doesn't know how to answer something.

Long time ago, all I remember was our group or someone in it being glared at by a porter as he said " Stand aside, I do not move over for no undergraduate ".  He looked just like the porter played by Sir David Jason in Porterhouse Blue, bowler hat and everything!  Chose Bristol in the end as I wanted to be away from family.  I did have the extreme pleasure a year or two later, when a rather obnoxious lad in my year who'd applied only to Cambridge (turned down), then to Cambridge and Bristol (turned down again), said something unpleasant to me in the terms of our course and me getting into a place like Cambridge and I replied, " I could have gone to Cambridge, but I didn't want to".

Cheers

Toby

Dated view, but I very much doubt it's changed.  It hasn't been anything to do with "Old Boys" for more than half a century; anyone thinking otherwise is doing a disservice to the applicants.

- Understand and apply principles

- Be able to parse problems into component parts; describe and treat those before re-collating

- Don't be rattled by cross-field questions

- Try to enjoy the process; it's actually very stimulating and the interviewers really want people to give their best

Finally, your comment about finding the exam desperate is important.  Many young people are used to performaing at 90%+ in school, or even public, exams. So it feels awful the first time they do a paper and can only be confident on 60%...but if 50% is median of the bright people applying, then yyou get through.  The same is true of the interviews, which feel like they push until you're "empty", or add complexity until you flounder.

A slight addendum to this - I've only known one person recently who's been on the interviewer side of the desk, but they very much seemed to think of it as a process of trying to unearth the potential in candidates, not looking for reasons to reject them. In particular, it's not catastrophic for someone to be totally flummoxed by some of the questions so long as they show a bit of a spark with others.

My personal experience of being on the receiving end is now lost in deep time, but I've more recent experience as a headteacher. I always took part in the mock interviews we set up to help applicants from our comp prepare for an Oxbridge interview. I'd second everything that's been said about the interviewers being most interested in how you think. The only further advice I'd add is: your son should make sure he lets them see his fascination, passion and enthusiasm for his chosen subject - eg by drawing on what he's been motivated to explore beyond the A-level syllabus.

Thanks for the advice! This is well off the topic, but as someone who has to teach sociology of education, I can't resist...   

Old school tie is of course a massive over simplification, but when I applied to Oxford in 1991 IIRC,  about half of students at Oxbridge were from independent schools, when about 7% of UK children were in any form of independent school. The figures have improved a bit but not massively as I understand it.

For Cambridge, I did a quick google to find some recent figures - found this https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/19783 which has an interesting break down of both applications and students. I know Cambridge has done a lot of work in recent years to increase all type of diversity among students, but the Varsity article does suggest the interesting way in which students who are in grammars or independent schools to 16 get classed as not that if they go to state sixth forms, and significantly up the supposed number of state educated kids at Cambridge. 

Anyway, I shouldn't sidetrack my own thread!

Comments like this make me feel my age quite badly, but I would agree with all the points made!

Dredging my decaying memory suggests I was asked about the news coverage of 9/11 in my general interview (I'm essentially a chemist by degree, for context). I can't recall any of the technical questions but as others have said the aim is to work out how you think not what you know. If you don't end up a bit flummoxed at some point it would feel quite odd.

J1.0 and you will in turn be shocked as to the number of privately educated students at Russell unis.

Awash with them even in science and maths subjects.

I was an interviewer for a few years for maths. I assume computer science has similar questions in their interviews but I'm not sure, and different colleges do it differently.

I can categorically say there's no hint at all of nepotism. The performance in the interview counts for a lot, much more than exams, because the whole system of education in Cambridge is based around supervisions, which are very like interviews in their format. That said, we tried to be aware of when students were nervous and making stupid mistakes under pressure, versus those who didn't understand even when we were giving strong hints. It's surprisingly easy to build a picture of someone's thinking process by doing this. There's also the game you have to play of working out whether someone has seen similar questions before, which can make it easier (or indeed harder, if they fail to spot the changes).

In maths our interviews were entirely question based. They sat down, we introduced ourselves and then we had (iirc) 20 minutes of maths problems. They had two of those interviews, each with two interviewers. I know other colleges do it differently, with one "general" interview and one subject specific one, which personally I think is bullshit. A friend of mine as an undergrad was asked about her opinions on a painting. She was interviewing for veterinary medicine. I hope Child 1.0 doesn't face this. Some colleges only have one interviewer and a separate "neutral observer" from a different subject.

I suspect in compsci (as it's called at Cambridge, pronounced compski, a noun for both the subject and its students) interviews they ask about algorithms and ways to solve problems computationally. I would be very surprised if they ask specific questions about programming, I don't think that's actually a requirement to do the course. They prefer to teach it themselves.

Sorry that was just a bit of a brain dump, I hope it helps. Let me know if you have specific questions

Long term academic interviewer here. wintertree's answer at 1405 above was very good methinks

If this was my child doing the interview, I would have him/him read the Cambridge website for the course he/she wants to get on to with great care, and also note what readings they'll do while studying [not read them, of course, but be aware of them and the detailed direction of all the years of study which are to come]

To your question "is it likely he'll get asked computer science questions in his interview?", yes, very likely

As others said, they'll likely be looking for someone who can think on their feet, show great interest in the questions asked, and if possible/necessary work with the interviewers to solve any problems or questions. Not to let it go

It's really fine to not know answers, but it is not at all OK to sit back with folded arms and say "I don't know". Or to show a lack of interest in the questions, topic, problems

Also have [1] a detailed idea of what you want to do in the future, and [2] some idea of how studying at Cambridge will help him/her to get there

All daunting, I know, be he/she should remember that most interviewees will be in the same boat, and that some preparation will be really helpful in letting him/her shine and do well

LOTS OF LUCK

Another quick thought: some schools, especially public schools (but also my own grammar school) put lots of effort into doing mock interviews and prepping students, whereas other state schools definitely do not do this. We tried to be aware of this and take it into account, and I think in maths it's perhaps not so helpful anyway to have practiced, it might just make you more comfortable: no amount of practice interviews makes you understand a type of maths problem you've never seen before. Part of the point of the interview is to introduce new concepts and see how the students react, how quickly they understand.

And something else from my own experience: it's very hard to tell how your interview went, and it's easy to be too harsh on yourself. I thought mine had gone really badly and I'd got in by the skin of my teeth, it was only being on the other side of the table several years later with my interviewer that he said he remembered it and it had gone very well.

The "Old school tie" phrase you use suggests that it's some sort of insiders' club where the emblem is sufficient to skew the outcome.

That's not true, and unfairly discredits both applicants and interviewers.  Furthermore, the data you cite don't support it.

What is true, and is supported by your data, is that many selective schools build well on their entry material and provide an excellent basis in thinking skills.  The interview process recognises that...but is also trying to spot talent that hasn't had such a good grounding. 

However, there there is a judgement about the raw ability vs. the size of "catch up gap".  I think many universities would bemoan the amount of catch up they have to undertake before a significant proportion of their intake really hits the standard needed for a degree course.

Absolutely agree with the statement that computer science is maths. I have some experience of the York CS course, albeit from a while ago, and it was heavily maths based, not really about programming. If the applicant is looking for something more applied then choose the course carefully.

From personal experience of the interview, don't be afraid to say you don't know - that takes more bravery than bluffing an answer that they'll know is rubbish. Then follow up by asking. I was asked how detergents work as part of a Natural Science (physical) interview. I didn't know, but I said so and asked how they do work, then had a great 20 minute chat about detergents and I passed the interview. They want people who are interested and keen to learn more about the subject.

Best of luck...

I remember my own really forcing me to think (I thought I blew it) and in all my conversations subsequently with candidates successful or not heard much the same. I think the subject advice already in this thread is better than anything I could add but something missing is they are keen you have more to your University life than your subject. Make sure you are enthusiastic and can explain why you enjoy your outside interests, sporting or otherwise.

My very favourite question was a raised eyebrow "why on earth do you read that?"... I said:  "I like two types of sci-fi, one that makes me think and another that allows enjoyable escapism, sometimes I'm lucky enough they overlap!"

Oh...and a screwball tip. Watch the current series on Young Sheldon as he enters college!

With respect: when I was being prepped for my interview everyone told me to be really smooth on this sort of question, hence my surprise when nothing of the sort was asked. Sitting on the other side of the table it was clear why: we don't care what the students want to do with their lives, we only care if they're going to be good at doing maths. It's as simple as that.

Also in maths (and probably compsci too) we got a lot of candidates with autistic spectrum traits and people who are generally not good communicators. These people can make the greatest mathematicians, but it doesn't make them very good at answering that kind of general question.

For similar reasons, we didn't really care what the personal statement said.

It is interesting you say that, as as I mentioned on the other thread I chose not to apply to Oxford or Cambridge for a number of reasons despite getting grades that would have got me into either (interviews had less weight back in the 90s, but I have no particular reason to believe I wouldn't have succeeded at one).  Part of it was that the collegiate system was very much not for me, I preferred the lower-supervision approach of a big city university.  Part of it was not wanting to be that far from family.  But another key part of it was the heavy involvement of maths.

I visited both Oxford and Cambridge as school trips, and at both we each got a chance to have a detailed chat with one of the college staff at the college we visited (I forget their qualification).  In both cases it was pushed as being heavily mathematics oriented, in Oxford's case they even tried to push me to study "Computation with Mathematics" which was very much not my interest.  There was also a reluctance to arrange for me to actually see the CS department and facilities and meet other CS students.

Obviously this was all over 20 years ago and things change.  But I would suggest that an interview is a two-way thing, and the nature of the course is very much something to ask about.  If he isn't up for a maths-heavy course as I was not - I'm not bad at it, just I don't enjoy it in the slightest nor has it ever been any use in my career which is very much application development/customisation oriented - then perhaps Oxford and Cambridge are indeed not his best choice.

Generally Manchester and Imperial have long been well regarded for a more practical CS, with a lot of to-ing and fro-ing as to which was the better of the two (the cost of London life would have easily flipped it to Manchester for me), but obviously things shift over time, so which others might be good is a matter for more research.

Indeed, if he wants a genuinely more practical path into a career in business IT (which is certainly a lucrative and rewarding one, and one I would recommend to someone so minded), something like Business Informatics may be better than even the more practical types of CS course that the likes of Manchester offer.  If you go to a university that offers that kind of course, it's something you can tweak your course choices to move into if you decide later you want to go that way.

From our daughter's experience (and the detective work she did beforehand), the interview is about thinking on your feet (well, while seated).  The logical approach is more important than getting the precise answer - do you really understand the implications of the question, what more might you need to know to answer it fully? (How, not what, exactly as tjhare1 says).  Having done the reading is a really good start - the question might not refer to it directly, but you might need something taken from it.  That said, that was Vet Med, and some of it was also pretty vocational stuff demonstrating commitment, so that might not be at all how it works in Maths. 

I provide mock interviews for local schools and private clients, so right now is pretty busy for me!  I don't cover comp sci, just maths and the physical sciences, but a lot of this is very transferable.

It's not surprising that he found the TMUA hard - it is!  To give you some context, as a physics specialist, I reckon that you could ask me to sit any A level physics paper with no prep at all and I would get 99% of the marks.  That's literally my job.  However, I can generally only get around 70% on the Physics Aptitude Test.  The usual mark required for an interview is just over 60%, so I'd get through, but not by a huge margin...

Certainly in the physical sciences, there's a lot of weight put on your maths performance.  The idea is that if you're a good enough mathematician, they can teach you the science, but if your maths is weak you're stuffed.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if the same thinking applied to comp sci.   So expect there to be maths in the interview, as well as some more specific comp sci material.

Some of the questions will be answerable, and he'll be expected to work out the answer.  If he gets stuck, the key thing is to think out loud; they're trying to evaluate his ability to work things out quickly and under pressure so they want to hear what he's doing.  Sitting silently for a minute and then giving the right answer is not as useful.

They may well also use 'unanswerable' questions - things where they are far more interested in his logical processes, than the actual number he gives.  Classic (rather corny) examples: how many piano tuners live in Chicago?  How many aircraft are in flight above the earth at any given moment?

There'll almost certainly be a question about why he wants to be there.  He should think about his answer to questions like why he wants to study comp sci, why he wants to go to Cambridge, why he chose this particular college, what he offers to this college... 

And finally, there will likely be one or more questions about whatever he's put into his personal statement.  He was severely limited in what he could write in there, so a question about the PS is regarded as an opportunity to expand upon it.  So if he's said that he is interested in, say, learning this particular programming language, be ready to talk about why he likes it and what it can do.  It is worth re-reading the whole PS, line by line, and thinking about what questions an interviewer might come up with from it.

Lastly: remember what the interviewer is looking for is someone they want to teach.  They are working academics who have to provide undergrad tutorials as part of their contract.  These two hours a week are not necessarily highlights for them.  Every single person they interview is clever enough - they wouldn't have got the predictions and passed the maths test otherwise.  they are looking for someone a bit sparky, a bit interesting, who they actually want to spend time with.  

Good luck!

Weird how things must have changed in a decade. In the early eighties all the Compsci students I knew were busy earning money on outside consultancy. They were great to drink with as they were relaxed (being totally on top of their subject) and because we all earned money there was never any aggro on avoiding rounds. Mind you the bast*rds were really cruel when they watched me fail to cross Newton's bridge for 30 minutes when I was inebriated.

I had a Cambridge interview for Physics. My mock interviews at school hadn't prepared me for it at all, they were all general chat 'why did you apply to this college etc' but the interview itself was very subject based and involved, as others have said, answering subject questions on the spot.

I was given 4th order differential equations to solve, asked where wind comes from (he was a geographical chemist and I had no idea - the poles? the equator?) and asked to derive a formula for calculating the terminal velocity of a skiier down a ski slope. It was pretty tough for 17 year old me and I felt I'd floundered around a lot.

Anyway I went home very disappointed and spent a few weeks convinced I'd not receive an offer. I was very surprised to get a place afterwards but my A level physics teacher had given me an excellent foundation in deriving formulas and pure maths was my thing, really, so maybe there was something in these areas that stood out.

Edit: this was 30 years ago btw

I would add one gloss to your admirable advice: don't feel rushed into responding, think before you open your mouth.

I reckon it’s a lottery if you’re somewhere near the right ability. 

I applied to Downing for Engineering. 160 applicants, 16 got offers, mine was AAAB because I was a bit weak in the maths interview and they insisted on not less than B in further maths. 10 got the grades. I was sent some electronics prep work before the course. I’d flown though AS Electronics - couldn’t do the paper. 1 student moved to medicine on day 1. That left 9. 2 almost failed the first year, moved to other subjects. One moved to do Chem Eng which is kinda separate. That left 6 that started the 2nd year. Various near misses and subject shuffles. We all made it to the end of the 4th year, but none of us got a first.

I cannot believe for a moment that we were anything like the best 6 out of the 160. 

I’ve tried to help people in the past, including a colleague’s son who had the ability but wasn’t sure if Cambridge was for him. As a working-class northerner, maybe it was me who convinced him it would be ok. He went, hated it and then left in the 2nd year, reunited with his girlfriend elsewhere.

Good luck, but don’t think for a minute that it’s fair or even the best option.

Anyway, here are some example questions I’ve heard for natsci / eng / maths that may make you think :

Explain what you understand by the term ‘charge’? (Followed by current, voltage, impedance, field, flux)

How could you go about establishing the weight of a large aircraft with small tools?

Sketch 1/sin x. (Reflection in y=x)

Estimate how much energy is used by a sprinter running 100m

Do bubbles in a carbonated drink accelerate upwards? Draw a force diagram and diff eq.

Estimate log base e of root 3

Consider a hole drilled through the earth from pole to pole. How does g vary down the hole? What happens if you drop something down? Now consider equator to equator. What’s different? 

What is the square root of i ?

What is the i’th root of i ? ( this may be a joke)

Not recently, and not compsci, and the other place, but yeah, what everyone has said. The maths paper seemed absolutely nails, because it was absolutely nails. The interview is about how you work stuff out so it won't be things you'll know the answer to, so don't expect to. And it will feel like you struggled because if you're doing well they'll make it harder until you aren't. Not in a mean way, but to see how far you can keep up. So be ready for it to feel like a disaster. Everyone had a story like that in freshers week. It'll probably feel more like a tutorial than an interview; they want to know how teaching you is going to play out. It'll be a really valuable experience, whichever way it goes. I kept hold of the questions and still use them, and that style, when I'm recruiting graduates.

Physics at Oxford in 2008 (got in) and now a university academic who has to interview students. The key thing is when stuck explain your thought process rather than just stopping at "I don't know". i.e. "I'm not sure but I would maybe try this, this or that?" or "I know I need to work out X, Y and Z to get the answer, I have an idea for how to do X and Y but not sure on how to get Z"

Basically demonstrate that you can see the important parts of the problem even if you're stuck.

There has been significant improvement over the last 20 or so years, but I still think there is a long way to go.

Mansfield College now accepting over 90% of candidates from state schools and also moving from bottom of the Norrington table in 2007 to 5th now suggests that other colleges still have a lot of work to do.

To the OP.

I haven't anything to add to the good advice on here other than to say the experience is very subject specific. My experience that stopped 8 years ago had been preparing students for Maths/Engineering and assume Computer Science will be similar to these.

Why is that a joke? Never heard of this being used but I reckon it would make quite a good interview question. It has several steps to it, and it's very easy to give hints and see how someone reacts.

Oh...Id have to try hard to not say: "ask one of the tools in the aircraft for the specification manual."

I’m intrigued by your (sidetrack) comment about students switching from private school to public sixth form. As a teacher at a (state) SFC, I thought it was the other way round: some parents would pay for private sixth form after state 11-16. So that while the overall figure for private schools is 7% ( and has remained remarkably stable), 14% of university applicants are from private sixth forms. 
Incidentally, congratulations on getting so many of UKC’s Cambridge alumni to out themselves!

I'm not, some parents will game any system. Now Universities worry about quotas it's a potential significant advantage as long as the sixth form teachers are good.

That is my experience as well, also many private schools will give generous scholarships/bursaries to students whose GCSE results indicate Oxbridge potential. 

Some interesting data.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/sep/28/social-class-universi...

https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/education-skills-and-tra...

The following pdf is a bit out of date now but the main message will still be there... when people say less than half the population should go to Uni it's never their kids who should lose out! Well over half of middle class kids have been going for over a decade.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...

 "socio-economic differences in HE participation remain substantial: pupils from the highest socio-economic quintile group are around 40 percentage points more likely to go to university than those in the lowest socio-economic quintile group; the difference in terms of participation at the most selective institutions is around 20 percentage points.  This means that those from the highest socio-economic quintile group are around 3 times more likely to go to university and around 7 times more likely to go to a selective institution than those from the lowest socio-economic quintile group. The socio-economic gap in participation overall and at the most selective institutions is largely – but not entirely – explained by differences in background characteristics and prior attainment. Around 85% of the difference in participation overall and over 95% of the difference in participation at the most selective institutions is accounted for by the characteristics of young people at our disposal."

Not a joke. It's exp(pi/2) .

I'm not convinced it is a good question because it is actually pretty trivial if you know the right maths, though it might be good for discussion if you don't.

I'm doing a practice Cambridge maths interview next week and I might use that!

I've been going through some STEP Maths paper questions with them. They are quite incredibly hard - I'm really struggling myself! I get the impression things may have become much tougher since my day.

At my interview the only question I can remember was "what is integration". I said it was the reverse of integration and the interviewer simply said I must have a good teacher and went on to the next question.

No it's not!

Loads of good advice already so I'll give my top two, even if they are repeats.

Fundamentally they want someone they can work with for the next three years, so intellectual curiosity and being able to engage in challenging questions is really key. Getting the answer right or wrong isn't the point.  It's showing your thinking and not just parroting facts.

Some students are really academic, but being bright and rounded is ok. They'll have seen the rote list of interests on the UCAS form, so being true to yourself will come across as more genuine.

I don't have anything specific to his chosen subject but if you pm me I can send you a file that I put together for my Geography Oxbridge students last year which contains some general advice as well as a long list of interview questions culled from a variety of sources.

I get the impression that for maths Cambridge don't care about you being rounded - they simply want you to be very, very good at maths. I don't now whether computer science would be the same.

Well, fair play. It would show the calibre of the interviewer to lead someone through this in a few minutes. I couldn't do it then and I can't do it now. 

One thing I (perhaps thankfully) didn't realise at the time, was exactly who was interviewing me. The guy asking very simple questions - 'What do you understand by the term 'voltage'?" did actually know a a thing or two about it. I had the privilege of being taught electronics by him, on a 1:2 or 1:1 basis on a sofa with tea & biscuits for two years.  https://www.phy.cam.ac.uk/directory/withingtons

Prof. David King too, no idea at the time who he was or what he did.....

I've been asked a few times to give mock interviews to Oxbridge candidates for science and medicine. Never for computer science, as it happens.

Without any inside knowledge, bar my own experience of having gone through one many years ago  for Natural Science (One that mystified me at the time. It seemed like a casual chat about nothing in particular), I thought the best thing to do was to get the candidates to show what they could do with stuff they would reasonably be expected to know, but in unfamiliar settings. I wasn't so interested in whether they got the right answer, if there was one, but how they went about it.

Did they see universals in the problem as set, like oh that's a wave, what do waves do? Or see symmetries, and so on.

Surprisingly to me, some kids who had nothing but A*s to their name were entirely stumped when faced with this kind of challenge.

That's my impression for sciences, and what I would look for.

We quite often used questions that were obvious when you know the correct way to do it but if you don't then it takes a lot of discussion. It's always great when you see a student finally 'get it', their faces light up. If they obviously already know it then it's quick to move onto another completely different question - or sometimes extend the current one to somewhere new.

This isn't the first time I've heard this suggested. Did you have many international students? One hypothesis was that more students coming from overseas has made things more competitive. The actual (tripos) exams don't seem to have changed much in the last 100 years though.

If I was a betting person I would say that ‘sbc23’ was originally a Cambridge email address?

lol. You are quite right! I never had this question, but I think the theme was exploring the differences and symmetries of inverses . x, 1/x, sin x, 1/sinx, sin-1(x) on a whiteboard.  

(All my maths now all involves £ to 2.d.p.)

My maths teacher was an ex. Cambridge, but quite odd and cynical. His useful tips for (engineering) interview were :

 - Always sketch a mechanics problem with accurate(ish) 30/60 deg angles rather than 45 so it's obvious which component is which. 

 - Make an effort to learn the standard angles 0, 1/2, 1/sqrt(2), sqrt(3)/2, 1 for sin & cos. Also know the approx. decimals for the estimate-type question. 

It helped my wife get in because she knew what 'e' was as a decimal. Almost useless info in most circumstances, but they embrace the odd people

One thing to note on the Complex number stuff - maths use 'a+bi' but elec. engineers use 'a+bj'. I got confused with [i,j,k] unit vectors when the question was phrased 'what is the square root of j?', because the question before was about cross-product.

You know that Physics & Maths Tutor has all the solutions, I assume?  It's saved me more than once with evil PAT questions!  

It's an interesting question to ponder - what proportion of state vs private students would be 'correct'?  We know that the ratio of state : private students overall is 93:7, but most private schools are selective so the proportion of the brightest students in private education is more than this would indicate.

The problem is, many private schools offer scholarships to the very best.  In my years teaching in a state school which happened to be surrounded by several very well endowed independents, we would see every year that a few of the most promising students got creamed off at the end of year 6 onto a full scholarship.  We never got to teach them.  Perhaps one or two pupils per year group (our intake was around 160 pupils), so in the order of the top 1% of our cohort.

Of 1.8 million undergrads in the UK, Oxbridge takes 28,000, so about 1.6%.  If you assume that independents are offering a scholarship to just one half a percent of the cohort, then even with no further selection or other advantages, about one in three of all the Oxbridge intake are going to come from private schools. 

One of my mates explained at interview that very soon it may be possible to access the data directly from Boeing, using GPRS & WAP on his nokia phone. In 1998, the interviewer didn't even know what WAP was, or that it was the pixelated precursor for what was to become general smart phone web access. A decade before the iPhone. It got him in. 

He went on to float a startup, then handset lead for Deutsche Telecom, retired at 40 and now sells wine. 

He knew exactly what to do from day one, public school, rowing, private pilot, oxbridge parents on big company boards, internship at a motherboard design firm, product patent with his name on it in a gap year at 18. He was bright enough, but at massive advantage. 

It is and I'm not sure, but we still have work to do 

Don't most select on parental wealth, rather than student ability 

As you say with scholarships and bursaries it is skewed, but I don't think by as much as most people think 

That isn't a typical state school in my (generally rural) experience, being a day student in a private school hasn't been an option for students in 4 of the 7 schools I taught in and two of the others only had one option. 

And at the end of year 11, but how many were from single parent, disadvantaged, from a deprived area? I think this is even less fair than the 11+

 >We never got to teach them.  Perhaps one or two pupils per year group (our intake was around 160 pupils), so in the order of the top 1% of our cohort.

I taught for 10 years  in a town where the only other school was a selective grammar school. In theory they should have been selecting the top 20% of students at 11. Most years we had 3/4 students applying to oxbridge and would be disappointed if at least one didn't get in, I still think more should 

If I thought they were accurately awarding scholarships I could see some merit in this, but it doesn't explain the difference between the number of places awarded to a small number of elite private schools compared to more modest provincial ones 

In reply to TobyA: if the interviewer is sat behind a newspaper refusing to interact, the correct response apparently is to set fire to it…this did apparently happen at an interview way back….

Unfortunately, pandemic and all, the interviews are online this year. So arson won't be possible.

Then again when I went to Oxford for interviews a long time ago, I was side tracked by very cheap beer in the college bar and trying to snog, IIRC, the daughter of the Bangladeshi foreign minister who had just flown in from a Swiss finishing school!! I remember palling up with a Scouse girl who was a comp kid like me, for mutual support dealing with the bizarrely posh or rich people we were meeting at the interviews. She was clearly smarter than me though as she got in and I didn't. As it was for PPE at New College, I like to think she's now either a Labour MP or has a column at the Guardian. But maybe online interviews aren't such a bad idea.

Over 20 years ago, so can’t remember any details and it was for history rather than science. However from what I recall, it was 3 nice chats about something I was interested in (history). No trick questions and all pretty fair. I didn’t think I’d done particularly well or badly but it was enough to get an offer. That was in the days before the entrance exam they seem to now have and before my college (Emma) got really academic. Might not get in if applying today 🤣

wintertree’s point is well worth reflecting on. The impression I got was that some scientific subjects there were very academic and less applied / practical (eg maths and medicine - in fact most medics moved elsewhere after 3 years). This may have changed of course. Whereas history was great due to a very broad and flexible syllabus.

I think Oxbridge is great for those who are academically minded and would enjoy being in that kind of environment. It’s also great for getting involved in sport and various other interests because these all exist at the college level, so you don’t need to be amazing at something to be able to try it (rowing is a great example of that). Oxford is definitely the better of the two for climbing.

Another point is that it’s relatively cheap to be there (or at least it was 20 years ago). All accommodation was provided by the college at a very fair rate, which only had to be paid during term time. Short terms as well, so the student loan stretched further. Commuting costs were zero due to cycling and walking everywhere. Oh and we had (still have) a cheap student run bar. £1 for a pint of Carling in my first year in 1999/2000. Obviously price was more of a consideration than quality when I was 18…

At the end of the day though, I suspect most employers these days don’t really care what uni you went to, especially once you’ve got a few years of actual work experience. 

The reason that the exam was all maths is that many (maybe most?) applicants will not be doing compsci A-level. The tests contain material that almost all applicants would be expected to be familiar with. I would expect the same to be true of the interview.

The content of the course is far more closely aligned with further maths than with learning programming languages.

I interviewed for Comp Sci at Oxford 3 years ago.. I think most things have been said but I might be of some help.

All three of my interviews were pretty much entirely maths focused, in fact I don't think any hard computer science questions came up at all, especially anything related to programming (I guess this is easy to pick up if you can do the maths)...  most of the problems they gave were a mix of straight maths questions and logic puzzles. The interviews seemed geared towards trying to uncover how you think, and how you cope with material you won't of seen before, rather than just what you know - I got the impression they would just make the questions harder until you start to struggle, to see how you approach them. The question structure might be different at Cambridge, since I remember the Oxford course being a bit more theoretical, but I doubt it'll change much between the two. I think it's worth just trying to enjoy the interviews and try to get something out of it, rather than putting pressure on yourself by trying to get everything correct.

Also, I'm not sure if the interviews are still online or not, but I think it's quite easy to get intimidated by everyone else also interviewing, as everyone there is very clever. I remember there being a number of people who had flown in from America and Finland just to interview, and an equal number who were at top public schools, Eton etc. 

As it turns out, I've ended up enjoying doing Maths elsewhere instead, so it's not the end of the world if you don't get in..

I had a friend at Cambridge who started doing Natural Sciences and wanted to concentrate in theoretical physics but was told they hadn't done well enough in their first year maths exams, so they switched to computer science and did really well. Not sure what that tells you!

Thanks. Looks useful. I'm ok with PAT. It's STEP paper 3 I am finding frightening😱. Seems to only have hints for that though? Maybe need another look.

Don't know if it is of any help but Lodge Jnr is currently in the second year of a CS course at Durham, he looked at and visited Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Bath, Warwick and York in addition to Durham.

He got the impression that many of them were just maths degrees with the odd mention of computers (possibly my oversimplification) but chose the course he liked as much as the institution.

So far he reckons he is loving it and very happy with his choice.

Hope he gets on the course he wants and enjoys it.

friend of mine did physics at Cambridge both as an under & postgrad (he's now a professor somewhere else). He said the order was something like pure maths/applied maths/ theorectical physics/applied physics (his field)/engineering. But he was a student back in the late70s/early 80s.

My experience of Oxbridge was an interview at Oxford for chemistry, thought I'd failed very badly but was offered a place. Dropped out after a year as I really didn't enjoy the course. Worked for a bit then went back elsewhere to a degree in ecology & finally a PhD in plant ecology. Second time at university I made sure swapping subjects was going to be easy if I'd made another mistake. Looking back I should have been more insistent that I didn't want to do chemistry although it was my best subject at A level & due to timetabling constraints I did double maths, physics & chemistry with no biology. But with school (a state grammar) & parents all pushing me to go to Oxford I did. As I was the first in my family to go to university it was all a bit of a step into the unknown.

Thanks Andrew. Interestingly I know that child 1.0 has also applied to Durham, Imperial and Warwick, possibly one more too - can't remember how many you put down on UCAS now. He definitely liked the sound of Durham so I'll pass on your son's positive experience there. Cheers!

Apologies - you're quite right, all that's given for STEP are guides to the solutions rather than actual worked answers.  As a physicist I shy away from STEP and MAT!

Well, yes.  But the existence of free or massively reduced scholarships for very high performing students means that some percentage of the state cohort's best chances for Oxbridge are being creamed off.  

So the school I taught in for most of my career was in a rather unusual town - Abingdon - which has three large state secondaries, but also three major independent secondaries within the town and several more within easy travel range in surrounding villages.  If you looked at our stats, a noticeable chunk of what should have been our top sets was simply missing every year.

But although the issue was perhaps very pronounced in Abingdon, I think it exists to some degree almost everywhere.  I went to school in a small town in Wiltshire (so not in the grammar system) and in my last year at my state primary I had two out-of-town independents try to persuade me to go to them on scholarships.  This was in the early '90s.

I do not for a second believe that scholarships are being accurately awarded to the very best - certainly not at the age of 11.  But they don't get handed out to dullards. 

Within each cohort there are only a few who might make it to Oxbridge.  If even a few of the brightest students (and even with somewhat ropey identification that early) get swiped away from the state system, than the percentages for a pair of institutions who are looking for the top 1.6% is going to be significantly skewed.

I mean, there are independents and there are independents.  I've done cover jobs in private schools who never send anyone to Oxbridge.  Some are bloody brilliant at preparing their students and some are hopeless (that applies to state schools as well as independents...)

Don't get me wrong - I cannot stand the idea that the school you go to might change your life chances, and I would like to see the end of independent schooling (although I know I never will).  My point is just that, given the system we have right now, if Oxbridge select purely on ability (and purely from those who actually apply - many excellent students do not), then the proportion of independent students they select will be far in excess of 7%.

I needed to look it up after your previous post, but apparently only 1% of scholarships are full academic ones. Apparently a large number are sporting or musical. 

Mid 80's that was me at 16 and my brother at 14, so I accept it did/does exist but I' m not sure to what extent. 

Agreed, but I'm concerned that decision/opportunitiy will depend on parental expectations at least as much as student ability 

Yep, but I think around 20% would be a better reflection of ability rather than 30/40% that we have now and the 60/70% that it used to be 

Yep, it is very difficult, but the selection process should try to take this into account, some colleges seem to be doing it, others seem to be claiming this isn't an issue. 

I agree on both points. 

I accept it will be more than 7% due to scholarships, but not by much. If state school heads had their budgets trebled how much difference would that make to outcomes? Should colleges take that into account when making offers? I don't know about it in any detail, but Mansfield college seem to have improved their outcomes significantly using a policy that results in over 90% of their students coming from state schools. Does their selection process make a better job of recognising ability and future potential rather than how well a student has been coached? 

I don't have good stats on this.  This article https://inews.co.uk/news/education/scholarships-private-schools-grants-9548... suggests around 3% of independent students are on a scholarship or bursary that covers more than three quarters of their fees, and it also suggests almost half are 'helping less affluent parents' as opposed to getting sporting and musical talent.  So for every 100 independent students, probably one or two are 'poached' in this way (perhaps more on less valuable scholarships too).

The schools are not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts - they are cynically making sure their exam results and university figures look good, so it's a fair bet that quite a lot of those students will be Oxbridge material.

Yeah, my gut feeling is that probably somewhere around 15-20% is the 'right' figure.

I'm sure that every single admissions tutor is trying to pick on ability alone.  How well they are succeeding... 

edit: some colleges are implementing positive action to actively choose more state students.  This has been known for a while.  Of course, this leads to privately educated children being switched into state schools at Y12 or even Y13 to take their exams there so they 'appear' to be state educated!

The aircraft rests on tyres.  I think I’d measure the air pressure in the tyres.  Then I’d measure the footprint contacting the ground of each tyre maybe with a piece of string and a steel ruler.  We know the pressure in each tyre we know the footprint.  From that we can work out roughly what force is bearing down on each tyre.  Then from that determine an approximate weight.

Air pressure gauge

Piece of string

Ruler

Notebook and pen

I think this is a huge issue that most people don't see at all. Probably the best student I've ever taught in the last 7 years, who is now doing, IIRC, biochemistry at Manchester - which I believe is a great course, should have given Cambridge a go. I just couldn't persuade her that she should try, could well get in and she could have a great time there and start a great career from that. She just kept saying that Oxbridge isn't for people like her, and no one would like her because she wasn't posh. This was despite Sociology being her 4th A level, so she knew and understood all about the inequalities in the British education system, Bourdieu and cultural capital, and she was perfectly aware that being from a relatively deprived background (no one else in the family having been to uni, school in very deprived area etc.) could actually be an advantage for her application - it's just something very deep-seated in attitudes, that certain parts of British life aren't open to certain parts of the British population, it's really sad and I'm not convinced it is changing at all.

I'd always understood that the majority of the support from tyres came not directly from the air pressure but from the rigidity in the tyre walls. But I stand to be corrected. Do tyres really compress enough when put on a car or plane to create all that force? 

Not all compscis and natscis go on to have careers in their subjects, either theoretical or applied. E.g maths grads favoured by the city, and non-academic factors like communication and abuilding relationships are important attributes to progression. 

So yes, colleges want students capable of groundbreaking research, but a pool of weathly alumni with successful careers is also important to them.

Top grades are a given but there can be a world of differentiation even within the A* banding.

Offwidth`s data suggests they aren't succeeding? I think I have got a bee in my bonnet at the moment as an ex student was murdered a couple of weeks ago (drugs related) I feel a bit responsible as I was on the panel that PEX"ed him in Year 10. On the flip side, an A* in GCSE maths, that he got at the end if Year 9, with under 80% attendance  was his only formal qualification. I did try to get him a scholarship in a couple of private schools, but given his background and issues unsurprisingly they weren't interested. I sort of agree with Neil on the physics thread, anyone who has had to work hard to get an A* in further maths is unlikely to get into Cambridge. 

Helps maintain their charitable status as well

Probably but I'd like to know for sure

A difficult job, but some people claiming the isn't an issue any more doesn't inspire me. The is also a new spin on the old boys network. The last student I taught that went to Cambridge to study maths, should never have been close to being offered a place and didn't last the first term. Allegedly one phone call from our CEO before his resits got him a place 

That will give those state school a nice performance boost! Very different from my experience of being concerned about accepting exam year students on a managed move. Perhaps the next step is rather than looking state/private quotas, we should be looking more closely at parental income/education. 

Yes even bike tyres deflect with very little weight on them.  The size of the footprint varies with the weight plus pressure in the tyres.  A large aircraft will have a much larger footprint and huge tyres. Errors from the string will be much less.

That conversation is one I had with one or two students every year, in East Manchester. It is so sad. Eventually though I understood that, for some young people, taking that opportunity would mean abandoning their entire social network in the hope of building another. Or so it looked to them. As you say, the barriers to social change are partly in our own heads (though that’s no excuse for unfair admissions practices).

Depends how you think about it. You can consider that the pressure inside the tyre pre-stresses the tyre wall. Then the normal reaction from the ground acts on the walls and reduces this pre-stress, but the wall can still be in tension. It's potentially confusing with force directions. This is the crux of understanding pre-stressed (rather than just plain reinforced) concrete.

I guess a small tyre of a bike may have a significant local effect from the pre-stressed tyre walls.

On a big aircraft tyre, maybe the larger surface area with compressed air inside being in equilibrium with the pressure on the ground is a reasonable simplification. Hence, the string suggestion above is valid, but only because you are assuming the area is loaded uniformly and is equal the tyre pressure. 

If you looked in detail, the width of the tyre tread of the tyre works like a weak beam between the two supporting tyre walls, loaded inside by compressed air and by the ground on the other side. 

No idea on the small tools front but casting my mind far back to a question on terminal velocity, I'd have a stab at estimating the weight of the aircraft from first principles...

I'd do this by having a stab at deriving the lift equation by having a wing of fixed area present at a small angle of attack to the horizontal airflow and redirect it to flowing vertically down without a change in speed (because of conservation of energy), with conservation of momentum giving the force upwards on the wing from redirecting the air.

For a 747, using a flight speed of 300 m s^-2, a wing area of 500 m^2, an AOA of 5 deg, an air density of 0.7 kg m^-3 and working on pen and paper (Taylor's approximation for the sin angle for effective area) I get a weight of just under 3,000,000 kg.

Wikipedia tells me the maximum take-off weight for a 747 ranges from 333,400 kg to 439,985 kg.

I'm a bit annoyed it's come out so close because I think assuming the downwash is vertical seems rather egregious to me.  

To be fair, this would fail if the aircraft had been stripped bare or dramatically overloaded and was awaiting some RATOs, and it's answering a somewhat different question to the one you posed, that being about the specific aircraft.  Still, aircraft are intended to fly and are not dramatically over-winged for that purpose, so the approach seems pretty defensible.

Using the small tools to dip the fuel tanks and jimmy the door to check the cargo loading would help refine the estimate from the class of airplane to the specific one...

This is spooky. One of my actual interview questions was explaining, with diagrams and arrows showing forces, how a tyre keeps the wheel rim off the ground. 

Seems obvious until you think about it a bit, then seems impossible until you think about it some more.

That's neat. You've misplaced the decimal point in your estimate.

I guess people here have likely heard the story about the exam question on how to measure the height of a building using a barometer. I've heard it told by people as diverse as Clement Freud and Murray Gellman, both times as though it were their own.

Thanks - you’ve solved my nagging worry.  Turns out I haven’t misplaced a decimal place in the estimate, I missed the factor 10 over-estimate vs the actual weight!   Well, that’s easily fixed by having the air stream reflect about the surface normal to the wing…. Feel happier with the result now, thanks.  

What an embarrassing mistake to make!
 

The question only said the tools had to be small, right? If you had a 'small' incredibly accurate weighing device, you could weigh... anything, then walk under the plane and weigh it again, and get the mass easily.

Hold on, why does the question feel the need to specify that it's about an aircraft? Doesn't seem like a necessary caveat if they're after these kinds of arguments. Are they looking for an answer like use a screwdriver to open an inspection flap and read the numbers next to "mtow"?

Also been a long time since I interviewed but agree with most of the above. My 2 cents:

1) They are interested in how you think 

2) They are interested in if they think they would enjoy teaching you (and that you could survive the course) 

3) They (almost certainly) love their subject and will be looking for that in you (or at the very least genuine interest)

4) They couldn't care less about anything outside of the above (captaining the football team, volunteering, climbing etc is utterly irrelevant)

5) The Cambridge Compsci course will be very mathematical so expect questions on maths concepts (particularly if relevant to computing). As suggested above check the syllabus but the course will almost certainly be more about teaching people to design a highly efficient algorithm than teaching practical programming skills.  Cambridge courses tend to be unashamedly academic - sometimes at the expense of some focus on the practical skills required by the profession (this was my experience with engineering).  

Child 1.0 did his interview today over Zoom. He suspects, being Child1.0A, (I'm not Elon Musk so I haven't literally called my son Child1.0A I hasten to add) he might have been alphabetically the first person to be interviewed by the college.

They did ask him something about his personal statement, but it was about his own "hobby" programming he has done. The rest was unsurprisingly all very maths based, and he said he was very pleased he had done the suggested reading this summer as the it would have been really hard without that knowledge. Anyway, now we just cross our fingers and wait. Thanks everyone for their thoughts above.