So, we’ve talked through the technical approaches of how to prepare and support great candidates, and I’ve shared what I know about the various components of the process. In this final post, I want to share what I think is the hardest and most challenge part of it all – the emotional rollercoaster that this will take you – and the candidate – on.

The numbers are not promising.

1 in 4 Cambridge applicants are offered a place

Oxford interview 60% of their applicants, but only offer places to 20% of their applicants.

And these applicants are almost all going to be straight 9/8 students at GCSE, and predicted AAA-A*AA as a *minimum*.

The likelihood is that – no matter how talented your candidate seems in the context of your school – the odds are against them in their application. Frankly, looking back at what I did, I’m hugely humbled by the sheer dose of luck that I appear to have had in my own application, and in the support of those around me. Every year, great candidates and wonderful Geographers don’t make it. How do you collectively shoulder that, and understand the emotions in place?

I think the first thing to do is establish a culture of big picture. Doing all of the work here isn’t *just* about Oxbridge – it’s great preparation for university, A Level teaching, and the world beyond school. You’re doing this because you’re a great Geographer, not only because you are applying to one university. It’s really helpful to reduce the identity politics that come with this, and support the candidate to understand that if you can.

There’s a weight of expectation that can often come with an ‘Oxbridge candidate’. Whether it’s celebrated in school media, or whether it’s just parents, family, friends and colleagues asking ‘how’s it going?’, there’s almost certainly going to be moments when the students feel like it’s not worth it. Parental pressure can be particularly tricky to navigate, and I’ve mentored a few people who were only really applying because they felt that their parent/s wanted or expected it of them. As a mentor, you might feel on the front-line of that, and you’ll certainly want to be aware of the pressure. Where possible, you need to do as much as you can to dial it back. The opposite of pressure isn’t ‘jacking it all in, and accepting an offer from X university’, it’s ‘doing the right things’ and being confident in the steps.

Other universities might not be your friend in this.  While the ‘conditional-unconditional’ phenomenon has been reduced a bit – where universities say “we like you, and if you make us your first choice, we’ll give you an unconditional offer” – the temptation to take a safe bet early in the game can be high for students. Keep the big picture and long journey conversations going!

Talk and celebrate other offers – and recognise they’re likely to come in quite quickly for your Oxbridge candidates – and keep having the chat about the big picture. So, you’ve got four offers? Which is your current favourite? What are you thinking now? Oxbridge candidates will often have university offers starting to come by October half term, and certainly through Nov-Dec even before other candidates have applied. It’s your judgement about how you share that publicly to support and motivate your other candidates.

Where possible, it’s really helpful to talk with other teachers. Whether you’ve got candidates across your school in multiple subjects, or have an experienced UCAS, Head of Sixth, or Gifted & Talented co-ordinator, sharing your approach – and your feelings about this – are really important in managing the emotions as well as the practical support.

Just like with exams, there’s only so much you can do for candidates. They have to go their own path, and accept their chances. If you follow the advice, give them good resources and give them some help, you can really do no more. Celebrate the successes you have, celebrate the amazing universities and Geographers that you’ve created – no matter what the destination – and know that you’ve played a part in their success, but so have they.

If you’ve got to the end of this, then thank you for reading. I hope it’s been helpful. I’m always happy to have a chat and help if I can, and I wish you – and your candidates – the very best of luck for wherever they choose to apply, and their future Geography studies!

Fundamentally, the biggest differentiation between Oxford & Cambridge (and a couple of other places) and other universities is the focus on dialogic teaching as the key focus of your student experience. As well as lectures, seminars and workshops that you’d have at any Geography Department, you’ll get regular discussions and debates in small groups. At Oxford, they’re called tutorials, and Cambridge call them supervisions. But at heart, you’re expected to be able – and willing – to discuss your ideas regularly with your tutor and peers, and hold your own in an academic conversation about the particular topic in question.

So, you need to be able to talk coherently about your subject. This isn’t really something that gets discussed in your initial application phases, but it’s the primary purpose of the interview phase.

Lots of resources are available through the Universities themselves:

• Oxford Guide to Interviews
• Cambridge Guide to Interviews  

You’ll find a lot of resources claiming to have a ‘definitive list’ of interview questions – and lots of candidates can spend a lot of time scripting and memorising the ‘perfect answer’ to some of these questions. It’s almost always wasted time.

First, the admissions tutors can spot prepared answers a mile off, and will ask another question or take it in a different direction. They want to see how a candidate thinks and talks naturally, and what they’re going to be like to teach. They can ask any questions they want, and take the conversation wherever they want to go for that!

Second, as I’ve argued earlier in this blog series, I believe the best way of preparing is through a ‘rich diet of Geography education’ from start to finish. We want thoughtful, engaged and enthusiastic Geographers in all of our lessons – and good dialogic teaching helps to model the scholarship and communication elements. The more students can hear and see what academic Geographical discussion looks like in their day to day, the less work they’ll have to do to prepare specifically for the application phase.

It’s really important to start this process early. You want to assume that candidates are going to be offered an interview, and prepare from late October. Don’t leave it late – it makes it *feel* higher-stakes and more pressured. Start early, do little and often, and it’ll be more positive and productive for all!

I’ve set out an overview of how to prepare for an interview, including a timeline of ideas and preparation phases, but fundamentally it comes down to these key qualities:

Able to talk confidently with an adult about an academic subject.

This is a really gradual confidence building exercise. Students need to start thinking of themselves as a ‘peer’ and talking in a more formal and academic register – and there’s always an initial awkwardness and discomfort. Push through that – you’ve got to get to high quality conversations about Geography with someone they know. Once you’re comfortable with 20-30 minute conversations with them, they need to be introduced to unfamiliar adults, and be able to do the same thing.

Pairing up with other schools, video interviews, sending your students to a school to be interviewed, while you interview their candidates – these are all great techniques of getting the student confident with turning up to a place they don’t know, and talking comfortably about their academic discipline with someone they don’t know. It’s always worth reaching out to the subject community – or me, if you can’t find people – to try and get these contacts in place as you start Sep/Oct preparations.

Able to respond to unfamiliar material (sources, data, ideas) and ‘show your working’ in how you integrate them in to your understanding

It’s common to be given something to respond to in an interview. Some Colleges might give you an article 30 minutes before the interview, and use it as a prompt to talk about. Others might give you data, imagery, sources, maps, or even physical objects to work with in an interview.

In your preparation phase, it’s important to include lots of unfamiliar material and sources. Print a good map, or image – what can you tell me about this? Print an article – give it to your candidate, and get them to read it for ten minutes, and then talk through what they’ve learned and how it fits with existing ideas.

It’s key for candidates to be able to “think out loud”. If they sit in silence for five minutes, and then come out with an answer, it might be good Geography, but it’s not great interviewing. So get used to “I’m looking at this, and think this… or I can see this pattern, which might suggest… or could this be why this looks like this….”

They should also build confidence in exploring options – “I think this means X… but can I check that this isn’t because of Y?”, “I’m reading this as Z, but can I check the scale? Because if it were ABC, I might reconsider…”

It’s okay to have uncertainty and want to discuss and debate clarification. It’s how a tutorial or supervision would work, and being able to discuss ideas is critical. Candidates need to okay saying “I don’t know what this means” or “could you explain this bit of it to me?” – they aren’t expected to know all of Geography and all possible routes through it!

Able to defend and debate ideas without becoming wedded to them.

Candidates often feel like they can’t say “I don’t know”, but they’re equally unlikely to say “oh, actually, I’ve changed my mind”.

It’s important that discussions can be free-flowing and offer the chance for people to develop their thinking. Yes, it’s important you follow a line of argument – but if you’re presented with new information, or challenged, you need to be able to accept that your original arguments, or ideas might be wrong. It’s okay to change your mind. It’s okay to say “so, looking at this, I might need to re-evaluate…”

Most of this advice works and would be transferrable to almost any humanities Oxbridge interview subject (let’s leave out STEM maths skills!). So it’s important that we add the final piece of the jigsaw – that this is fundamentally rooted in a Geographical understanding and scholarship. We need to talk about ideas that are Geographical – sustainability, place, space, interconnectedness. How are the candidate’s answers showing they are engaged with the Geography underpinning the individual topic? Having a look at some of the big ideas of the discipline (OFSTED’s 2021 research review series has an overview of some of the core literature, and Teaching Geography articles and debates, and resource from the RGS and GA can be really helpful) together with the students can be really helpful – and provide nice ‘language’ to be able to ‘talk like a Geographer’.

Candidates to read Geography at Oxford complete a pre-interview assessment task, but this is not something that candidates for Cambridge need to complete.

The purpose of the pre-interview assessment is to help the admissions team offer interviews to the best of the applicants. Oxford currently use the Thinking Skills Assessment (Part 1 and Part 2) for Geography candidates, and it’s an important step to prepare for. Few details are shared about what kind of threshold scores are typically required – so all you can do is aim for your very best.

For candidates:

A comprehensive guide to the test is available online for free. You can find details of the logistics, dates and costs, and lots of past paper questions and video guides to the different sections.

The test comes in two parts.

In Part 1, you complete multiple choice questions in a time window. They are designed to test problem solving skills, numerical and spatial reasoning, and critical thinking skills like arguments and reasoning using every day language. You’ll see a range of questions using different themes, and need to answer 50 multiple choice questions in 90 minutes.

In Part 2, you’re expected to write an unseen essay in 30 minutes. This requires structured and thoughtful essay planning, and effective and clear communication. The questions are not subject specific – the aim is to test your ability to think and reason clearly in a short period of time.

It’s strongly recommended that you get lots of the practice papers, and become familiar with three key aspects:

1. The type and nature of questions. Seeing the way they ask questions, and getting a sense of the themes and types of questions that get asked will help you understand the thinking skills, and your own strengths and weaknesses to work on.
2. This helps you to make good decisions. There are some questions where you’ll immediately know an answer and be able to solve it quickly with high confidence. There are others where you can get the answer with high confidence, but it’ll take you a decent chunk of time. There are others where you’ve got low confidence that you’ll get the right answer, irrespective of how much time you were to spend on it. Knowing what to do, to prioritise and how to approach the test as a whole piece for best scores helps!
3. Practice against the clock. In groups, discussions, or with all the time in the world, you’re probably going to be able to get most of the questions right. But you need to get skilled at doing it in the time conditions.

To an extent, working with teachers and groups can be a helpful first starter – perhaps in the early part of summer. But as you get closer, you’ll want to build your own confidence by working through this yourself, and knowing your own approaches. Even within 2-3 Geographers applying, there’s the potential for a big range of skill sets, and it’s important that you do what works best for you!

For schools:

Teachers supporting Geographers applying for Oxford might want to work together with colleagues, other subjects, and their Exams Officer for their expertise in organising this. There’s a decent amount of logistics involved in administering the tests, and if it’s your school’s first time, the preparation for this is probably better started before the summer holiday!

The tests will need to be taken at an approved Cambridge Assessment centre, and if that’s not you, you’ll either need to get approval to become one, or support your candidate to find their nearest.

You’ll also want to think about how you can support candidates – TSA are sat by multiple subjects, so it can be worthwhile to provide space for them to think through ideas together in the early stages, and to support familiarity with the approach and type of work. You might want to provide feedback on essay writing and clarity, and be available for mentoring – but as suggested above, increasingly, it’s important for candidates to own this themselves and know their own approach to the papers!

It’s important to phase your preparation cycles so that you can start thinking about potential interviews, too. Don’t wait until you’ve got an offer of an interview to start getting ready for it!