In mid-December, the week after term ends, hundreds of Year 13 students descend on Oxford for the admissions interviews. By this stage, we’ve already reviewed the applicants’ UCAS forms, schoolwork samples and language tests. Everyone who comes out of that process looking as if they might be able to take up a place on the course is invited to spend a few days in the college they applied to. While they’re here, they’ll attend two interviews, perhaps more, with the college’s experts in their subject. During one admissions week, my colleague in French, Helen Swift of St Hilda’s College, kept a video diary of how the process looks from our side.

First, before the interviews get underway:

Then five days later, just after finishing her last interview with a candidate:

And then a couple of days after that, once the final decisions had been taken:

Oxford has been making an effort in recent years to demystify its admissions, and this blog will be visiting different aspects of the process in the coming months. This seems like a good place to start.

posted by Simon Kemp