Amongst the brain testers are: ‘What makes a short
story different from a novel? And is it easier to live in the sea or on land?’
A question for potential PPE students was on the meaning of the words lie,
deceive and mislead. Dave Leal, who posed the question said: "Questions of this sort help us to test a
candidate's capacity to draw nuanced distinctions between concepts, and to
revise and challenge their own first moves in the light of different sentences
containing the key words. Discussion may well lead into areas which could crop
up during a degree in philosophy, including questions in ethics, the philosophy
of mind and of language. It's not, though, a test of 'philosophical knowledge',
and the content of the discussion begins from words which candidates should
have a good familiarity with."
Martin Speight, a biological sciences tutor, said
he may ask; "Is it easier for
organisms to live in the sea or on land?" Stephen Tuck proposed asking budding
historians who they would most like to interview from the past and why. "The question is not so much about which
person the candidate wants to meet, but what sort of issues the candidate wants
to find out about (which can be quite revealing) and then working out the best
way to do so. 'Meeting' Elizabeth I or Winston Churchill might be exciting, but
if the candidate wants to find out about, say, their leadership style, they
might be better off asking questions of a courtier or member of the war
cabinet. Or if they wanted to find out what we don't know about any given
period, they might want to interview people who didn't leave any written
records."
Mike Nicholson, Oxford's director of undergraduate
admissions, said; "Academic
interviews will be an entirely new experience for most students, so we want to
show students what they are really like so they aren't put off by what they
might have heard. Most interviews don't involve strange or irrelevant-sounding
questions at all - they might include a logic problem to solve for a subject
like maths, or a new text to read and discuss for English. They may start with
familiar territory and then move into areas students have not studied before,
introducing new material or ideas, and they are entirely academic in focus."
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