Greetings from your friendly neighbourhood Oxbridge reject.
That’s right, I can claim membership to that very exclusive club. Like many others, I fell in love with Oxbridge – I won’t say which university – on my first visit there. I was fourteen.
I still like Oxbridge. Pretty place, nice reputation. The people aren’t half as snobby as TV makes them out to be.
I might never recover from my Oxbridge interviews though. I had two, both at the same college, and both for English. One interview was a marked improvement on the other.
Let’s have some background.
I took an ELAT (an aptitude test) and scored an interview at my chosen college. My interview was in December 2012. I chose a rather old college, with the best academic records in the business. The room was lovely though – I’ve included a picture. There was a problem with earwigs in the taps, I recall, and they had to give us cans of coke because we couldn’t drink the water. Imagine a college full of nervous potential candidates hyped up on caffeine. You don’t understand the meaning of competitiveness until you’ve played Articulate with a room full of emotionally unstable teenagers.
As I’ve said, one interview was quite nice. The professors shook my hand, told me they valued my views and everything. The other – not so much. The girl just before me ran out crying, sure she wouldn’t be accepted. The professors sat me down right across the room from them, so I had to shout to be heard. They didn’t smile. It began.
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