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Now what? - Part 2


What else can you do to stay at the top of your game between now and Oxford interviews?

* Prepare to be unprepared - the whole point in the Oxford entrance exams is that you don't know what you'll be faced with on the day. So practice dealing with the unseen; download questions, articles, journals, graphs, tables, equations and analyse them, write about them, answer them.

* Download past papers -if you're sitting an entrance exam, make sure you take some practice exams; even just knowing the format of the paper will make you more prepared on the day.

* Select your work submission carefully - make sure it shows your skills off to the best of your ability. If you can choose a piece of work which is a little different, it might help you to stand out. I was planning on sending my essay on 'Aristotelian Tragedy' but my English teacher said everyone around the country would be writing on that as it was on the A Level Syllabus, she instead suggested I sent in my feminist argument on Virginia Woolf's 'Orlando'.

* 'WHY? JUSTIFY!' - I've said it once, I'll say it again, throughout the whole process, be it writing your work submission, answering the entrance exam, justify everything you say! Whenever you form an opinion, ask yourself WHY you think that, when dealing with pre-existing ideas, ask WHY they stand. Contantly have the word WHY in the back of your mind.

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