Additional Interviews at Other Colleges

By MJ Manning

It’s Friday, the end of a gruelling week of interviews and the whole exhausting Oxford admissions process. It’s 11am, you check your emails for the sake of it, and lo and behold, emails from two extra colleges, one you’ve never heard of before, inviting you to interview.

You may be exhausted, frustrated, emotional, excited, or all of these above. But crucially - do not panic. This is not rejection from your college of choice. Equally, it might, like it was for me, be a chance to interview with a college or tutor more suited to you.

The infamous Oxford admissions database was never truly explained to me when I got my additional interviews, so I gift this to you now since it is coming up to the festive season…

As far as I know, or as my current tutor explained to me at the beginning of my interview, when one applies to an Oxford college, there are 4 additional colleges able to view your admissions profile. This is organised via what I can only assume is the mother of all spreadsheets and ensures that undersubscribed colleges get a chance to view other applicants and, accordingly, invite them to interview.

Therefore, additional interviews are an exciting opportunity for you to have another conversation; to talk about those readings which you didn’t get to discuss in the first round; to speak with more incredibly knowledgeable Oxford tutors and get a feel for what tutorials are like here (spoiler alert - they’re not that scary and fun most of the time!).

So really do take a moment to process that the work isn’t over yet, but be reassured that there is no rejection here, rather another chance to show off all you have done so far!