[Music]
the Cambridge interview process is um
it's very important to see this is one
part of the assessment so we look at
many things about each candidate in Our
Minds when we're doing an interview the
sorts of things we're thinking about are
whether or not the uh person in front of
us has the right kind of background
knowledge needed for our courses uh
whether we think they'd be successful in
our kind of teaching environment
and to put it in a nutshell really can
they
[Music]
think hello hello hi take a seat hi hi
I'm Nick I'm nice to meet you hello
there um just as we start this interview
I want to give you a bit of an outline
of what's going to come next um so we're
going to start off with a question from
Nick and then we're going to talk a
little bit about some unseen material at
the end of the interview there'll be
some time for you to ask any questions
if you have any you don't have to have
any if there's anything that we say that
doesn't make sense or that you'd like us
to repeat or rephrase please do just say
we' be more than happy to do that okay
and we will make notes as we go along as
well please don't be thrown by that okay
okay you shouldn't be surprised to find
those interviewing you are taking notes
during the interviews this is because
they need to remind themselves of topics
which have been covered both during and
in subsequent discussion of the
interview performance what we're
expecting out of students in those
interviews is firstly that they are
listening really carefully to what
they're being asked and we're interested
to find out how people are thinking so
in their responses if they can take us
through their own thought processes then
that's great because it means that we
can see how they're exploring those
ideas we'll start off um an hared by um
talking to you about the essays that
you've sent in and then we'll move on to
one or two other topics that come out of
your personal statement um as as the
interview goes on in one of your essays
you were talking about uh the theory of
functionalism that things are kind of
designed for purpose um in your
archaeological or anthropological
reading have you come across that as an
idea as a sort of a school of thought um
yeah I've definitely come across that
idea comes across a lot actually um and
there's definitely interlinking between
sociology and and especially social
anthropology and that idea um like the
like Society works as a body through the
organs it's not necessarily something I
believe in I don't think um the problem
with these kind of broad theories that
is they generalize too much I think and
there are too many exceptions in the
Arts and social sciences we will often
make use of a student's ucast personal
statement and their supplementary
questionnaire that they fill in
specifically for camridge we're not
evaluating the quality of their writing
in the statement we're asking them to
say some more about things they have
told us about themselves about their
extracurricular academic engagement and
about their interest in the subject that
they want to read and Herod I was
interested to see that in your personal
statement you mention um archaeology and
that you've been doing some things in
that field after you've uh finished at a
levels can you tell me a little bit
about what you've been doing and how
you've been exploring that that area I
think um with archaeology I've been
trying to build up a broad a like a
basic kind of foundation knowledge
because I've never studied it my
interest started in in programs about
egyptology and and seeing exhibitions of
that of that sort in place at the briti
museum that kind of sparked my interest
so I wanted to try and understand that
more introductory
Book for a technical interview like uh
Natural Sciences or engineering or
mathematics then what we're looking for
is how teachable they are we're looking
at how interested in the material they
are how they can take an idea and
develop that even if it's something that
they perhaps haven't necessarily seen
before so it's going to start by
sketching a function and the function
that I'm going to write down you've
probably not seen before but I'm fairly
sure that you all seen the pieces of
that function okay so if I write down
the function is y is equal to sin
x
/ X okay okay and what I would like you
to do is sketch the behavior of that
function between - 2 pi and 2 pi and so
if you can sketch some axes for me and
give that a go first of all I'm going to
start and get some of the main points
that I need to work out so I'm going to
start with X is equal to Z okay so if I
can just stop you there for a second cuz
X is equal to Z is a little bit tricky
so choosing some points is a good idea
absolutely but we might just come back
to that one so are there any other
points that you know the values of
um Pi is a fairly good one okay um so s
of Pi will be
zero and so 0 divid Pi is zero mhm
excellent even when she was getting to
the stage of being uncertain about what
to draw and you could see the hesitation
she would nevertheless draw something
and that gave the opportunity to say
well yes that's sort of in the right
direction you need to change this a
little bit so
that would
be yeah have a scribble if it
helps uh what was this one that was 2/3
mhm what's this one that's minus 2/3 of
pi oh yeah so that'll be more like minus
2 9ths yeah to be a lot smaller if
candidates are very hesitant and very
unwilling to write things down or say
things it's very difficult for us to
help them so keeping the dialogue going
is very very important and I think
Hannah was very good at
that the questions we ask at interview
are designed to push the candidates and
to make them think hard what you hope to
do is to start with something which they
will be able to answer but to get
progressively more difficult as you go
through the problem and often the
candidate who thinks they haven't done
very well will have done well because
they'll have actually progressed further
through the problem we would expect
candidates by the end of the interview
to feel that there was something that
they haven't been able to answer
starting with something that hopefully
we've already covered in some degree you
should know what role do bases actually
play in the hereditary nature of DNA uh
so uh tripet code so uh three bases uh
together code for one amino acid um and
then different combinations of those
codons in DNA build up a chain of amino
acids and code for proteins okay so why
is it three why is it why is on made up
of three bases why not just one base
because not the three bases are needed
so you can have different combinations
to code for uh different amino acids
there's only four bases so right if you
only had a single um base you would only
be able to code for four uh amino acids
where whereas we have uh a triplet code
which codes for 20 different amino
acids is it 20 how many combinations can
you have with with with three uh I'm
have to write something down yeah
so Oliver gave a very positive interview
actually I think he answered the
questions very well what I particularly
liked was that he didn't give up he kept
on trying to work out answers and he was
listening to the information that we
were giving him and you'd see flashes
every so often we go oh of course that's
that I've connected it together I've
made that's exactly the kind of thing
that I'd be looking for well let let's
think about this if you have one Amino
uh one base sorry you can obviously code
for as you said four different amino
acids right so you could have a t g
z if you now have two what's the
combination so I've got
[Music]
um 12 what I have bit more than 12 I'd
have
eight I want a right so I could have 16
16 okay so when you have a triplet what
can you get um so I've now
got 64 64 yeah so can 64 code for 20 it
could code for 64 different om it could
do up to 64 potentially couldn't it yeah
it can be quite difficult I think when
you come into an interview situation to
remember that we want you to do well so
if you can take a moment to gather your
thoughts and make sure that you
understand the question that's being
asked of you and what you want to say in
response to that you look as though
you've kind of got a sense of what it is
that you're trying to say in response to
the questions and I think Natalie
handled that really well she took a few
moments to reflect and she thought about
the kinds of things that she was
interested in without ever dodging the
question she always talked about
relevant material but she did it in a
way that I think allowed her to express
her own interests in the subject this
shows you total fertility rates um by
nuts two regions in Europe and it's
averag between 2006 and 2008 okay I just
want to start off really by asking you
if you could describe the pattern that
you see there so I can see that um
in West Europe the fertility rates are
generally High well higher um but within
each country there's variation so why do
you think the patterns might look the
way they do particularly in Western
Europe which you identified immediately
I'd say cultural factors play quite a
big role so the expectations of how big
families could be um and
also maybe welfare measures also fa role
so um the provisions of the state and
how that um it may encourage or
discourage people to um bring up
families I wonder if I could ask you to
speculate on what you think this map of
total fertility rates will look like in
20 years time I would say that possibly
the fertility rates in the UK and France
might decline a little bit um why might
that be that might be to do
with the changing role of women so their
expectations um of their careers and
um I suppose it's quite difficult to say
because there are so many factors that
sort of come into it that you can't
really speculate that much until until
it happens okay certainly a complicated
picture thank you very much thanks we
run a holistic emissions process so we
try and collect as much information as
we can about a candidate a lot of that
comes from the paper record so record of
examinations for example the personal
statement the reference from the school
the interview is just one component of
that whole process it's not the be on
the Endor it can tell us important
information about a candidate but it's
not necessarily uh the most important
factor in our
considerations the single piece of
advice I'd give any student coming for
interview is to listen carefully to the
questions that they're being asked and
if you don't understand a word ask for
clarification be yourself as much as
possible we are assessing you to see
whether we can teach you effectively so
the more you are like you and your
interview the better
[Music]