Are you actually smart enough to get into Oxbridge?

Every year Oxford release a sample of their interview questions, they’re usually really difficult, thought provoking and occasionally just plain weird.

Sample questions came out a few weeks ago, ahead of the interviews that are currently taking place for shortlisted applicants.

The questions are:

•Is war the opposite of politics?

•What is the significance of the brain’s ‘face area’, and it being stimulated when people see and recognise faces?

The questions aren’t necessarily about getting a right answer. They’re more about critical thinking skills.

Professor Nick Yeung, a professor of neuroscience at Oxford explained: “Because one of the really important things that we want to look at is, how does the person think when they don’t already know the answer.”

Still, I swear they get more difficult as the years go on.

See if you could actually answer any of the below questions and if you can, you’re Oxbridge material.

Oxford 2014

Q: How much of the past can you count?

Q: Why do some habitats support higher biodiversity than others?

Q: An experiment appears to suggest Welsh speakers are worse at remembering phone numbers than English speakers. Why?

Oxford 2015

Q: Do Bankers deserve the pay they receive? And should government do something to limit how much they get?

Q: Why is sugar in your urine a good indicator that you might have diabetes?

Q: Imagine that 100 people all put £1 into a pot for a prize that will go to the winner of a simple game. Each person has to choose a number between 0 and 100. The prize goes to the person whose number is closest to 2/3 of the average of all of the numbers chosen. What number will you choose, and why?

Q: Can archaeology ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ the Bible?

Oxford 2016

Q: What makes a novel or play ‘political’?

Q. About 1 in 4 deaths in the UK is due to some form of cancer, yet in the Philippines the figure is only around 1 in 10. What factors might underlie this difference?

Q: What exactly do you think is involved in blaming someone?

Q: A large study appears to show that older siblings consistently score higher than younger siblings on IQ tests. Why would this be?

Oxford 2017

Q: ‘I agree that air transport contributes to harmful climate change. But whether or not I make a given plane journey, the plane will fly anyway. So there is no moral reason for me to not travel by plane.’ Is this a convincing argument?

Q: Put these countries in order by their crude mortality (deaths per thousand of the population): Bangladesh, Japan, South Africa, the UK.

Oxford 2018

Q: The viruses that infect us are totally dependent on human cells for their reproduction; is it therefore surprising that viruses cause human diseases?

Q: What are the different ways in which you listen to music? How does that change the way in which you think about what you’re listening to?

Q: How many different molecules can be made from six carbon atoms and twelve hydrogen atoms?

Q: How can we estimate the mass of the atmosphere?

Q: What can historians not find out about the past?

Other questions from previous interviews

Q: Instead of politicians, why don’t we let the managers of Ikea run the country?

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Q: If a wife had expressed distaste for it previously, would her husband’s habit of putting marmalade in his egg at breakfast be grounds for divorce?

Q: At what point is a person “dead”?

Q:What would you do if I were a magpie?

Q: If my friend locks me in a room, and says I am free to come out whenever I like so long as I pay £5, is this a deprivation of liberty?

Q:How would you poison someone without the police finding out?

Q: What happens when I drop an ant?

Q: Are you cool?

Q:Should someone sell their kidney?

Q:If there was an omnipotent god, would he be able to create a stone that he couldn’t lift?

Q:Why can’t you light a candle in a space ship?

Q:Can history stop the next war?

Q:Where does honesty fit into law?

Q:What books are bad for you?

Credit: SWNS

Q:Does a snail have a consciousness?

Q:Think of a painting of a tree. Is the tree real?

Q:What is the point of using NHS money to keep old people alive?

Q:Is the Bible a fictional work? Could it be called chick lit?

Q:Do you think chairman Mao would have been proud of china today?

Q:Why isn’t there a global government?

Q:If you’re not in California, how do you know it exists?

Q:What is the population of Croydon?

Q:Are there too many people in the world?

Q:Was Romeo impulsive?

Featured Image Credit: SWNS

Questions sourced from University of Oxford, Do you think you’re clever?

Related stories recommended by this writer:

•Meet the students who turned down Oxbridge

•I went to Oxford and don’t get the Oxbridge obsession

•Posh kids get private tutoring to get into Oxbridge. This recent grad is offering it to state school applicants for free