Could you get into Cambridge? Answer these bizarre interview questions and maybe

It’s no secret that Cambridge University interview questions are hard. I mean, it’s Cambridge – you don’t expect it to be an easy place to get into right?

But who knew the questions hopefuls get asked are quite literally impossible? Like, are some of these trick questions? I honestly don’t know where I’d start if faced with some of these.

Cambridgeshire Live has put together 18 of the most bizarre Cambridge University interview questions ever, and they really are something. See what you’d have to say if you suddenly had these thrown at you.

1. How comfortable is that chair?

Law students have been asked this in the past, and I’m not sure if “very” is sufficient.

2. What is your opinion on spontaneous human combustion?

I mean, I wouldn’t want it to happen to me? This question has been asked to potential medicine students, who hopefully had a more in depth response.

3. Describe a potato and then compare it with an onion

This is a question for natural science questions and I don’t know where I’d start either.

4. Is Hitler really evil?

Yes? – Said every history interviewee, ever.

5. How can reindeer tell the difference between spring and autumn?

Honestly Cambridge, let the medicine students live.

6. I would describe maps as an example of unreal realism. How would you react to that statement?

I don’t even know what this question means, any geography students want to explain?

7. Would you rather be a seedless or non-seedless grapefruit?

Non seedless. Don’t ask me why I just would. Yet again, this question was faced by medicine students.

8. Do you like Birmingham?

Let’s hope none of the social and political students who got asked this were from the Midlands, because implications in this are just straight up rude.

9. What is the meaning of life?

It’s just plain mean to ask law students one of the hardest and deepest questions known to man.

10. How do you think the Christian differences shown in the Archaeology of Avebury relate to that of the Sutton Hoo ship burial?

Nope. From an Archaeology and Anthropology interview, obvs.

11. What would you do if I were a magpie?

Yes, natural science hopefuls at Cambridge have actually been asked how they would respond if their interviewer magically transformed into a magpie.

12. How would you poison someone without the police finding out?

If you’ve been binging true crime documentaries you might actually have an answer for this one. It’s another question which has been put in front of medicine students.

13. 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?

I mean, I guess? Law students in the past have been asked this one.

14. What percentage of the world’s water is contained in a cow?

Are veterinary students actually expected to know niche facts like this or???

15. Do you think you are clever?

You’re in an interview for Cambridge University, so probably. Another one for the lawyers among us.

16. *Throws pen across the room* Draw what you just saw.

Firstly I want to know why the interviewee would chuck a pen across the room for no reason, and secondly I want to know what relevance this has to anything a medicine student would need to know?

17. If you were a rat what would be the most important thing to you?

I just know I’d waffle about Ratatouille or food or something in a nervous panic. Natural science wannabes would hopefully have a sensible answer.

18. If the government passed a law requiring people to wear seatbelts, why might this result in more road accident casualties?

Economics students have been asked this one in the past, not sure why they need to know this but there we go.

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