Think you’re Oxford material? These are the most insane Oxbridge interview questions ever

For most of us who just went to your bog-standard Russell Group uni, writing a bang-average personal statement and managing to meet our grades on Results Day was enough to get you in. But not at Oxford and Cambridge. To get in there and truly reach insufferable status, you’ve gotta battle through an entry test AND an interview.

The thought of an interview in itself is enough to start heart palpations in most people, but looking at some of the questions past students have been asked? I would literally just show myself the door.

Genuinely, some of these questions are impossible? Like, they’re just straight-up mean and seem like trick questions. I honestly don’t know where I’d start if faced with some of these.

So here are the most awful and insane Oxbridge interview questions people have been asked:

1. Do you believe in fairies at the end of the garden?

Yeah, they helped me prepare for this interview! This was asked to prospective engineering students at Oxford.

2. What would you do if you woke up tomorrow and you were an ant?

Omg defo pick up a massive crumb over my head and carry it around never letting my ant friends even have a sniff. You?

3. Do you think you’re clever?

Not after you forced me to answer this question, no.

4. How do you know the moon isn’t made of cheese?

Because it just isn’t?

5. What is a sense? 

Nah I’m getting up and leaving what do you MEAN.

6. How do you know you are in Oxford?

Probs because I took a train here, I’ve heard the word “rah” at least seven times and I’ve got the only northern accent for miles.

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

Gotta be seedless. Couldn’t tell you why, but it just feels right.

8. Do you believe in the Loch Ness Monster? 

Will it help me to get into Cambridge if I do? If so then yeah we’re besties x

9. ‘Talk to me about triangles’

They’re… pointy?

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

Erm, one is yellow and one is white? This was one for the natural science students among us.

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

If you were a magpie and sat in your old red chair asking me philosophical questions I’d genuinely run for the hills because that is TERRIFYING.

12. How comfortable is that chair?

I am profusely sweating and the chair is sticking to me so, not very.

13. If the punishment for parking on a double yellow lines were death, and therefore nobody did it, would that be a just and effective law? 

This was asked to law students at Oxford. Watch them all increase the death rate in this country by 76 per cent.

14. Do you like Birmingham?

Um, what? This is just straight up rude? This question was asked to social and political science students at Cambridge.

15. So, do numbers exist? 

Well I study English so not to me!

16. Would you believe me if I said right now that you have not secured a place at Oxford? 

Nah, this is just straight-up MEAN.

17. My son hit someone today. Was he wrong? What should I say to him? 

He’s your kid! I’m not the parent here.

18. If you had a time machine, would it be wrong to go back in time and kill baby Hitler? 

This was for a philosophy interview at Oxford and you can practically hear everyone who was asked this trembling.

19. Improvise a one minute piano piece based on space using a hexatonic scale  

Can you imagine the scenes if this wasn’t for music students and was actually just thrown at maths or PPE students?

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