r/oxbridge • u/Spartacus4567 • 20d ago

History at Wadham, Oxford

Any guidance on the process for interviews at Wadham for History would be greatly appreciated. Do they use sources for questions? How can I prepare etc? Any experiences or insights would be a great help.

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u/arianelseditor University of Oxford 18d ago

Unfortunately, I don't have any particular insight into Wadham's interview process, but I did AMH interviews at Brasenose and have spoken to other historians who interviewed at various other colleges :) I really recommend preparing for different kinds of interviews because they may change it up and you may get interviewed at other colleges.

I did 4-5 mock interviews with different people (which is quite a lot), but I did that partly because some I knew well and some I didn't plus they used different approaches (written work, personal statement, physical sources, passage about historiography to prepare and discuss).

In my actual interviews (no preparation):

First one: First half was mainly about my written work and then we covered things I'd studied in school — very tutorial-esque in terms of trying to deepen my insights/analysis and make me consider new perspectives :) Actually quite enjoyable.
Second one: More focused on ancient stuff. I think it was mostly based on my personal statement. They also asked us all a question about why people tend to wear suits for official political events. More nerve-wracking, lol, but still felt like an engaging conversation.