Recommended Reading
As the competition for places has intensified, particularly at the best universities, it's no wonder that many applicants are unclear about the qualities academics are looking for when interviewing prospective students.
I'm assuming, if you've got an interview at a university of your choice, that you're expected to get good grades at A-level. But what is going to set you apart from all the other candidates with similarly good predictions? The first key to success is more obvious and more human than you might expect: demonstrate your enthusiasm for the subject. Few things are more winning than enthusiasm; remember that the person you're talking to is someone who has made a career - arguably a vocation - out of the subject you're applying to study.
Furthermore, your interest in the subject is a kind of guarantee that, in choosing you, the institution is making a good investment and gaining a motivated student who will make the most of this opportunity to study.
Showing this enthusiasm is linked to the second key to success: a willingness to talk. This doesn't mean trying to say as much as possible, or demonstrating that you've got the gift of the gab. What it does mean is being prepared to answer questions, and to engage with your interviewer in a way that you will only have rarely had to do during your school career. It's important to remember that this isn't a test: your interviewer isn't looking for a specific set of answers, but trying get a sense of you as a person, your motivations, and your stage of academic development.
This then leads to the third key to success at interview: preparation. You'll be most able to talk comfortably, convincingly and enthusiastically about why you want to study this subject, at this particular university, if you've already given it some thought. Ideally, start thinking about what you're going to say a good few weeks before the interview is likely to take place. Step back from your A-level studies and ask yourself some basic questions. What is the subject you're applying to do really about? Why do you want to study it? Try to provide some examples from your A-level work.
If your answers are also informed by some wider reading or extra-curricula engagement with the subject, then all the better - it's what will give you the edge over other candidates. You'll already be behaving like a degree-level student. And who could say 'no' to that?
