The University of Cambridge interview is infamous and necessary. But recently, a failure to recognise the interview process as an access initiative has led to the university’s most recent misstep: moving it online.
I went through the Cambridge interview process in December 2019. It was the day of the general election – I remember it as if it were yesterday. When I first entered the waiting room, there was only one person other than me not in formalwear. Every other boy wore suits, and several were rehearsing lines from notebooks.
I wasn’t bothered, though. A rule I have always followed is that if you’re the only person in a room not in a suit, you’re not the problem: the room is. The point of the interview is to make yourself memorable, and wearing a black suit was a one-way street to being forgotten the moment the door closes behind you. Afterwards I was pretty happy with how it all went. “If I don’t get in,” I reasoned, “it’s a sign I wouldn’t have liked it here anyway”.
Fast forward three years and I’m now in my final year. I suspect my ability to stand out in a room that was screaming at me to be formal may have helped get me the golden ticket.
But in person interviews aren’t the norm anymore – they haven’t been since before the pandemic in 2019. The only college offering face-to-face interviews is Trinity. For everyone else it’s online interviews, which are thought to be more convenient to the student. But getting students to face-to-face interviews was never a problem before the pandemic. I know my college offered me free travel and overnight accommodation. And online interviews were an option anyway: it was just rarer and predominantly targeted at international students.
One of the biggest problems however, lies in the actualities of online interviewing. I spent my second term at Cambridge at home and had to join my seminars and supervisions through online calls. I live in a rural area, in a family of five, and my dad was working from home too. So obviously, this was not ideal. Calls were interrupted by noise and poor internet, supervisions were delayed, seminars abandoned. The same can be said for interviews. Some students will have the luxury of better wifi, an office to call from, or being an only child. Others will have it much worse than I did.
The argument that students feel more comfortable calling from home than in an unfamiliar city is of course contingent on being comfortable at home, and having the time, space, and bandwidth to do the interview. A large number of applicants, however, do theirs from headteachers’ offices, or worse still in common rooms. This is no more comfortable than it would be in Cambridge itself.
Logistics aside, there is an important social aspect of in person interviews: I like to tell myself I’m really good at interviews, but I hate speaking on video calls. There’s an apprehension because you never know if the other person is about to start speaking.
The static nature of video also helps those who have done lots of interview prep the most. Interviewer asks a question. There is a pause. Student answers. In person, conversation flows and meanders more, allowing for a little creativity in answers. This would be fine if the rehearsed nature of a video interview didn’t unfairly benefit privately educated kids, who have likely been spoonfed the right kind of answers by teachers. And if it didn’t stifle personalities, either.
To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment, sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here
Then there’s the issue of presence. Before my interview, I had never been to my college and Cambridge was unfamiliar to me. But private schools are more likely to organise trips to the city, and privately educated children are more likely to attend one of the university’s many expensive summer schools, or even just visit fairly regularly. This familiarity grants an understanding of Oxbridge (especially if your school routinely sends more than a few kids there a year) and an eagerness to get there. If you’ve never been before, and you’re suddenly offered an online interview, Cambridge remains in the abstract and seems less accessible than if you’ve walked the university’s corridors already. You may just not bother with the whole thing as it seems too out of reach.
I do not believe that it is some conspiracy to shoe-in private schoolers, or a financial hustle to save money, but rather just a sheer lack of thinking. But by holding interviews online the university risks diminishing an interviewing process that has worked for decades; a process that is only strong because it throws everyone in the deep end, and all applicants are treated equally on the strength of their mental character.
In my eyes, the university’s decision to move away from in person interviews is a step forwards into the digital age, but two steps backwards in terms of accessibility.
