How to Prepare for Unseen Materials in your Oxbridge Interviews

Investigate the Kind of Sources You Might Receive

Whilst you cannot predict what specific source format or content you will be given, the nature of your subject can help you narrow down the options. For example, if you’re applying to History, you will be unlikely to get a page of equations or problems to solve, and if you’re applying to Maths, you’re probably not going to be asked to discuss a picture from this year’s lates Tate Modern exhibition.

With the obvious out of the way, you can narrow this down even further by researching the kind of materials former applicants have received in their interviews. We recommend checking out our free subject-by-subject interview guides here for some hints on the matter. You could also ask any friends, family members, or school members who have applied in the recent years, or alternatively ask our expert mentors in a one-to-one private consultation.

Whilst we don’t recommend trusting past experiences you hear about one hundred percent (since each interview is always unique), getting a good idea of past unseen materials can give you specific formats or contents to focus on a little more strongly in your preparation.

Familiarise Yourself with All Kinds of Sources and Contents

The real key to being ready for unseen sources is to look at loads of different example pieces in the lead up to the interviews. When practising with sources (the specifics of which we will get into in more detail below), make sure that you are not tempted to stick to similar topics or formats of source/problem. In particular, do not hone in on topics that you have looked at in school, since this really is a waste of your preparation time. Admissions tutors want to see how you deal with something that you’ll likely never have seen before, so will try their best to stay away from anything on your school syllabus.  

Make Concise Yet Comprehensive Notes

If you are given an unseen source prior to the interview (often applicants will be kept in a ‘waiting room’ prior to the interview, where they are given a copy of the unseen material to look at 5-20 minutes before the interview itself), take a pen and make some notes (if the interviewers permit).

Of course, you won’t know the specific questions the admissions tutors will ask, but making notes on the aspects that jump out to you the most will help you remember to mention them in the case that a relevant question is asked. These notes should not be very long (we don’t even recommend using full sentences), but rather should be easy signposts to which you can refer back during the interview. Remember that you are talking interviews through your thoughts on the source, not writing about it, so you need to be able to smoothly reference the points you find interesting without taking large pauses in your discussion.

Don't Be Too Afraid of Getting Things Wrong

It is really important to remember that you are not expected to know everything about the source; in fact, as we mentioned before, the idea is that you don’t know very much about the content prior to seeing it. This is because admissions tutors are looking to assess your application of skills to new materials, not the random knowledge you may or may not have obtained in the course of your studies (there are some exceptions to this, such as problem sheets or music assessments, which we will discuss later on).

This means that you may be asked to guess certain things. For example, one of our advisors was given a poem translated from Chinese and asked to guess in which year it was written (with no contextual evidence given alongside the source). The admissions tutors did not expect the applicant to give the correct answer (or even in the right ballpark), but rather wanted the applicant to give an informed guess based on solid reasoning. As it turns out, this particular applicant got the year completely wrong (by about 1,000 years!), but they made a reasonable argument for the poem’s expression of concerns relevant to modern China. Their reasoning therefore won them ‘points’ with the admissions tutors, where making no effort to guess or saying simply ‘I do not know’ would have got them none.

Remember that it is always okay to say ‘I am not sure, but…’ in an interview. You do not need to be overconfident and state every guess as fact (indeed, we very much recommend that you do not do this), but always give an educated guess based on the evidence you have available to you. This leads us to our next piece of advice…

Always Show Your Working

This is as relevant to history and literature sources as it is to problems sheets and statistical data. In any subject, with any format of material, it is crucial that you explain how you got to the answer you are giving. This is because, as we said above, whilst you are often not expected to have the ‘right’ answer (if it even exists), you are expected to have followed a reasonable train of thought to reach a plausible conclusion.

It can be difficult to explain your thought process to someone else in the moment, so this is where we really recommend practising out loud with a friend, family member teacher, or mentor. It’s all very well looking at sources on your own, but it’s quite another to cogently explain to someone else your thought processes. Bring together the notes you have made and the thinking you have done since seeing the source as best you can to explain, in logical steps, how you have reached your answer. Practice really does make perfect with this one!

Think Creatively

In all cases, regardless of the subject, admissions tutors are looking for you to apply the skills you have in creative, sometimes unusual, ways. When looking at an unseen source, once you have exhausted the ‘obvious’ routes of enquiry, you should try thinking outside of the box to see if there is a more interesting or creative solution to the problem at hand. This applies to mathematical problems as well as literary analysis; if a problem sheet looks to be asking for a certain method, then by all means follow that avenue. However, if things aren’t working out, perhaps look for clues to another way of getting to the solution. You can always present to the interviewers the various avenues you went down in pursuit of an answer to the problem: ‘on the one hand, this could be the solution… but on the other hand, it could be fruitful to investigate it from this angle…’.