<p>OXFORD, England (CNN) -- You might expect Oxford and Cambridge universities to ask prospective students to compare the works of Chaucer to Boccaccio or to explain the theory of relativity.</p>
<p>Cambridge students may have to field questions in the application process that would baffle some observers.</p>
<p>Instead, Oxford wants to know: "Would you rather be a novel or a poem?"</p>
<p>Cambridge asks applicants: "What would you do if you were a magpie?"</p>
<p>The idea, say administrators at the two ultra-prestigious schools in England, is to see how well prospective students can think, not just how much they know....</p>
<p>Just a note – I didn’t experience any questions like these during my Oxford interview. Most of the questions asked were very difficult but pertained to the subject I had applied to study (chemistry). This may have been due to the fact that it was an international interview in North America, I’m not entirely sure.</p>
<p>How interesting that Oxford and Cambridge scoff at the American admissions system and the emphasis on sports and ECs, and yet their alternative is so Agatha Christie!</p>
<p>I continue to be amazed at how those esteemed universities interview, and I’m baffled at how they learn about students’ thinking by asking such off the wall questions.</p>
<p>I had a mock interview for English at Oxford, and they asked me whether I’d rather be a poem or a novel. It’s not rocket science and there’s never a right answer, you just give your opinion and back it up with reasoning (I’d rather be a novel; you couldn’t condense my personality into <12 lines. I’m too ~deep).</p>
<p>Northstarmom, they want to see how you think, and it’s a chance to show individuality in your reasoning skills. When every candidate has 4As at AS Level (which is pretty much the only requirement at Oxbridge, ECs are almost a bad thing) there’s no other way to find out who is intelligently superior other than to question you to within an inch of your life. If you don’t break or cave to their pressure, you get in. It’s simple.</p>
<p>I don’t see how answering such random questions reflections intelligence at all. Saying this from the perspective of someone who during doctoral studies in psychology learned how to assess intelligence. I’m also recruited employees for a Fortune 500 company, and have been an alum interviewer for Harvard.</p>
<p>All that answering those kind of off the wall questions will demonstrate is how a person may react in a situation that doesn’t make sense.</p>
<p>If someone asked me that poisoning question, I’d laugh and probably blurt out, “Are you looking for a hit man?” I suppose my answer reflects my tact and sense of humor, but I don’t see how my answer would help anyone determine my suitability for admission to a college.</p>
<p>Or they probably are also looking to see if you read a lot. I read a lot of real life detective stories and there was actually case that was detailed by a detective to show how one MD used caster bean to kill her husband slowly. If you read a lot in the news, you may also stumble on the riccin as the poison. In the last few years, there was a case of poison an ex-Russian in London. Newspaper probably mentioned similar case of poison by the Russian such as Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian writer and journalist who was living in London, died after a man stabbed him with an umbrella, which injected a ricin pellet.
[Poisoned:</a> spy who quit Russia for Britain - Times Online](<a href=“Latest news & breaking headlines | The Times and The Sunday Times”>Latest news & breaking headlines | The Times and The Sunday Times)</p>
<p>But I’m sure they won’t fail a student on a simple question but rather if a student fails on multiple questions. The question is can students think on their feet because sometimes good grades are probably earned by just being a grind.</p>
<p>I think they’re also looking for a sense of humor - you know those Brits and their humor quotient! They’ve claimed humor as high art since before Shakespeare. I like the questions. It’s a way of finding whether a certain intelligence exists that’s not measurable by testing and accomplishment. Wit, repartee and insight are all valuable character traits.</p>
<p>Also if you look carefully at the link in the OP you will find that those questions aren’t thrown out randomly. A candidate for chemistry isn’t asked about being a novel or a poem and a geography candidate isn’t asked about poisons. All of the questions seem to me to be relevant to the the particular field of study where they were asked. The interview is testing how you can think around concepts that are part of that subject, not an oral multiple choice, or a cosy alumnus chat.</p>