I also managed to convince my school to let me self-study for European History and Comparative Government! Hopefully that helps my application.
Congratulations!!
They are going to ask you questions that are designed to take you past what you know, and see how you use what you know to push your thinking forward. They will also want to know how you handle the back and forth of a ‘supervision’. Listen to their response to your responses to see where they are trying to lead you. Don’t be afraid to take a beat and think about your response (and breathe!!). You will find that it goes very very fast!
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To avoid any unfairness there will be a standard set of questions that are the same for each candidate. They’ll either show you some document or ask a more abstract question. It won’t necessarily be based on research interests, it may be better to look at which first year course(s) the interviewer teaches and check you’ve done some background reading on that.
Thank you for the advice! One of my interviewers is a Director of Studies so I looked at the papers he lectures in, but the second actually seems to be a just-graduated student – I couldn’t find another record online. Is that typical? Thank you again and sorry for so many questions.
Thank you! And thank you for the advice! I wish I knew a bit more of what exactly to expect (I’m really jealous of all those who get to do practice interviews with their schools) but I’m going to do the best I can. Would you have any idea how long my interview is likely to take given I’ve only been scheduled for one?
There truly is no way to know- and they work hard to keep it that way. Their goal is to learn something about how you think and how you handle the interview: it’s not a learning format that suits everybody. IF you are offered a place, your supervisions will be similar in many ways to the interview format.
So, think of it as more like a ‘supervision’, where you are engaging with your prof about an essay you have written 
Again: take a breath, allow yourself a minute to think, and listen. Odds are pretty decent that you will find yourself enjoying the process of being asked thought-provoking questions about your comments.
ps, don’t think attach too much weight to how you think it goes. I have seen students who thought their interview was terrible get offers and students who thought they nailed it not get offers!
Thank you again for all of the advice, everyone! I just had my interview today and it went better than I expected, but everybody who says the interviewers are difficult to judge is completely correct –– I have no clue whether I even have a chance, so I’ll try not to worry. It was a great experience, though, and I’m glad I went through with it. I’ll let you know if I receive an offer
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Did you get an offer?