5 Top Tips to Help You Prepare for a University Interview

UCL student Gabija Barkute shares their top 5 tips to help prepare for a university interview.

University interviews can be very daunting, but a little bit of preparation goes a very long way; if not to improve the scope of your answers, to make you feel more confident and at ease about the process. How, then, do you best prepare for a university interview? No need to panic!

Here my 5 top tips to help guide you in the preparation process:

1. Don’t try to learn anything and everything: be strategic. Admissions tutors do not expect you to be an expert already; there would be little point in you applying for the course if this were the case! That said, you would not be making a great first impression if you had no recollection of a particular book you mentioned in your Personal Statement. For that reason, it would make sense to dedicate more time to researching the topics mentioned in your Personal Statement and less time to scoping out other important aspects of your subject (say, for a languages degree, getting a very general picture of Spanish Literature and its main movements/authors).
2. Spend time reviewing your Personal Statement again and underline everything that could lend to further questions, allowing you to anticipate possible questions and think about how you would approach answering them. It is worth asking somebody without any subject knowledge to do this as well, as their questions are likely to differ from yours!
3. Dedicate time to practising thinking critically. Critical thinking is at the heart of many humanities degrees, so admissions tutors often look out for students who can go beyond merely regurgitating information. When completing further reading, take the time to reflect on the arguments posed by the writer. Do you agree with all the ideas, or are there any gaps? Do these ideas contradict those of other writers?
4. Stay up-to-date with your subject in the news. Many university lecturers also undertake academic research alongside teaching, and their research helps to shape the course that a specific university offers. In this way, keeping up with your subject in the news will give you insight into the main issues and debates in your field and how current events affect these.
5. Try your best to stay calm. The fact you have gotten to the interview stage demonstrates that you are a strong candidate for the course. Remaining calm, confident, and collected will allow you to give more coherent responses and think about what is actually being asked.

I hope that you have found these tips useful; we all wish you the best of luck!