University of Oxford Medicine Interview Questions
General Interview Information
Interview Format (Historically)
Oxford University utilises a traditional panel interview. Each candidate typically has two interviews; these are conducted by tutors and clinical tutors from their respective colleges. Oxford uses the following criteria to inform their selection process:
Personal Characteristics
· Empathy
· Motivation, commitment and insight into medicine
· Communication skills
· Honesty and integrity
· Ethical awareness
· Teamwork
· Capacity for sustained and intense work
· Alignment of individual values and behaviours with the values of the NHS Constitution
Academic Potential
· Problem-solving: critical thinking, analytical approach
· Intellectual curiosity
· Communication skills compatible with their tutorial format
COVID-19 Update for 2021
Interviews for the 2021 Medicine intake are still scheduled to take place in mid-December 2020, and consist of online interviews with two colleges over the space of two days. These are of a ‘traditional’ format.
Interview Focal Points
Recent Interview Questions
Why Medicine/Oxford?
1.Why do you want to study medicine/be a doctor?
2.Why the University of Oxford?
3.What do you think you could contribute to college life?
Background and Personal Statement:
4.How good were your teachers at school?
5.What keeps you awake at night?
Work Experience:
6.What did you learn from your work experience?
General Questions
7.If you could invite any two people alive or dead to a dinner party, who would they be and why?
8.If you had to choose a new language to learn, which one would it be and how would you go about it?
Attributes of a Good Doctor
9. What makes a good doctor?
Biology and Abstract Biology Questions
10. When given a drawing of the nerves from the ear to the auditory canal; explain the image shown.
11.How would you poison someone without the police finding out?
12.Why is it a disadvantage for humans to have two legs?
13.Given a skull: what animal is this, describe the teeth and why they are designed as such.
14.Describe what happens when a neuron is excited and an action potential follows.
15.Show what happens to the membrane potential of an animal cell when put in different solutions.
16.How can a specific animal tell the difference between spring and autumn?
17.How many genes are there in the genome of a rice plant?
18. Draw a graph of learning against time/stage of life
19. What do you like most about the brain?
20. Can you describe an experiment to differentiate between a normal and multi-resistant strain of bacteria?
21. Why do we have red blood cells?
22. How is a city like a cell?
23. How would you design a better brain?
24. Why don’t we just have one ear in the middle of our face?
Chemistry-Based Questions
25.How many moles of H2O are there in a cup of water?
26.Calculate what volume of wine can be drunk to reach the legal concentration of alcohol in the blood for driving?
General Science-Based Questions
27. How would you simulate altitude in your living room?
28.How would you measure the weight of your own head?
29.If you are in a boat in a lake and throw a stone out of the boat, what happens to the level of the water?
30.Why can you not see many stars when you stand on top of a mountain?
31.How would you design an experiment to disprove the existence of God?
32.What leaves you drier if it's raining: running or walking?
Medicine-Based Questions
33.Why does your heart rate increase when you exercise?
34.What's the greatest medical innovation this century?
35.How would you determine whether leukaemia patients have contracted the disease because of a nearby nuclear power station?
36.At what point is a person "dead"?
37.If urine was emptied into the small intestine instead of the bladder, what would happen?
38.What does the letter b stand for in b-lymphocyte?
39.How do prions actually affect the brain?
40.How does the body try to remove or recognise poison?
41.How would you solve the aids crisis in South Africa
42.How would you restrict the spread of an epidemic such as Ebola?
43. In your opinion, what has been the most significant medical breakthrough in the last 10 years?
The NHS
44.What do you think of the state of the NHS? What would you do to improve it?
Ethical Dilemmas
45.Should patients be allowed to sell their kidney(s)?
Additional Questions:
46.Why are manholes round?
47.If you were a grapefruit, would you rather be seedless or non-seedless?
48.Draw a cross section of a bicycle wheel. Now draw another one.
49.How would you describe a human to a person from Mars?
50.What is a tree?
51.How many people believe in evolution in the United States?
52.What is your opinion on spontaneous human combustion?
Oxford Medicine Interview Mark Scheme
Click Here (Available to UKCAT/BMAT/MMI Interview Course Attendees)
Oxford University utilises a traditional panel interview. Each candidate typically has two interviews; these are conducted by tutors and clinical tutors from their respective colleges. Oxford uses the following criteria to inform their selection process:
Personal Characteristics
· Empathy
· Motivation, commitment and insight into medicine
· Communication skills
· Honesty and integrity
· Ethical awareness
· Teamwork
· Capacity for sustained and intense work
· Alignment of individual values and behaviours with the values of the NHS Constitution
Academic Potential
· Problem-solving: critical thinking, analytical approach
· Intellectual curiosity
· Communication skills compatible with their tutorial format
COVID-19 Update for 2021
Interviews for the 2021 Medicine intake are still scheduled to take place in mid-December 2020, and consist of online interviews with two colleges over the space of two days. These are of a ‘traditional’ format.
Interview Focal Points
- The main focus of the Oxford Medicine interview is to see how the candidate approaches problems, and especially how they cope with not knowing the answer immediately. This is closely aligned with the Oxford tutorial system and is designed to examine the candidate’s suitability for this style of teaching and learning. For this reason, engaging in discussion, as well as logical thinking, justifying your thoughts and adapting your ideas based on the discussion in the Oxford Medicine interview is highly recommended.
- The Oxford Medicine course has a heavy focus on research, and aims to produce academic doctors. Hence, they want students who are interested in learning about science beyond the minimal requirements required to be a doctor.
- Candidates are often provided with an image to discuss – such as an x-ray or a microscopic slide. Whilst knowledge of the contents are not expected, a structured, systematic approach which takes on board the interviewers cues will score well.
- Candidates may also be given a review article to read for half an hour before their interview, which they then have to answer questions on in the interview itself. In most cases, the main focus here is not on the intricate details of the article but instead on the general themes explored. What is the overall message of the article? What were the authors trying to do and say?
- Alternatively, interviews may involve reviewing and interpreting a graph or data set.
- Many Oxford Medicine Interview questions centre on creative problem-solving, with questions including:
- How much does a mountain weigh?
- How different would the world be if the wheel wasn’t invented?
- These questions are designed to test the candidate’s creative and critical thinking skills and how they approach the problem. Can the candidate explain their thought process out loud? Can they guide them through their thoughts, step by step? Can they ask logical questions to reach an answer?
Recent Interview Questions
Why Medicine/Oxford?
1.Why do you want to study medicine/be a doctor?
2.Why the University of Oxford?
3.What do you think you could contribute to college life?
Background and Personal Statement:
4.How good were your teachers at school?
5.What keeps you awake at night?
Work Experience:
6.What did you learn from your work experience?
General Questions
7.If you could invite any two people alive or dead to a dinner party, who would they be and why?
8.If you had to choose a new language to learn, which one would it be and how would you go about it?
Attributes of a Good Doctor
9. What makes a good doctor?
Biology and Abstract Biology Questions
10. When given a drawing of the nerves from the ear to the auditory canal; explain the image shown.
11.How would you poison someone without the police finding out?
12.Why is it a disadvantage for humans to have two legs?
13.Given a skull: what animal is this, describe the teeth and why they are designed as such.
14.Describe what happens when a neuron is excited and an action potential follows.
15.Show what happens to the membrane potential of an animal cell when put in different solutions.
16.How can a specific animal tell the difference between spring and autumn?
17.How many genes are there in the genome of a rice plant?
18. Draw a graph of learning against time/stage of life
19. What do you like most about the brain?
20. Can you describe an experiment to differentiate between a normal and multi-resistant strain of bacteria?
21. Why do we have red blood cells?
22. How is a city like a cell?
23. How would you design a better brain?
24. Why don’t we just have one ear in the middle of our face?
Chemistry-Based Questions
25.How many moles of H2O are there in a cup of water?
26.Calculate what volume of wine can be drunk to reach the legal concentration of alcohol in the blood for driving?
General Science-Based Questions
27. How would you simulate altitude in your living room?
28.How would you measure the weight of your own head?
29.If you are in a boat in a lake and throw a stone out of the boat, what happens to the level of the water?
30.Why can you not see many stars when you stand on top of a mountain?
31.How would you design an experiment to disprove the existence of God?
32.What leaves you drier if it's raining: running or walking?
Medicine-Based Questions
33.Why does your heart rate increase when you exercise?
34.What's the greatest medical innovation this century?
35.How would you determine whether leukaemia patients have contracted the disease because of a nearby nuclear power station?
36.At what point is a person "dead"?
37.If urine was emptied into the small intestine instead of the bladder, what would happen?
38.What does the letter b stand for in b-lymphocyte?
39.How do prions actually affect the brain?
40.How does the body try to remove or recognise poison?
41.How would you solve the aids crisis in South Africa
42.How would you restrict the spread of an epidemic such as Ebola?
43. In your opinion, what has been the most significant medical breakthrough in the last 10 years?
The NHS
44.What do you think of the state of the NHS? What would you do to improve it?
Ethical Dilemmas
45.Should patients be allowed to sell their kidney(s)?
Additional Questions:
46.Why are manholes round?
47.If you were a grapefruit, would you rather be seedless or non-seedless?
48.Draw a cross section of a bicycle wheel. Now draw another one.
49.How would you describe a human to a person from Mars?
50.What is a tree?
51.How many people believe in evolution in the United States?
52.What is your opinion on spontaneous human combustion?
Oxford Medicine Interview Mark Scheme
Click Here (Available to UKCAT/BMAT/MMI Interview Course Attendees)