Ah, how this article on Odd Oxbridge Interview Questions took me back.
I remember one of the questions at my own Oxford interview like it was yesterday. "Henry VI - a good man and a bad king. But was he a good thing?"
It seemed a strange question at the time. Not least because I was hoping to read Chemistry. I blathered a bit about the delocalization of electron charge in an aromatic ring, and knocked up quite a decent proof for the three-body problem as expressed in a Helium atom. But it didn't hold water. But then, in a state of panic, I punched the tutor on the nose and ran screaming from the room, before pegging a passing Scout to New Quad with croquet hoops.
Turns out, Oxford being Oxford, that was the correct answer. They probably taught how to answer that kind of question at Manchester Grammar School. I always thought it was a bit unfair, having to derive it from first principles like I did. And if I'd only managed to catch a second Scout I'd have got a scholarship.
Not having the requisite y chromosome, I never did find out how all those boys from Manchester Grammar got into Oxbridge. They never seemed to be pressurised or drilled or even to think it was a big deal. I suspect a secret tunnel dug many years ago by the founding members of the school's chess club.
ReplyDeleteApplying to Oxbridge from within a stressy Girls' school not a million miles from MGS was all too much like hard work. I just applied to Scottish universities becuase they wanted lower grades. Oh, those glory days before student loans and the like.....
Rita, you've filled in an important gap for me.
ReplyDeleteWould you believe, not being from the frozen north, I never made the connection that the reason all the Chemists from MGS were men was because that was the entire gene pool, so to speak. But indeed, they seemed to think that Oxbridge was a kind of entitlement.