If you were a grapefruit, would you be seedless?

If you were a grapefruit, would you be seedless?

Oct 18, 2008
The New Paper

AND if you have trouble answering that question, sorry, but maybe Cambridge isn't for you.

Want another shot at this? How about: 'What you would do if you were a magpie?' or 'Should there be laws for the use of lightbulbs'.

Such bizarre questions are increasingly being used by leading universities in the United Kingdom (UK) to select the best students.

As another year of application deadlines for universities loom, such UK universities believe that A-level grades are failing to split students and discover potential, reported The Telegraph.

These questions were revealed when Oxbridge Applications, an independent education consultancy set up to help applicants fulfil their potential in the Oxbridge interviews, published some of the questions that students are faced with.

It said that the top universities use such questions as a way of discovering whether students are capable of thinking outside the confines of their subject's syllabus, how quickly they think on their feet, how ably they manage their own intelligence and how articulate they are in their answers.

Hence the choice of questions that can take the students by surprise and seem unrelated to their studies.

Oxbridge Applications surveyed more than 4,000 students who went through the interview process last year to get a glimpse of the wacky questions.

Ms Chloe Palfreman, the company's managing director, felt this form of testing was confusing students who no longer know how to prepare for such interviews.

She said: 'They are so committed to succeeding in their academic examinations that they sometimes lack the time and confidence to expand their knowledge outside of the classroom.

'They know that top exam grades are not all they need to get into the university of their choice but don't know how to prepare for the all-important admissions interview.'

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SOME ACTUAL QUESTIONS

• Would you rather be a novel or a poem? (English, Oxford)

• How many monkeys would you use in an experiment? (Experimental Psychology, Oxford)

• How does Geography relate to A Midsummer Night's Dream? (Geography, Oxford)

• How do you organise a successful revolution? (History, Oxford)

• Talk about a light bulb. (Engineering, Oxford)

• What would you do if you were a magpie? (Natural Sciences, Cambridge)

• Should we have laws for the use of lightbulbs? (Law, Cambridge)

• Instead of politicians, why don't we let the managers of Ikea run the country? (Social Political Science, Cambridge)

• If I were a grapefruit would I rather be seedless or non-seedless? (Medicine, Cambridge)

This article was first published in The New Paper on Oct 16, 2008.