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Home / Information for applicants / What to expect in your subject / Chemistry

Chemistry interviews

Thank you for applying to Oxford to study Chemistry.

All shortlisted candidates will have two interviews in the week starting 4 December with tutors from Hertford College. There will be two tutors in each interview, and we will cover organic, inorganic, and physical chemistry, plus some maths. During the interviews, which will last around 30 minutes, we’ll work through a number of problems with you: you should try to explain your thinking at each stage and try not to worry too much about getting the ‘right’ answer. Often, we are more interested in the way you are thinking about a problem than whether or not you get straight to the right answer.

The material in the interviews may not all be familiar to you, but you should be able to work though it based on material you have covered in your A Level (or equivalent) course. During your interviews, we will be trying to establish how good you are at Chemistry and to do this we will need to ask you increasingly more challenging questions until we get to a question you cannot answer. Don’t panic if you cannot answer every question: this definitely does not mean you have ‘failed’ your interview, and we promise that it will happen to everyone, not just you! Do your best to answer every question, and we will help you if you get stuck.

Some candidates will have an interview with tutors from another college on Tuesday 12 and Wednesday 13 December. Our admissions process is organised through the Department of Chemistry, and this second set of interviews allows us to make sure we can take into account any variation between colleges when ranking candidates. If you have one of these additional interviews it does not mean you will or won’t be offered a place at Hertford or at Oxford. It just means you have another interview, and you should treat this just as you treated your earlier interviews.

For Chemistry interviews, the University recommends that you have access to a Miro whiteboard (www.miro.com) and a touchscreen device and stylus to write out scientific/mathematical notation in addition to the device you use to access Microsoft Teams. Take a look at our Online Interviews Technology page to find out more and watch an introductory video. If you have any questions or concerns about the technology set-up, you should email undergraduate.admissions@hertford.ox.ac.uk and we’ll work with you to find alternatives.

WATCH A DEMONSTRATION INTERVIEW

Meet some of our interviewing tutors

Dr Patrick Robertson
College Lecturer in Physical Chemistry
Professor Fernanda Duarte
Tutorial Fellow in Chemistry & Tutor for Equality and Diversity

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