David Hirst’s answer is great. I can perhaps add a chemistry-related question that I was asked during one of my interviews.

“I have this substance,” he said, placing a small phial of white powder on the desk in front of me, “and I want to know what it is. What tests can I perform on it?”

I’ll give my best recollection of my answer below, but maybe have a think about it before scrolling down…

Me: “You could burn some of it and see what colour the flame is.”

Him: “Do you know what that is called?”

“Measuring the emission spectrum”

“Ok. Anything else?”

“Perform X-ray diffraction on it.”

“What does that do?”

(Slight hesitation, as I didn’t know in detail) “It tells you where the different atoms are in space with respect to each other.”

“What else?”

“Put it in a mass spectrometer.”

“How does that work?”

Bingo. I’d recently learnt about mass specs in A-level physics. Cue a hand-drawn diagram and descriptions of the ionisation chamber, the velocity selector, the detector, and which regions have electric and/or magnetic fields in them.

I’ll freely admit I got a bit lucky there!

One of the other questions I was given in that interview was “what do you think is the difference between a good Cambridge student and a great one?” It’s important to remember that not all the questions (= opportunities to impress) will be technical.

Good luck!

I generally like the Oxford education system. College-based lifestyle and having the brightest students as my friends and in my day-to-day life.

I had a truly exceptional experience learning so much in my own subject that is mathematics as well as learning so much about life.

In the field of quantitative finance, it is extremely important for any program to comprise both faculty that are academics and also industry practitioners. The Oxford MSc Mathematical Finance program has accomplished both of these. Many senior-level industry practitioners who also regularly publish in academic journals are regular guest lecturers, which provides the students a glimpse of how theory is put into practice. This is definitely a unique offering.