Applying to a British university necessitates a UCAS application. For the vast majority of applicants the details registered on this site, the results achieved, the personal statement and the reference from the school is the sum of the information available to the universities in making their decision as to whether to offer a place or not. That is why students put so much energy, effort and stress into their UCAS application. In this article let us look at the minority of circumstances where the UCAS application is only one part of the process.
Firstly for Art, Design and Drama courses it is not unusual to find that the university or college running the course will invite applicants to attend interviews. For Art and Design courses this typically involves taking the portfolio, the collection of the students best work, over to the interview so the university can see first hand the quality of the student's work. For drama courses applicants may be asked to attend an audition, to prove that they can act, sing, dance etc. In each of these cases it seems eminently sensible that students should be given the chance to demonstrate their aptitude outside of creating extending prose explaining their skills which is a quite different skill altogether. For example Jay Z is a great rapper but would he be able to write an essay explaining to you why he is a great rapper? Maybe he could but the easiest way to prove it is to listen to him, not to read about it.
An interview is also a good opportunity for the student to ask questions of their potential professors to decide if this course really is the best for them. So given the advantages of interviews why are they not more common? The simple answer is cost and time. Most courses probably feel they do not have the financial nor human resources to hold interviews for all the thousands of applications they receive each year. As it happens Art, Design, Drama, Medicine and Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge) are sufficiently niche to be able to justify holding interviews. Also because the places are so valuable, and missing good people (and likewise incorrectly choosing weaker people) is so damaging that for each of these courses the universities feel that they have to be sure.
As an aside it is worth us considering that in international education the environment is changing subtly. Forty years ago universities were free at the point of access meaning that universities received funding from the government. As such they controlled the process and were able to hold the power and choose which students they wanted to select. Now the mood is changing, in a market where the student now receives significant fees and must decide carefully how to spend the money assigned to their education the university model is becoming more of a buyers market. Student hold increasing power and soon they will want to interview the university to see if their professors can prove how good they are! In English we have a saying for this - that the tables have turned! I am sure we will one day live through this period when universities fight each other for students.
However in 2013 it is still the situation that students fight each other for limited university places - so time for me to give you some advice! Let me tell you a story about a Chinese student that applied to Oxford and had to attend an interview. They were already living in the UK for their A levels so they did not have to travel far to attend the interview. They arrived early and made a few friends amongst the other students waiting to be interviewed. The whole process can be quite long to interview for Oxford and Cambridge - sometimes students can be in the city for 3 days or even longer. The student, Amy, was extremely nervous about her interview, she didn't enjoy speaking English to strangers. So when the time came for the famous Oxford academics to invite her into a room where education has happened for over 400 years she could barely speak. The professors tried to be kind but they decided the best thing to do was to stop talking about Mathematics, be polite and talk about China and finish the interview early. Amy heard back from Oxford 3 weeks later to hear that her application had been unsuccessful. She was very sad. But actually, as I told her then, and as I hope she now understands, Oxford saying no was the best thing that could have happened.
Imagine if they had said yes. She would have gone to university and found the tutorials where you speak to professors so stressful and unproductive that she would have learnt little. So after a few months of this she would either have to quit and go home or she would stay and eventually fail. Either way it would have been a blow to her confidence and a big waste of her parents money. So as it happens do not be sad if you too get called for an interview like Amy and do not succeed. If you cannot make the interview a success you would probably not succeed on the course. So it is better to know that as soon as possible so you can make new and better plans for your life!
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