GEM: How many interviews did you have?

[Scrutiny]

It would be most interesting to hear how many interviews people had before being accepted onto GEM at Oxford, over the last couple of years.

For what is supposed to be a standardised selection process - at least according to the Course Director, Paul Dennis, and according to the Oxford University Admissions Office - there seems to have been several somewhat non-standard features, including the number of interviews at any one college - which are ALL supposed to work to the SAME system!

To start the ball rolling, when asked whether there would be one or two interviews at Pembroke College, here's a statement from Dr. Jeremy Taylor, Admissions Tutor for GEM:

"I am not sure as yet if it will be one or two interviews. We have used both single and double interview formats in the past. It will really depend on who is conducting the interviews and their timing."

(I think I recall rightly when I remember that Pembroke College was involved in the 'Cash for Places' scam?)

[munafiq]

which are ALL supposed to work to the SAME system!

Unfortunately Oxford has actually moved away from a centralised system for admissions. This means that it really is all down to the individual colleges, an unfortunate side effect of the Oxford system.

The GEM course is totally dependant on the colleges for teaching and so has to give them some leeway. Undergraduate medicine is even worse, and I think it is some of the differences between the colleges in undergraduate admissions that creeps into the graduate course.

Ultimately, the close relationship between the college tutors and the students means that somewhat idiosyncratic criteria are used by individual tutors to pick the students they want the most, and would get along with.

For what it's worth, I had four interviews, two at each college (first choice and randomised second choice - they ignored expressed second choices last year), but most people had two at their first choice college and one at their second choice college. A friend of mine was assigned two first choice colleges by mistake, so he had interviews at the same time in different colleges.

[Scrutiny]

Thanks for the feedback.

The process is centralised up to and including the point of shortlisting for interview. And now the allocation of candidates to colleges for interview - regardless of choice for some people. Seems from your friend's experience that Paul Dennis has not quite got that right either!

The colleges are issued with standard forms by the Faculty, which document the 'published official selection criteria' for the colleges to use, and which includes noting that each college should be conducting two interviews. Obviously, this has not been the case. The GEM Committee has stated that colleges should not be using independent selection criteria.