For those thinking of applying to the Oxford GEM for 2006 entry, here is some information about the selection process at interview for Somerville College – should you be unlucky enough to be interviewed by Somerville College!

The interviewers use a non-standard unauthorised format, not used by any other college, by which they apply ‘independent marking criteria’ (independent marking criteria has been identified as being applied by colleges and has been prohibited by the GEM Committee to which all the college should comply).

Somerville does not tell their candidates that the College is administering this independent selection criteria, or that it is an oral test, and do not administer the oral test consistently across all candidates. You will note that Somerville give ‘bonus marks for speed’ – so do not think about your answers, just say the first thing that comes into your head – this is the Oxford way and has been shown to work successfully!

Despite using the score from this oral test to rank candidates, Somerville may not bother to ask all the questions on the form – so you will never get the chance to be fairly assessed against other candidates.

In addition, Somerville have been known in the past to conduct the test over 15 minutes, rather than the 20 minutes that they give to other candidates – again this will mean you will never get the chance to be fairly assessed against other candidates.

If you are unfortunate enough to be interviewed by Somerville College in the first round then Somerville will interview you twice: once against the ‘published official selection criteria’ that is used by ALL other colleges for GEM, and then a second time using the unofficial non-standard test NOT USED BY ANY OTHER COLLEGE.

If you are unfortunate enough to be interviewed by Somerville, then hope that Somerville is the second college you see, as Somerville will not apply the full test to you as they applied to those for whom Somerville was the first college! I.e. Somerville will reject ‘some’ candidates they see first by using the full test (one of two interviews), but then admit later candidates they see by only using part of the test (only one interview)!

The oral test involved 4 sections, with each section carrying 10 marks (40 in total) – five minutes on each section as directed by the interviewers – that is they will move onto the next section after five minutes.

BUT if Somerville decide to only give you 15 minutes rather than the 20 minutes then you may be asked questions on only 3 of the 4 sections – obviously with only 15 minutes instead of 20 you will not be given the chance attain as many marks as those who are given 20 minutes – in such cases, Somerville will simply make up a score (literally) at the bottom of the sheet so that they still have 4 scores, just as though they had asked you questions on all 4 sections to give them a score out of 40 (i.e. 4 x 10 max).

WARNING! The interviewers (possibly Dr. Matthew Wood and Professor Angela Vincent) may focus on one or two questions – thus not allowing you to answer more questions in any one section, and thus you will not be able to amount a score in the same way as a candidate for whom they asked more questions!

Of course, normally you would not know that this was a problem, as you would be expecting an interview rather than a scored test, AND as Somerville will not have told you that you are engaged in an oral test being scored on a question-by-question basis. Normally, you would think that this is just another interview - as conducted elsewhere, and possibly be encouraged to engage in a discussion with the interviewers about a topic – BUT!! whilst you are doing this – and Angela Vincent will in fact string you along with this – you are NOT answering the questions, so will NOT be scoring points!!!

No other college admitting for GEM uses this test – or the independent marking criteria used by Somerville.

Obviously, other colleges may present you with problem/ethical questions – this is to be expected – indeed Somerville also ask problem/ethical at the proper ‘interview’ when assessing candidates against the ‘published official selection criteria’ using the official grading form provided by the Medical School to all colleges.

For example, Professor Morris at St. Hugh’s has stated that St. Hugh’s does not use such a test, and he will NOT ask questions about nucleic acid chemistry or diagnosis of neurological disorders. Unlike Dr. Wood and Professor Vincent at Somerville, Professor Morris has stated: “No specific topics…we shall be trying to find out how you can think about topics you may not know much about rather than what you have learned.”

Dr. Hunt at Keble College has described the use of a test instead of an interview (at interview!) as, in his words, “preposterous”.