How to survive the Oxbridge Inquisition

Having listened to Martin Amis answering questions at his Oxford interview, one of the interrogating dons quipped: 'I see, Mr Amis, that you have come armed with all the right cliches.' 'You can never be too careful,' Amis replied.

Too true. Interviews are the key to getting into top universities. Now that Oxbridge exams have been scrapped in most subjects, and that 24.1 per cent of A-levels are A grades, the crucial gateway is the interrogation of aspiring undergraduates by learned dons and profs.

Although the universities' websites try to make the interviewing process as transparent as possible, interviews remain bafflingly diverse: some universities ask for one, others two; an interview may last 10 minutes or an hour; include two questioners or three; focus on the A-level set texts or range over the candidate's personal statement and holiday reading.

JR Lucas, who interviewed hundreds of would-be undergraduates during his 36 years teaching philosophy at Merton College, Oxford, stresses how individual the dons' approach is. '"One of your interviewers is a robot: how can you determine which one?" was one don's regular question. "I'd come close to hear if the wheels were turning and then cut you open to see," answered a successful candidate.'

A politics don preferred to test students' knowledge of current affairs ('Who's the Chancellor of Germany?'), while another challenged the terrified student by repeatedly asking: 'What are the grounds for believing that?' At his Balliol College interview, Ted Maxwell, Robert's grandson, had to explain the connection between history and cooking. With such questions, the interviewers hope to determine the student's originality, lateral thinking and quick-wittedness.

It is a tool that aims to reveal the rough diamond's shine. It may also highlight the shallowness of some other candidates, well-polished conformists whose chief asset is a privileged education.

It's no wonder the interview fills middle-class parents with dread, petrified lest the inquisitors ask leading questions ('Did your parents go to university?') in order to achieve the kind of socially engineered results that the government rewards with more funding.

Geoff Parks, director of admissions at Cambridge University, insists interviews never touch on candidates' social background.

The best way to the heights of academe is to choose the A-levels - further maths, physics, foreign languages - top universities yearn for and rarely find. Having done that, cultivate the art of talking in paragraphs, not monosyllables. That should make it a doddle to discuss Hamlet's Oedipal complex or Gordon Ramsay's resemblance to Oliver Cromwell.