Hi everyone. My name is Doctor Matt Williams. I'm a tutor in politics and what is known as the Access Fellow here at Jesus College, the University of Oxford. So today I'm going to have an interview with one of our lovely history and politics students called Skye. And before that, I'm just going to talk through some of the hows and whats and whys and wherefores of interviewing, just to give you a bit of context. And then you'll be able to see the demonstration interview and get a realistic, sense of interviewing is like. I've been involved in admissions at Oxford for 16 years and conducted many interviews, and this mock interview will be using a real question that I've used in the past to admit students to the University. So it's it's a very realistic portrayal of what could happen and what sort of questions could come up. Okay. So that's the the idea, just sort of quickly for a bit of background. So why do we interview at the University of Oxford? Interviews provide really helpful data to sit alongside other data that we collect in other aspects of the admissions process. So we take quite a lot of data from our applicants, and we put it all together holistically. So it's not like the interview is a sort of boss level of a fiendishly difficult computer game, where you've got to complete all of the other levels. It's actually sort of integrated, it's holistic, the whole process. We look at all the data holistically. So the interview helps us answer some particular questions, especially with regards to your ability to communicate clearly in English and to be able to come up with some ideas, to articulate answers to questions. I suppose if I was to massively simplify, I might say that the interview is a good opportunity to answer the question, ‘what do you think’? And to a certain extent I consider that like a magic four-word question. What do you think? And I want to get a sense that you are able to articulate some ideas, even if you're not terribly confident about it. And it's important to note that a lot of our applicants and successful offer holders are neurodiverse or otherwise feeling a bit uncomfortable in articulating their views. They might, for example, not feel confident in their views, but we will encourage them in the interview to feel like it's a safe space to start sharing their thoughts on particular puzzles. And that's very reassuring, because when it comes to tutorials in Oxford, which is a small group teaching method that we use at Oxford University, I'm going to be asking, ‘what do you think?' over and over and over again. So the interview is a good opportunity to to see whether you're up to that. And that's an important way to frame the actual interview and how it tends to proceed. It is a mock tutorial. It's a lesson. It's not like a job interview. So I'm not going to be asking you questions like, why have you chosen this particular college? Or where do you see yourself in ten years time? It's nothing like that. I'll be just teaching you an academic lesson, and you've had hundreds of lessons in your time, so you should not go into it feeling terribly anxious because it is in many ways just another lesson. It can be quite stretching and challenging, but that's not any reflection on your value or abilities. When, when I was 17, I applied to Cambridge and was rejected and it was a really positive experience. I don't have any bitterness about it. I'm glad I got involved in the admissions process, and it's just one of those things that life has to require a few things going not the way you might hope in order for eventually things to hopefully go the way you would hope they will. So in other words, try and be positive with this whole experience. Don't try and sort of see this as like the 20 or 30 minutes to prove your value to the human race, that that has already been proven beyond any doubt. So just try and enjoy the process. So I would say that generally speaking, people who are relaxed and enjoying the lesson tend to perform better. So if you can try and sort of contain some of your your sense of foreboding, then that will be to your advantage typically. Okay, so despite it being a lesson we're not usually assuming, for politics, prior subject knowledge. Now, many of you might be studying politics at school or college, but that's not required for PPE. And we assume you haven't studied it formally before. And indeed we will tend to talk about phenomena that, sure, you may have come across with just a general interest in politics, but you're not likely to have formally studied before. We can use a variety of materials. So we will conduct the interviews like this on Teams, which is why I'm recording this on Teams. And we might share our screen and we might show you some data or charts or graphs or tables. We might show a block of text or we might do as, as will be done in this mock interview, just talk and I'll describe certain ideas and data and get you to respond so they can come in all sorts of different formats, and it's important not to be too thrown by that. Again, it's just like a lesson. So in lessons you might have all sorts of different approaches to learning style, and it's not something you should be particularly perturbed by. We have certain admissions criteria as you'd expect, that we are going to be checking off. And so I can show you on the PPE website what those look like. So I'm just going to share my screen so you can see this. And you can find these if you conduct an internet search for ‘admissions criteria PPE’, these will come up as one of the first hits. And you can see what it is that admissions tutors like me are looking for when they're conducting interviews. So we're looking for application and interest. And that will include your capacity for sustained study, motivation and interest, and an independent and reflective approach to learning. We're trying to gauge how independent and reflective you can be. Now remember that four word question I started with, you know, 'what do you think?' that nicely gauges your application and your interest. If you're eager to contribute some ideas, even if you're not fully confident in them, because guess what? I'm not fully confident in my ideas. No one is. Or perhaps no one ought to be fully confident in what they they think, but you're still willing to give it a go to get stuck in. That's really important, and it shows good application and interest. We also look for your reasoning abilities. So are you able to pull together threads into a bit of an argument? Now bear in mind that I'll be helping you with this. So remember the interview is a lesson. It's not an interrogation, it's not a grilling. So I'm going to help you pull your reasoning together. And indeed, it's worth sort of being clear in your mind that the interviewer is your best friend. They are trying to get you into the university. They're not trying to sabotage you. They're not trying to make you feel small or insignificant. And so if you listen to them carefully and you follow their instructions, then that would be to your best advantage. And then finally, we will be testing your communication skills and your willingness and ability to express your ideas. And what those three elements, again, have in common is summarised, albeit somewhat simplistically by the four word phrase, ‘what do you think?’. So that's, broadly speaking, what we're going to be looking at. The other thing to note is that in interviewing at Oxford, we are often trying to stretch and challenge you. So the questions will often start relatively straightforwardly, and then they'll get increasingly challenging. And if the questions do become more challenging, then that is typically a good sign. It's not something that you ought to be particularly perturbed about. And what we're often doing, at least this is how I think of it, is trying to sort of help you up these stairs. So this is quite famous, concept in education theory. It's called Bloom's Taxonomy. And the lowest stair is, remember, and that is the somewhat easier way of grappling with knowledge. And the higher up the stairs you climb, the more difficult the skill is. So can you remember stuff? Can you sort of keep facts in your head? That's relatively straightforward. Can you understand things? Can you apply things? Can you analyse? Those are getting harder and harder and harder. School qualifications like A-levels in the UK will typically take you up to the analyse step, but not far beyond. It's not usual in A-levels to be rewarded for evaluating or creating, but at university, those levels of the stairs are where we would like you to to get eventually by the end of your third year. And that's what we would teach you towards, is to be a creator of knowledge, not just a passive recipient of knowledge. And the interviews provide us with a really helpful opportunity to just see where your potential lies for that. So we're not looking for you to be the perfect package already, because otherwise there would be little point in educating you, right? So you don't need to be perfect when you step into the doors of Oxford University, because that would be wholly unrealistic and slightly pointless, right? But we just want to see, can you climb the stairs with us and bear in mind, remember, I'm going to help you climb the stairs. I'm not just going to open the doorway to the stairs, if I can talk to this metaphor and sort of expect you to just jump up on your own accord. So this is really relevant when it comes to thinking about how you can stand out in, in interviews, because standing out is not really your job. It's my job to help you stand out. And what will happen is that the questions will become progressively higher up the Bloom's stairs and will get you closer and closer to evaluative and creative thinking. So evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of ideas and then creating your own ideas. And again, albeit admittedly simplistically, we're sort of summarising that with the sense of what do you think? You know, what would you create as an answer to these puzzles? I'm not looking for you to remember what other people think or to summarise what other people have said. But when you to try and sort of get stuck in yourself, I think that'll be really interesting. And I am genuinely interested in what you have to say. I think sometimes students are amazed or perplexed that an academic would have any time for them, but we absolutely do. We love to hear your ideas, and we want to see that you're eager and willing to try stuff out. And trying stuff out means occasionally getting things wrong and maybe having a bit of help from the teacher. And that's okay. You shouldn't censor yourself for fear that you might say something wrong. It's better to get stuck in, have a try, and then if you're going down in a bit of a cul de sac, we’ll help you out. Again, there's no shame in that. We all try things out and perhaps take a few missteps here and there, and there's unlikely to be something that you would say that is disastrously wrong. So give it a try. So what are some common mistakes in politics interviews? Well, probably the most common mistake is not actually listening carefully enough to the interviewer. So the interviewer, remember, is your friend. They're helping you through the lesson, and they're teaching you a concept. Sometimes interviewees are eager to show off how much stuff they know, and so they might sort of drop in lots of information, which is kind of tangential or adjacent to what we're talking about. It's not fully relevant, and they might sort of dominate the conversation and make it difficult for us to have a have a back and forth. And so you need to listen carefully. Make sure you're following my instructions and not try and dominate the conversation too much. Obviously, we want you to talk. Obviously we want you to communicate, but avoid the temptation to go off on a sort of five ten minute long speech that you've pre-prepared that shows up how clever you are. Part of the issue with that also is that you'll you'll typically stay at the bottom of Bloom's stairs. You'll be talking about things you can remember that you have read, for example. You won't be progressing up the stairs towards the creative end because you're not giving me the chance to help you up there. So I think that's the most common mistake. And that therefore relates to another common question we get, which is how are you supposed to stand out? And I think it's crucial to point out that it's really my job to help you stand out. I think sometimes interviewees feel an extraordinary amount of pressure on their shoulders to be brilliant from the second that they start the interview and to start sort of name dropping authors they've read or things they've done it to seem really sophisticated. But we have structured the interviews in order for you to show off your skills and potential. And so if you follow us on that journey we’ll hold your hand and figuratively speaking, will take you up the stairs to the top. So don't sort of feel the pressure that you have to do all of the work on your own. It's really, it's really my job, to be honest. So how can you prepare for this? Well, one thing you could do is just read around your subject and stretch yourself. Find stuff that's relatively challenging for politics. There is a lot of accessible material that's freely available or easily available. So it could be current affairs, or it could be a government report, or it could be the report from a think tank, or it could be an article in an academic journal, things like that. And once you've read something like that or considered it, then try and summarise its contents to somebody who's not a subject expert. So it could be a member of your family, could be a friend, could be yourself in the mirror. It doesn't really matter. You summarise the contents of whatever it is you've read, and then you try and analyse it and think about its strengths and weaknesses and evaluate what you've read. And crucially, the last step is to try and contribute to it. So how would you take this work forward? What do you think? Answer that magic four word question. What do I think? That's where you're pulling yourself up Bloom's stairs on your own. And then in the interview, you'll feel a bit more comfortable when someone else is holding your hand figuratively and trying to guide you up the stairs. Okay, so those are good ways to prepare. What you don't need to do to prepare is to have mock interviews with subject experts necessarily with people who will test your knowledge of politics. Because remember, it's not really a test of knowledge. It's a test of thinking and reasoning abilities and skills which we will gauge. Okay, I hope that makes a bit of sense. The mock interview should hopefully put some skin on these bones and make it a bit clearer. If you do have any questions about the process, then do drop them in the comments and I'll try and answer them as soon as possible. Thanks so much for watching. My name is Doctor Matt Williams. I'm a teacher in politics and what is known as Access Fellow at Jesus College at the University of Oxford. I'm delighted to be here with Skye. Skye, do you mind telling us a little bit about yourself? Hi. My name is Skye-Jane, and I'm a second year, History and Politics student at Jesus. So Skye has the misfortune of being one of my students at the moment. So we're working on a British political history paper together and Skye is a second year student, which means there's a slight sort of artificiality to this interview in so far as I already know, Skye and Skye's been a student at Oxford for over a year already, but nonetheless, it's going to be a really helpful guide as to the sorts of things that could come up in an interview, and Skye's going to be brilliant at it, so that's why we hope it will be really helpful. Okay, you ready to go, Skye? Yes I am. Fantastic. Bringing back memories. Yeah. Hopefully not too triggering. Okay, so, what we're going to be talking about today is trust, if that's okay. What I'm going to do, first of all, is I'm just going to describe to you the findings of a survey on trust, and then we're just going to chat about it. All right. So there was a trust in government survey that was conducted by the Office for National Statistics. And you don't need to know anything about the ONS, as we tend to call it. But it's a it's a public body, but it's not controlled by the government. Okay. And they asked just under 2000 people if they could rank on a scale from zero, meaning not at all, all the way up to ten, meaning completely - in general, how much do you trust most people? So just strangers on the street. Okay. And the mean response, the average response of all of those participants was 6.3 out of 10. Okay. Don't worry if you don't remember any of these figures, I'll happily recap any of them. Okay. And the modal response, the most common single answer was 7 out of 10. Okay. Those same people were also asked again on a scale from zero, meaning not at all. All the way up to ten, meaning completely. How much do you trust the British government? Okay, and in that instance, the mean the average response was 3.8 out of 10. And the modal response, the most common single answer was 5 out of t10. Okay. So I'll just quickly recap. So just under 2000 people were asked how much do you trust most people? To which the average response was 6.3 out of 10. Modal response of seven. And the same people were asked how much you trust the government, to which the mean response was 3.8 out of 10, with a modal response of 5. So first of all, what what are your just initial thoughts of those data? Well, people trust random people. It seems more than they trust the government, which is striking. Yeah. And I guess that there's a difference as well with the, the mean versus the mode. So maybe there's some sort of deviation in the sorts of people that have trust. 00:17:22:15 - 00:17:46:13 Unknown The fact that they're not the same, there's a slight disparity there. Excellent. Let's let's dwell on that just briefly. So the means in both cases are lower than the mode. What what might that suggest. So. Well if the mode is like the frequency so the most frequent answers is slightly higher. And then the mean is slightly lower. That suggests there's a group of people who are bringing down, have a much lower level of trust in both strangers in the government who bring down that figure. Yeah, that's exactly right. But in the case of trusting most people, the mean is quite is closer to the mode. So it's 6.3 to 7 is the mode whereas for trusting the government it's 3.8 to 5. Yeah. Yeah. And what do you make of the fact that the modal response to how much you trust the UK government is five out of ten? What what could be your interpretation of that finding? Well, it's slap bang in the middle so that's something. There's clearly some trust but also a lot of skepticism because that's a five point gap versus seven for trusting ordinary people. So you could either see that as, people are surprisingly willing to trust strangers or that they have quite low trust, in the government comparative to that. So I guess it depends on how you read that. Good. Right. So most people are just sort of like like putting themselves right in the middle. But there are because the mean is skewed below the mode, as you pointed out. That suggests there are some people who are sure that they don't trust the government and they're dragging down the average. Excellent. Okay. That's really helpful. Now, this is quite a tricky question. So do take your time. But how would you define trust? So I'm not I'm not concerned about a dictionary definition. But if you were to sort of say in your own words what you think trust could mean, how would you define it? Do you mean trust of the government or trust just broadly as a concept? Let's keep it really. Let's keep it really broad for now. So yeah, just generally speaking, if you use a word like trust, how would you use it? Okay. Another question sorry, I don’t know if this is allowed. But is it trust as in interpersonal trust or trust towards a system or an institution? Because I feel like you might define those slightly differently. But that's a really interesting distinction. So would you define those differently? I'm actually interested to know I think I would because I think this is I guess this is a slight deviation, but if you're trusting a person, there's, there's a sort of like, there's a thing about human, humanness and kind of respecting somebody as an individual I think that you don't have the same in a system. So it's a trust in people is, yeah, it's quite a human thing, in the sense that, like, the word humanity comes to mind, like there's a sort of humanity to it, a sort of there's somebody else on the other side. Whereas I think trust in an institution. Say, the government, that's much more based on, kind of does it deliver? How does the system work? So there's that personal, that personal part that I think is much more taken out than there is in any other form of trust. But that's a really helpful distinction, because of course, the UK government is a group of people and a bunch of systems. Right. So that that's a useful distinction to draw. But let's let's just focus on interpersonal trust. Yeah. For now. Yeah. Could you, could you describe trust it in other words without using the word trust. Yeah. Respect. Yeah. Honesty. Integrity. Transparency. Nice. These are the, the main words that are kind of coming to mind. Excellent. Okay. Those all sound fine. Can we trust the measures of trust. Is there is there anything else you think you might need to know about this Office for National Statistics survey to feel like it tells you anything about what the whole country is, is thinking. Yeah, well, the ONS are likely to have taken a small group of people and measured, taken that and extrapolated. So that's where those people are located, because I assume trust might vary based on region in the UK. Quite possible. Also, I think I'd want to know the time the survey was taken at. And just particularly because I think there's times, so, say in the economic cycle in a peak and then a trough when trust might be slightly different depending on how the government is performing at that time. And then also the age of the people, because that's becoming quite a big factor in deciding people's politics in the UK. Yeah. Great. So there's, there's a few extra questions you'd like to ask. And so yes the sample was just under 2000 and they did try to randomly sample people so that as you say there was no concentrations of people in particular parts of the country or at particular ages. So we can hopefully trust the levels of trust. But I have a bit of a concern, so hear me out, see what you think. I think if you ask someone, do you trust the public, they might be inclined to say yes because it makes them seem like a better person, you know what I mean? And also, if you ask someone, do you trust the government? It might seem slightly fashionable to say no, they don’t like the government very much. So. Do you think we could measure trust without giving the game away? In other words, can we measure trust without telling people that we're measuring trust? Is there something they might do? Some behaviours they might have that could give away how trusting they are? And then we wouldn't even have to ask them. Maybe if they actively in terms of the government and, and UK politics, they're actively participating in politics. So if they're going out to vote and also perhaps you could extend that definition, so between elections, how politically involved are they. Yeah. And how and and they also are they an active participant in maybe civil society as well? Because I feel like that would suggest that you trust institutions more and people more than the other option. Absolutely. Yeah. Good. So there are, there are surveys of people's participation in civic organisations that might give away how trusting they are, I mean, like exactly. Right. And as you say, participation in political processes, which suggests at least some level of faith that the process is not going to serve you badly. Yeah. Good. Absolutely. So let's sort of try and get into the data and try and explain what could be going on here and why there is a gap between trust in individuals or strangers, if you like, and trust in the government. Now, I should just sort of preface this by saying, you don't need to know anything about recent political history to answer this. So we're just going to be talking quite abstractly, okay? I mean, why do you think there might be a mistrust of or distrust, I should say, in government? What could generally explain that? What sort of things might encourage people not to be trusting of government? The performance of the government is quite a big one, but also that's always through the lens of somebody's perception of what the government is doing for them, or kind of the group that that the socio-economic or the group that they relate to more generally. Yeah. Another thing. So could you repeat the question? I've lost my train of thought. No, that's absolutely fine. Yeah. So just wondering, generally speaking, how we could understand why someone might lose trust in the government or indeed may not even have had it in the first place? Do they see themselves in government as well? Are they represented? Just yeah. In that sense, do they see who they are or that their interest represented in government? And also what do they, so the area that they live in, perhaps, how do they see government working within that context. So like their local council or like national policy, the area around them, how has that impacted them and their standard of living? Probably the main things that I would say. Great, and that nicely connects to the next question I wanted to ask you, which is why you imagine there might be this gap between trust in general, trust in people, versus trust in the government, because the government is also made up of people. Right? Yeah. But I don't think you, when you're trusting people, I think you tend to bring to mind, I mean, even if you say the question out loud, say trust in the person, it tends to bring to mind people that I know or have encountered on like an individual basis whereas a lot of people, maybe some lucky for you, do have an interaction with government on that level personally, but most people don't - like government is quite an abstract, as I said, not very personal thing for the majority. So I think that is why. I mean, I think that's why there's a disparity, because when you think of a person, you're like, oh, these are all the people in my local community that I know and talk to, and they seem generally trustworthy. But then when you talk about government, that seems for a lot of people, I guess, quite far away and abstract in a sense. Right. Excellent. And do you think that's our fault as citizens? Do you think we have a duty to be better informed about what's happening in government than if we are not, not trustful that might reflect poorly on us rather than potentially poorly on the government? I think there's an extent to which you can blame the individual, though I would say, given that in certain areas or just generally, there are groups of people who don't interact with the government or don't vote and don't trust the government, there's clearly some sort of system error going on there. So I think, okay, you can blame the individual, but it might be more useful to look at it as a system problem, because clearly the way of looking at it as an individual is not working. That's probably how I would separate it. Like what's useful versus what's what's going on and how can we solve that. So I probably look at it slightly differently depending on. True, but you acknowledged earlier that an individual's sense of trust will depend on their perception. Yeah. Is it not therefore up to us to alter our perception? I think that's very easy to say. Let's alter our perceptions. But if your reality and everyone and you're surrounded by it's very difficult to say, change your perception fundamentally for the good of this ONS survey. So I think, yeah, I think people can change their perceptions. They're probably people in those areas who maybe there are some individuals, who do have a higher engagement in government. But I don't think you can say just change your perception. That's not, I don't think that's a fair critique. Okay, excellent. That's helpful. And do you think it could potentially be a good thing, quite positive for the for citizens of a country not to be fully trusting of their government? Is there is a scenario in which that's actually quite good news. Yeah. I think it can be good news. I think distrust, being distrustful can prompt a public or public opinion to question a policy that government's putting forward. Kind of look at it with an with an eye of skepticism, which can be useful because policy can go wrong and government isn't infallible. So you do want a degree of criticism. So I'd say distrust can be useful in that in that sense. And could you imagine this scenario, doesn't need to be a real world scenario, but just as a thought experiment where trust in the government was higher than trust in other citizens, in other words, we trust government processes and systems more than we trust each other. But what could cause that potentially? If anything. Yeah. I think a situational national defence crisis, where a government is kind of telling us you must do this thing for your safety. That movie where that, like, all hell breaks loose with crime for a night comes to mind but I can’t remember what it’s called. Yeah, The Purge or something like that. Right. I think a situation where you kind of have, like a purge and you can only trust the state and everyone else is going to come out and get you in this, like, yeah, in this like, Hobbesian world. I think in that scenario, I might trust the government more because I know that they’re the only ones who can keep me safe. Right. Yeah. And you mentioned sort of Hobbes so that some sense of a very powerful authority. So I suppose this might also be the situation that pertains in some authoritarian countries, where people at least will say they trust the state, perhaps more than they trust each other. Yeah. So that seems quite negative. Potentially. It could be quite a scary scenario where you end up trusting the government more than you trust each other. But still. Do you think the government should do anything about this? Is there any moral obligation on the government to react to something like this survey finding? I would say yes. I would say the government should see this as a sign that it's failing in some way. Okay. Because I think in a democracy at least, it's quite important that you have people, individuals actively trust to participate because you need people to participate for you to have any form of legitimacy. So I think, yeah, I think the government has responsibility. I mean, I'm quite biased. I would say they should have more education for for young people and for people, about politics. So, yeah. And what what might success look like if, let's say, the government doubles down their efforts on trying to build trust in in the government. Yeah. When could they say. Right. Yeah, job done. I think it's an ongoing process. I didn't think there'd be a point where you could say trust is achieved because, if you're voting every five years, then you need to make sure there's that ongoing trust and relationship between the state and its citizens. So I'd say that isn't an endpoint. And there's only progress to be made in generating trust for government. But but as that sort of minimum, would you expect there to have some sort of equalisation between trust in the public versus trust in the government? Or could there always be a bit of a gap and you'd be satisfied with that? I think there could be a smaller gap. I think if there was a gap, or maybe because we're saying there's two for the medium mode on, on government trust versus like nought point something for the for the government median mode. So I think if you got those between, you know, like one point, or if you move that slightly closer, I think I'd probably look at percentages since it's so small. But, if you were able to minimise that as much as possible, I think that would be good. Okay. Then that makes a lot of sense. Fantastic. We've come to the end. Did you have any questions for me? It's not required. But just in case you're wondering, What do you actually understand trust to be? So just for the benefit of the audience, normally at the end of the interview, we would, we would offer you the opportunity to ask a question, but we wouldn't have the chance to discuss the topic of interview, it would be more just about what the next process in the interview going to be like. But what do I understand trust to be? I'm not supposed to be interviewed myself. I think you've said some really interesting things. It's that sort of orientation towards the future and imagining that some sort of outcome is relatively predictable. If it's in the hands of someone you don't know, and it's quite a big deal, trust. It's one of the foundations of a lot of political processes and systems. Yeah. It was interesting that you were talking about systems quite a lot. I thought that was really smart because the systems are being propagated, delivered by human beings. And if we don't trust our neighbours, then how can we possibly trust what people all the way over in London are up to? It's magnificently difficult, and it is something that governments really wring their hands over. So when I was sort of asking you, is this something the government should do? They clearly think it's a problem. But it's also very difficult because as you also pointed out, a lot of it is subjective. It's dependent on the perception of individuals and altering those perceptions is very difficult. They're quite sticky. People, for a long time will hold perspectives on trust. It can be difficult to shift one way or the other. And that's why I wanted to explore with you, and it was interesting where we went, on how you could maybe measure it without telling anyone, right? Without actually getting them to use the word trust because, you know, people can get quite prickly. Do you trust them? Oh, you know, they might react somewhat sort of viscerally. Anyway, I thought that was really interesting. Thank you so much for your time and assistance. And yeah, I'll see you in our next tutorial.