Hello so my name is Sandra Campbell I'm one of the Biomedical Sciences tutors here at St John's College and I'm going to chat with you today about why we interview and what we're looking for. And so, first of all, if we think about why we interview so if we take last year, which was the 2020 interview period in December, we had 550 applicants for 40 places and so that means that we have lots of highly qualified candidates for a very small number of places and so therefore we have to use criteria other than the BMAT score or the school grades to try and identify those people who are most likely to thrive here in Oxford. And so what we're trying to do is we're trying to capture additional information that we don't already have on your UCAS form. So typically we might ask questions on the personal statement to assess maybe the areas of science that you're interested in and that would be us looking for intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm for the course. We then typically present you with some puzzles, often pictures or graphs, and here we're trying to look at reasoning, we're trying to look at problem solving ability and we're trying to see whether you actually express your ideas clearly and effectively and then as part of the puzzles we often give some feed-in information that you then have to use and there we're testing your ability to listen and use the information that we give you. And then at the end of the puzzles we'll often ask you about some of your own ideas or some of your own proposals based on the information that's in the puzzles and then that gives us an assessment of whether you're creative in your thought, whether you've got any original ideas and so the interview is a little bit like a mini tutorial because that's how we teach within the small group tutorials here in Oxford and so all that we're trying to do in the interviews is we're trying to see whether you'll thrive in the environment that we present here in Oxford. But the interview isn't everything, the interview is only one part of the information that we use, so we use everything when we make our decisions: we use your personal statement, we use your BMAT test, we use information from your school, so your references, and we use your predicted grades, we use your past school performance, we think about how well you've done for the school that you've gone to and then we also look at the interview scores.

Hi Finn, thank you for coming to see us today and being interested in Biomedical Sciences, so I'm Sandra Campbell, I'm one of the Biomedical Sciences tutors here at St John's. Hi Finn and I'm Charles Newton, I'm one of the Professorial Fellows at St John's, a Neurologist in the Department of Psychiatry. Ok, so your interview will be about 20 minutes or so, Finn. We're going to start off with some questions on your personal statement, so for things that you chose to to show us that you're interested in, and then there's going to be two puzzles and while you're doing the puzzles if there's anything that you don't understand please let us know and we'll we'll reword that in a different way, ok? Great so I'll hand over to Charles and we'll do some questions on your personal statement. Great, well thank you Finn for coming. First of all I just want to open up as to why you've chosen this course, Biomedical Sciences, as opposed to other scientific courses and then also in particular why have you chosen Oxford as opposed to other universities. Ok so I think I'll start with the first question why did I choose Biomedical Sciences. I think it's the the customizability of the course, the fact that you've got this fundamental first year so you can you can start to gather... start to gather which interests you've got, be it genetics, neuroscience, elements of physiology, etc., and then going forward into the second year that's when you can pick your modules. I think that's the thing that attracted me most to the course, especially Oxford as well because that modular system is made quite clear and all the staff are quite supportive in telling you which modules you should pick as well, so yeah definitely the the module side of the course.

Great thank you. I read your personal statement with great interest. I mean you've clearly investigated a wide range of subjects in biomedical sciences and I'd like to start off with your interest in prion diseases, can you tell me what a prion is and how does it cause disease? Prions are a a protein that can cause infection in the body, particularly in the brain, so they're involved in neurodegenerative diseases such as CJD, scrapie in sheep, and specifically how they cause disease is believe that there's two forms of the prion and it seems that there's a chain reaction where with the disease formed...the disease form induces the disease form in like adjacent prions next to each other and then that causes like the breakdown of tissue muscle, especially in the brain, so that's how the the disease propagates in the brain.

Do you know how the word prion was derived?

I think if you take the word specifically, I think it's from the...because it's proteinaceous, I think proteinaceous infection, then that's how you...if you kind of combine the two words together you get prion. Correct and so the infectious nature of it is the interesting bit as to how a protein can become infectious because it doesn't have any way of replicating itself in terms of nucleic acids. Can you just explain to me a bit more about that...what you understand about the replication of prions? Yes, I think that was something that when they were first discovered that kind of came under a lot of scrutiny because they don't have an immediate replication mechanism, so perhaps it's something to do with perhaps like a toxin that they release, I know they're particularly toxic to neurons so it could be that...that release of the toxin that could induce the infection of adjacent prions.

And I mean there's been quite a lot of interest in in prions in degenerative...other degenerative diseases, more common ones for example like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. What do you think the mechanism of them causing those sort of diseases is?

So I think it's a...it's a very similar mechanism in the way that the the spread of the infection throughout the brain it causes like a like a spongy appearance in the brain and you can see physical pores in the brain that correspond to the like...the common symptoms like a lack of mental acuity so, for example, like concentration and you can see those symptoms in, as you say, the more common diseases like Alzheimer's so I think it's a very similar mechanism across the board. Do you know what the protein that is specifically involved in in Alzheimer's is?

No I'm not...I don't think I've come across the name of it. Ok do you think prions would be a good vehicle for biological warfare because they cause death, you know, 100 percent fatality most of the diseases they cause.

I think the the issue, the issue with that, with using prions in biological warfare, is they've got a very long incubation period. If you, if you think of biological weapons, such as nerve agents for example, you get...you get quite severe symptoms with nerve agents quite quickly, in like a matter of minutes, matter of hours. With prions if you look at patients with Alzheimer's, it's a matter of years, decades and we're not exactly sure when Alzheimer's starts appearing in the brain but it could be decades before the symptoms start to really take effect, so I don't think they could have like a very like prominent effective biological warfare for that reason. Yes, I agree with you. The other interesting area that you mentioned in your personal statement was the connectome. Can you just tell me what the connectome is? Yes I think it's...the development of the connectome it's using, especially computer modelling, to model the entire brain and all of the connections between the neurons in the brain and you see that in projects such as the human brain project and it's definitely being used and it will be used going forward to

perhaps model effects that certain diseases can have on the brain and it's just to understand the relationship across the brain between different brain regions, between different neurons specifically, so it's like a new model that's emerging using computing. Is it just a computer model or is there more substance to it?

I think there could be...you know you could analyse like...use...use experiments...use physical experiments to look at the relationship between neurons. I think at least a lot of a large part of the reading I've been doing is looking into the computational side of it, the mathematical modelling as well, but I'm sure it does have a basis in the...the physical brain as well. Thank you thank you. And I mean one of the other things that you also mentioned was that you're interested...that you attend a lecture on psych-... Schizophrenia and Psychosis. How does the connectome influence our understanding of say Schizophrenia?

Well with with a disease so complex with schizophrenia...it's it's quite easy to believe that it's...it's caused by different regions of the brain having certain problems affecting with them, so the connectome can definitely look at those relationships between the regions and understand the bigger picture of Schizophrenia. We've already got quite a good analysis of the cellular level of it, but I think especially when you're looking at human disease, it's good to understand the cellular level and then building up to like the whole organ level so I think that's where the connectome can particularly come in useful because we need that fundamental understanding of the whole organ to start looking at...looking at illnesses like that. Great, thank you very much. I'll hand you back to Sam-...Sandra now. Ok, Finn, so we're gonna show you a picture now.

Alright, can you confirm that you can see a picture of two young boys on the screen? Yeah. Yeah, fine. And can you read the words that are on the bottom of that picture? Yes, yeah. Yeah and and what do you think...what do you think discordant monozygotic twins...what do you think that means? Well if you take...if you take the two words separately, so monozygotic, I suppose that means having twins originating from the fertilization of a single egg and that's splitting into two zygotes, perhaps. Discordant perhaps that means like, looking at the word, like maybe branching off of something so branching off of certain aspects in that phenotype perhaps? I'm not sure about that one in particular. Ok so if we were looking at the phenotype of these two boys, do you think that they're similar?

Yeah, they are...I mean looking at...looking at the picture they're similar in certain aspects but I wouldn't say they're identical, there's definitely still seem to be differences in the phenotype. Ok and what would their genetic material be like?

Like does that mean like the the differences between the two genetic material? Yeah, would their genes be the same or would they be different?

Well as far as the genes, they have corresponding to certain elements of the phenotype they would be the same, but that'd be the same across humans. Maybe perhaps they'd have different allioles expressed in those genes. So if these two boys are monozygotic twins, what would be the difference between say monozygotic twins and dizygotic twins? Yeah so dizygotic would be...

there would be two zygotes produced so maybe that the splitting would come before, so perhaps like going back to the thing about the allioles, maybe that they've got the same allioles because they're monozygotic? Ok so they say that monozygotic twins have identical genetic material. Ok. And dizygotic twins would just be like brothers, you know, they would be similar because they're from the same family but they wouldn't have the same genetic material and so if, if I showed you this picture and said that these were two identical twins, what strikes you about the picture? The first thing that's immediately striking is their differences in height, assuming that that's not manipulated by the taking of the picture, and it is their physical differences in height. I guess there's something to say about the the behavioural aspects of them. Mm-hmm. The twin on the left, he definitely seems much more happier than the twin on the right, so yeah those those are the two ones that particularly stand out. Ok, so if we go for the differences in height, what do you...why do you think that two boys this age- I think they're probably about maybe one and a half, two years old- why do you think they would have such differences in height at such an early age? What sorts of things if you if you saw your one of your friend's brothers or sisters and they were...they looked like this, what sort of thing would you be thinking if you heard that they were identical?

Well, yeah, so in like a general population, height does...is affected by multiple genes but because these twins have the same genetics it would have to be something to do more environmentally, perhaps their development in the womb?

Ok, so if I said to you that they were both almost identical in birth weight, what other options might you have for why they're so different?

Could we be looking at like epigenetic modification, it's like after? We could, what is epigenetic modification, Finn? So I haven't done too much into it but from like the basic understanding I've got it's the idea that there's chemical modifications to genes which affects their expression in the phenotype. Ok. So and and those can be pa-...they can be inherited, they can be passed down through generations, they can express themselves in different ways and perhaps that's another another reason for their difference in height? Ok, so some environmental conditions can cause changes in gene expression but what about some more of the simpler things that might explain the height difference between two boys.

Their actual environment that they live in.

Is this assuming that they're living in the same environment, they're having like the same exposure? Ok, so let's say...that that's quite a good point actually, do they live in the same environment, so let's say that for this instance they do actually live in the same household with the same parents.

I'm not hundred percent sure because I would feel like there need to be quite a significant change in their environments to have a difference in height so, yeah, I'm struggling to see what would...that be like difference. Ok, what if I said to you one of them was quite a picky eater. Oh of course yeah, yeah because like food and diet, especially at an early age, it affects development quite severely, so yeah that's that's definitely one of them I missed out. The one with being a picky eater...they could be eating foods that aren't very nu-...haven't got much nutritional benefit as opposed to the the other twin who's less of a picky eater with a more balanced diet, especially for growth as well, so yeah that's definitely that one. Ok but what if I said to you that actually both twins eat pretty much the same diet, what else might you think? Perhaps differences in exercise, in activity? Ok yeah so that might be something. That could have an effect on height.

And one last one last thing, if one child was, say, stunted in growth in comparison to the other child,

what might you think could cause a stunt in growth in one child but not the other, even if they were just, you know, friends and didn't have the same genes.

There...there's like a certain...if they...if they didn't have the same genes, there's certain conditions that can...that can stunt growth. Ok. For example, dwarfism or perhaps something less significant on the effect of growth, they can still...they can still cause them to different height. Yeah, I mean, one of them could have just been ill, couldn't they, had an infection or kind of prolonged condition that affected...affected their height, good. Why do you think that experimenters are particularly interested in experiments with discordant monozygotic twins? I think it's because a lot of our knowledge of...how...how our phenotypes are expressed, how we how we appear, is based on genetics, so if you look at monozygotic twins with the same with the same genetics you're then assured that any different...any differences they have are not based on genetic factors, they're based on environmental factors, for example, like the ones we talked about, so it...it provides like a more direct route to studying those aspects. Ok and if you wanted to do...if you wanted to use twins like this, to ask specific questions about the environment, how would you go about planning that sort of experiment, what sort of data would you like to see?

I think like with the with the aspects we talked about regarding their diet, regarding their levels of activity, if you were to take one of those factors you'd then want to gather data based on the same variables but between the two twins, so you can make direct comparisons between them. Obviously there's been experiments in the past, they likely wouldn't be ethical now, but the separation of twins with them growing in different environments and then you could also see the effect when you...you compare the two, the effect on their different environments and how that works as well. Ok, yeah, so these are only...these are two boys aren't they. Yeah. Do you think that using two boys in an experiment is a good plan? How might you change it if you wanted to do an ideal experiment?

Yeah you could use one boy and a girl, just because then maybe there may be differences with like...like sex-linked.

Yeah yeah, they wouldn't be...they wouldn't be monozygotic twins then, though, would they? Oh no, of course, no. But we could we could use twins, though, just because then they're brothers and sisters, same way, but probably would be good to have some girls in the study wouldn't it? Yeah just to...yeah I guess, I guess because they would like... boys and girls may have different approaches to like different factors as well, so you could look at it like that. Great, ok, thanks very much. I'm gonna hand you over to Charles now, I'll just stop sharing this picture.

Great and I'm just going to share my screen with you.

Can you just confirm that you can see the diagram then? Yeah that's up there. Ok, so I want you to study this diagram this is...the first...the top diagram shows the relationship between the number of risk allioles for obesity and the average BMI and the bottom graph represents the BMI classified according to underweight, normal overweight or obese. I want you to spend a couple of minutes just looking at these two diagrams and then I'm going to ask you some questions, ok? The risk values are on the x-axis and the BMI is on the y-axis on the top diagram, ok.

Tell me when you're ready.

Ok, yeah I think I've got an understanding. Ok, great. So the first question I want you to...to ask you is, what do you think is the overall conclusion from the top diagram, from the top graph? So it looks like the...the more risk allioles you have the...regarding weight, the the greater your average BMI would be, just based on comparing the two. Ok and what what do...do the diamonds and the bars represent in the diagram? Is this on the the orange line? Yeah. Yeah so that

so that would be...it could be like standard deviation or variance which is like a common one. Of what? Of the of the average BMI so based on the number of individuals there would be like a a deviation between them based on like how you calculated it? Ok good. And the line, what does that represent?

That would be

the the trend of the average BMI based on how many risk allioles, because obviously you you can only have a a whole number of risk allioles, so that's just like a line of best f-...a line of best fit drawn through the points? Right ok. Ok good...and the bars, the blue bars on the diagram? So that's within this within the sample of however many people were studied that's how many have a certain amount of of risk allioles weighted against

...would you do like a weighting based on how many people were in the study as well? Within each group? Well the weighted...what do you think the weighted could be? I mean, you're right, the the bars represent the frequency of the number, or the number of people with each of those, say eight, high risk allioles, what do you think...what would you weight it for?

No I haven't...I haven't really come across like weighting when it comes to producing experiments and graphs but maybe it's based on how many...how many people are in each sample, for example, how many people with eight risk allioles, how many people with seven, how many people were six, and then you would

produce like like a baseline number of people so you could compare them more easily, that's how the weighting works. Yeah I could, I could see where you-...you're going with this but in fact, I mean in this particular study they weight it according to the effect of the number of allioles on the...effect size on the, on the BMI. Oh ok. Which they used to weight. So why would you have to be careful about the interpretation of this graph?

I think because it's

it's...it's quite easy to assume that the number of risk allioles directly correlates to the BMI and that's the only variable...that's the only factor that that changes BMI. Obviously there's the risk allioles...is the genetic aspect but there's many environmental aspects, such as diet, such as levels of exercise that will affect BMI as well so it can be very dangerous just to draw direct conclusions from from just the two. Right and what do you think the limitations of the study are?

Well yeah that, that talking about is the...it's focusing on only one factor, that is one limitation. It also doesn't account for males and females, it doesn't make this...doesn't distinguish between two, it's just a general population, unless it doesn't state it on the graph, so that's the second limitation.

I guess you could also say that

it's with...you've got less than 3 and more than 13, that's like a whole group, you have three, two, one or zero and thirteen upwards of however many, so you can't really correlate that to just the single allioles between four and twelve.

And do you wanna comment on the range of the BMI in the experiment? Yeah so we're looking between...yeah just just over 27 and around 25, so I would assume that there's a much greater range of BMI within the population it doesn't account for any of these individuals as well, so it's a very it's a very similar...Right ok, so how would you redesign the experiment, what would what would you want to do?

I think it could be that you would calculate someone's BMI in a different way and then look at how many risk allioles they have? Because then you would...you could gain a greater range of BMI, and then you could you could do it that way, so you could then have a look at how many allioles they have, as opposed to what they could have done, they could have could have studied the number of risk allioles to fit their their range of risk allioles and then looked at the BMI, which could be quite counterintuitive. Ok.

Ok, thank you very much, I'll hand you back to Sandra. Let me just stop sharing the screen.

Ok that's the end of our puzzles, thank you very much for coming to see us. Do you have any questions for us, you don't have to and it's not part of the scored interview but if there's anything that the student helpers haven't been able to answer for you then we'd be happy to do it now. No I don't think...I think everything's been pretty well explained so...Great, well good luck in your second interview and thank you very much for coming to chat with us, we really enjoyed it, ok. Thank you very much, bye Finn. Thank you very much, lovely to meet you. You too, thank you.

So let's have a chat about how Finn's done in his interview. Will we start with the personal statement and how you think he did on the questions that you gave him? Yes. I mean I was impressed by...when reading his personal statement because of the variety of topics that he had chosen but I was disappointed with the depth of knowledge of the topics that he had chosen...that he mentioned in his personal statement and so when I started to probe him a bit more depth, I felt that he hadn't done a lot of reading and understanding about the concepts behind the areas that he mentioned in his personal statement. What did you think, Sandra? Yeah, yeah I w-...I would agree with you, Charles. The topics that he chose (prion disease, Alzheimer's disease, connectome, Schizophrenia) were all four things that were actually listed in his personal statement and so these were things that he had chosen and said to us that he was happy to receive questions on and therefore I think the questions that we asked were actually fair and so I think if we were...if we were going to give any advice for future students then one of the things we'd say is that if you do put things in your personal statement that you should do a little bit of research in advance of coming to the interview so that you can answer just a few minutes on each one. Absolutely, I agree. Great. What did you think about...how did he do on your...yes so when I showed him the question, he worked through methodically what monozygotic discordant twins were, even though I don't think he recognised the words, so I thought...I thought that was...I thought that was good, that he worked through that and he didn't panic. He quickly got the difference in height between the twins and he did very quickly talk about differences in womb development between the two boys. I fed in some information so that...to push them down a different route when I said that they were both born, you know, the same birth weight. He did talk about things like epigenetic changes but I was kind of expecting more things like, you know, food, diet, illness, maybe bullying between the boys you know with food intake, that that sort of thing, some of the more common things. He did ask quite an interesting question about whether they were both brought up in the same environment which I thought was quite a good observation. I would have liked him to take that a little bit further by saying that twins born in...genetically identified...identical twins who are reared in different environmental circumstances can have very different outcomes. And then, I think one piece of advice I would say is that I did actually feed in information to Finn, throughout the problem, about food, about diet, about chronic illnesses and he didn't actually use the information I was giving to him, about the sorts of answers that I would like, and so if I was going to give some advice to some candidates going forward, what I would say is if...if your interviewer is giving you information, they're giving you information for a reason. In the future experiments question, what I was expecting there was an increase in sample size, to look at you know, for example, monozygotic female twins, to look at maybe brother and sister pairings, to look at different ages across...across the lifespan of the kids and perhaps looking at different geographical elements and so I thought that he hadn't put...he hadn't used some of the information that he might have brought in earlier about the different...different environments the boys had been brought up in, I thought he hadn't used that as he went forward. But overall I thought that he had a good grasp of the question, I thought he understood the sorts of things that I was trying to ask and I felt he was just a little bit nervous and quick with some of these answers without stopping to think about what it was that we were really looking for. How do you think he did...your question?

How did he do on your question? On your one on your...On my question. So I agree, well I...I think also he was very methodical in my question, he got the...the main components of the...of the top graph out well, was able to describe the mean and standard deviation of the bars, he knew what the line was, although it is actually a regression line, he knew that the bars...the blue bars were frequencies and the distribution was...was in sort of normal distribution. What was um disappointing was that he didn't recognise that the BMI was a very limited range and the reason that this was disappointing was that information was held in the second graph and so for other candidates I think what is important is that if you are presented with two pieces of information, you must use both pieces of information because they're there for a reason and you must utilise them to connect the two facets together. By not incorporating the extended range of the BMI to underweight, obese people means that you have a very limited interpretation of that data and that then also limited to his possibilities of suggesting further studies to be undertaken to try and understand the relationship between at-risk alleles and BMI. I did think, for example, that he had a good guess at what weighting of the...of the allioles was, although it wasn't correct in this context, it was a very plausible answer and so I felt that he was thinking on his on his feet. Yeah, no I...I'd agree with you. I would say to candidates at the start, when you've when you're given a few minutes to look at the graphs, make sure you look at both and and keep in mind why two sets of information are there, even questions are only been asked about one of them because the second graph is not there as a mistake. But I mean overall he he did very well. I think that there are things within the interview that candidates watching this could pick up and help them prepare for the remote interview.