最新！牛津大学公布了2020本科面试样题！！

就在上周五，2019年12月6日，牛津大学公布了年度重量级的面试样题，希望给即将参加2020本科入学面试的同学们提供一些参考，可谓是雪中送炭、相当及时了！

未来两周，牛津大学将迎来成千上万的本科面试学生，他们将参加牛津的入学面试。大多数学生有至少两场面试，取决于所选专业，而且面试期间可以免费住在牛津的各学院。每年的面试问题都是以专业为主，给学生一个机会展示对所选专业的兴趣和热情。申请Modern Languages的同学可能会被问到--在这个英语主导的世界，为什么学习法语或意大利语仍旧很重要（why it is important to still learn French or Italian, in a worldwhere the dominant language is English？），PPE专业会问--战争是政治的对立面吗（ “Is war the opposite of politics?”），可能会让工程学生们--解释并画出，足球从静止到被踢到空中的这个过程中，引起速度变化的力（explain and sketch the physical forces behind velocity, that determine the process ofkicking a football, from being at rest to up in the air）。

面试中不管问了什么问题，“正确答案”不一定是导师的最终目标，认知神经科学教授与牛津大学学院导师Nick Yeung教授解释：“每场面试，我希望达到这样的程度，即面试者不能马上知道答案。因为我们非常想看到的一方面是，学生不知道答案的情况下如何思考。当然了，我们导师也准备好了给他们提示，不希望看到任何人只是坐着几分钟，面试中我们会做的事情之一是给学生空间和时间来思考，如果学生坐在那有点困惑，我们可能会让他说出自己的思考过程，第一个想法是什么，然后顺着这一点往下推。”牛津大学本科招生主任Samina Khan表示：“这个过程是为了帮助申请者，让他们尽可能地感到舒适。新的、陌生的环境，从来没见过的人问你问题，可能会很有压力，所以一开始我们会让学生放松，让面试尽量简单。”“没有偏题怪题，我们问的每道题都有目的，为了看到如果学生在牛津导师课堂学术讨论时，面对新的信息和观点，他们会怎样思考、给出怎样的反应。我们寻找的是潜力，看他们在自己热爱的学术专业上或者PS他们关心的内容上，是否能坚持自己的观点。最好的一个建议就是，阅读和理解你PS中提到的内容和问题-现在不是即兴发挥的时候。”

除了网上模拟面试和关于面试程序的手册，牛津大学今年还录了视频博客，三位面试导师分享了面试建议和如何回答一些问题的指导建议。

Khan博士补充：“我们知道关于牛津面试大家感觉很神秘，有一些误解，所以我们放出了尽可能多的信息，我们也有很多学生助手提供帮助，让学生们更轻松地面对面试。大致了解了面试官的期待是什么，学生能够更好地为面试做准备，在一定程度上减少未知因素。”

为了让大家更好地理解，这里就给大家直接放原文了，补充解释一下：Subject代表面试专业；Interviewer代表面试的导师；Question是面试问题；Response是导师给出的提问方式和答题思路。最新牛津大学面试样题：地球科学

Subject : Earth SciencesInterviewer : Professor David Pyle, Professor of EarthSciences, Geodesy, Tectonics, Volcanology and Related HazardsQuestion :Present the candidate with a rock specimenand ask them to describe the rock and what they are seeingResponse :Quite a few of my colleagues may bring a rock specimen in with them for an'observe, describe and infer' style of question. The rock may well have someparticular feature - in the way it appears, or the materials it is made from -that the interviewer will start with. The questions will start along the linesof … here's a rock; spend a few moments looking at this sample, and handlingit. Can you tell me what you can see - I don't want to know what it is, I'dlike you to describe what the rock look like, or appears to be made of. Can yousee particles? or crystals? What does it look like to you? Use any sorts ofdescriptive words that you are familiar with. We make no assumptions at allabout whether the candidates have looked at rock before, or not.

The focus at the start is to make carefulobservations, keeping these separate from any pre-conceived or instantinterpretation that the candidate might want to jump to. These observationsform the evidence for how the rock may have formed; and, ultimately, for whatwe might call the rock.

We'll then pick up on the observations, and lead thequestions so that the discussion moves on to thinking out loud about whatphysical or chemical processes might have helped to create that particularfeature of the rock: why are the grains round? Did they start off that shape, orhave they been moved around? What sort of place on earth today can you think ofwhere you might find grains that look like this? Why do you think that the rockis red? What elements or compounds are you familiar with that have a redcolour? And so on. The way to approach these sorts of problems is to listen tothe questions, and to take your time thinking out loud as you work through thetask. This isn't a pop quiz, or an exercise in knowing stuff; it is an exercisein seeing how you can gather evidence objectively, and then to use thatinformation to build up some simple ideas about how the sample might have formed.

PPE

Subject : Politics, Philosophy and EconomicsInterviewer : Dr Matthew Williams, Academic and CareerDevelopment Fellow, Jesus CollegeQuestion :Is war the opposite of politics?Response :It is common for interview questions inpolitics to tacitly (or in this case explicitly) ask — what is politics? Thisis a tough question, but an important one for the discipline. Good responseswill break down the question, interpreting what is understood by ‘war’,‘politics’ and ‘opposite’. The interviewer will look for the candidate to offeran argument in response to the question, and explain how they have interpretedthe question.In common usage, ‘politics’ can include ‘war’, not beopposed to it. So the ambition is to encourage students to think outside thebox, and imagine an interpretation of politics that could even be considered tobe positive and optimistic — politics as the avoidance of conflict. The bestresponses will notice that terms like ‘war’ can mean physical acts of violence,but could also include cyber warfare, or financial piracy. And, politics couldbe considered at the level of states and all the way down to the level offamilies. Hence the stark differentiation of war and politics may not be veryuseful to our understanding of these terms.The further the interview goes, the more we will talkabstractly about the use of concepts. At root, the question asks about thevalidity of posing binary opposites to understand concepts like politics. Doesthis polarising use of language (x is the opposite of y) illuminate or obscurethe reality? This might be a question to end the interview on.

心理学

Subject :PsychologyInterviewer :Professor Nick Yeung, Professor ofCognitive Neuro-Science and Tutorial Fellow at University CollegeQuestion : What is the significance of the brain’s‘face area’, and it being stimulated when people see and recognise faces?Response : Facial recognition is a skill that is veryuseful and we mostly take for granted. By asking this, we are looking for thecandidate to think critically about experimental design, and what we can learnfrom the results. For example, does the experiment have a clear hypothesis andpredictions? Is it well designed to test these? Are the methods usedappropriate? Does the experiment have necessary control conditions?As well as thinking critically, we're also looking forthe candidate to think creatively, for example about how the experiment couldbe improved and what the results of such an experiment might tell us about howpeople think and how the brain works: What does it mean to"recognise" a face? What cognitive processes are involved? What mightbe special (or not special) about faces? Why might there be a brain areadevoted to face recognition?