What's the most difficult question you were asked during your interview for Cambridge?

During my second interview, the interviewer asked me to compare language with a city, meaning I had to use components of a city or town in order to describe how the structures of a language worked. I told the interviewer I wanted a few minutes to think, which they were happy about, so I wasn't rushing into my answer. I then explained how I would make the transport system "grammar", because grammar enables us to connect individual words together to form a sentence. I said that I would therefore make the buildings the individual words, and the interviewer asked me to specify what kinds of words each building would be. I then explained that content words, like nouns, could be skyscrapers, because they tend to form the overall meaning of the sentence, whilst function words, like verbs, could be buildings like libraries, museums and buildings like this that are used to learn, because function words glue the sentence together and complete its meaning. The interviewers were mostly interested in how my mind worked and how I articulated my thoughts. So, although this was a tricky question, it was less about my actual answer and more about how I got to my answer. 

GR
Answered by Gabrielle R. Oxbridge Preparation tutor

1945 Views

See similar Oxbridge Preparation Mentoring tutors

Related Oxbridge Preparation Mentoring answers

All answers ▸

A hypertensive patient asks you to choose his treatment without disclosing potential side-effects of different options as that would only make him anxious, he claims. Which medical and ethical issues would you investigate before proceeding?


Interview: (Shown protein structure of virus capsid) Explain what you think this structure is, and how knowing the structure may be of relevance to medicine?


I know I am good at maths, but is there anything more I need to do in my interview to secure a place to study it?


How should I best approach writing an Oxbridge personal statement?


We're here to help

contact us iconContact ustelephone icon+44 (0) 203 773 6020
Facebook logoInstagram logoLinkedIn logo

MyTutor is part of the IXL family of brands:

© 2025 by IXL Learning