2019-2020学年
培诺收获41封牛剑面试邀请
其中剑桥11封牛津30封！

而此时此刻
牛剑面试已落下帷幕
我们的培诺学子
早已走下“战场”，准备启程归国
等待着牛津、剑桥抛出的橄榄枝

据牛津官网透露，今年一共有21500人申请牛津，约10000人收到面试邀请，实际录取人数3000多人。也就是说，3个人里面，最终会录取1个人！

已经击败了11500人
成功拿到面试邀请的培诺学子
能成为那3000分之1吗？
答案是：Of course！

为什么？
因为我们是培诺牛剑面试团成员！
为了面试这一刻
我们很早就开始准备了——

我们有
毕业于剑桥大学等
世界名校的精英老师做辅导

我们有
暑期牛剑集训营
面试真题+烧脑竞赛题
进行各种拓展训练

我们有
面试流程介绍
面试技巧分析
牛剑学长学姐面试辅导

我们还有
牛剑导师
一对一模拟面试
体验真实面试场景

这一切
都是为了在牛津、剑桥面试中胜出！
纵使3个面试者里只有1个成功
我们也会成为那1个成功的面试者！

如今，拿到面试邀请的小伙伴已经完成牛剑面试，他们离终点仅有一步之遥。而仍在准备申请牛剑的小伙伴们，一定也期待着明年的这个时候能成功拿到牛剑面试邀请。

那我们该怎么准备才能离梦想更进一步呢？

小诺之前给大家“科普”过剑桥大学为什么要面试及如何准备面试。

今天，小诺就来说说关于牛津面试那些事儿！

牛津大学为什么要面试？

小伙伴们应该知道，在牛津大学，教学主要是通过导师制来实施的。通过面试，你的面试官（可能是你未来的导师）能够有机会对你进行直观的评估。

评估你的学术潜能，你在导师制教学方式下学习、思考的能力，以及你在学校或大学课程范围之外接触新思想的能力。

另外，导师也希望能通过面试，看到你对课程的自我激励意识和热情。

“面试能告诉我们申请者的一些重要信息，而这些信息无法被成绩或考试分数反映。我们希望看到申请者是在独立思考，而不是鹦鹉学舌。”

看，牛津大学要的，可不是只会埋头苦学的“书呆子”，他们需要的，可不只是高分那么简单。

那么，谁会被邀请去面试呢？

每年，牛津都能收到20000多份申请，但能够入读的学生却只有可怜巴巴的3000多个。

申请人数那么多，根本无法面试每一个人，所以，牛津大学要“万里挑一”，寻找他们认为最有潜力、最符合他们选择标准的申请者。

咱培诺学子能拿到牛津面试邀请已经是相当厉害了！

面试官想要寻找什么样的人才？

来听一听牛剑大学的导师怎么说——

‘First of all, there really is no Oxford ‘type’. A promising applicant is one who is flexible, responsive and thoughtful in their approach, whichever educational system or background they come from.’

“首先，其实没有典型的“牛津生”。合格的申请者，无论来自于什么教育体系和背景，都应该在面试中灵活善变，有问必答，思维缜密。”

‘Clarity of expression and thought, precision of analysis, flexibility of argument, and sheer enthusiasm for the subject – a raw intellectual curiosity which encourages the student to think and question.’

“言简意赅，分析精准，灵活善辩，要对申请课程充满激情，因为与生俱来的求知欲将激发学生思考与质疑。”

‘A deep, irresistible interest in the subject they want to study combined with an imaginative but rigorous mind. The best interviews develop into conversations rather than question-and-answer sessions.’

“对申请课程有极度且难以抗拒的兴趣，拥有善于想象且思维严谨的大脑。最好状态下的面试应该逐渐进入一种交谈的氛围，而不是变成一场问答会。”

小诺给大家总结了下，虽然没有典型的“牛津生”，但牛津导师希望你：言简意赅，灵活善变，思维缜密，热爱你所选的课程领域。

怎么才能在面试中赢得导师的心？

1. 没什么好害怕的，面试官又不会把你吃掉！

大胆一点，雄赳赳气扬扬地迈进考场。没什么好害怕的，我们又不是去抛头颅洒热血，面试官也不会把你吃掉。面试官很仁慈的，他们会让你放松下来。

牛津大学本科课程招生与推广主任Samina Khan说道：“面试流程被设立的能够帮助到申请者，让他们尽可能的感到放松。”

“在一个全新的、陌生的环境，被你从未见过的陌生人提问，可能会给你极大的压力，所以我们会在面试开始的时候让被面试者放松，并让问题尽可能简单的传达给他们。”

“面试不会有那种带陷阱的问题，我们在面试中所有的提问，都是为了让参试者展示他们是如何思考，并以新的想法和信息回应问题的，而这一切学术问题相关的交谈过程，跟牛津大学正式学习中，你会遇到的授课的形式极其类似。”

“我们希望了解的，是参试者的潜力，是参试者能否在他们喜欢学科的相关学术交流中稳住阵脚，亦或者是他们在个人陈述中提及的，他们关心的相关问题。”

“这里，我想分享的最重要的面试注意点，就是阅读并理解面试提供的文本，以及你在PS中提到的问题，要知道，面试可不是你即兴发挥的时候。”

2.思考的过程比答案的正确性更重要！

无论你被问到什么样的问题，你都要记住：比起给面试官一个正确的答案，你整个思考的过程才是面试官最看重的。你不是去做卷子的，而是去向面试官展示你的能力的。

感知神经学教授，以及牛津大学学院（University College，牛津大学诸多学院之一）导师Nick Yeung教授解释道：“每场面试中，我都希望对方不要立即知道问题的答案。因为面试中我们最关注的点之一，就是当面试者在还不知道答案时，是如何思考的。当然，我们已经做好准备给予他们一些引导，我们也并不想让他们呆坐在那儿几分钟。”

“我认为在面试中，我们要做的是尽可能的给面试者思考的空间和时间，如果他们在回答时遇到一些小瓶颈，我们可能会要求面试者可以自言自语（thinking out loud），让他们将一开始的想法和如何一步步将问题的答案推进到这一步的说出来。”

所以，即使你不知道问题的答案，也不要慌张，在教授的指引下，认真思考，一步步往前走就好。

3.看看牛津大学特别制作的面试技巧视频吧！

牛津大学对同学们格外的好，特意制作了一个视频，由3位招生官分享牛津大学的面试建议，并就可能被提及的问题给出了参考建议。

Khan博士补充道：“我们了解关于牛津大学的面试，民间有很多谣传和误解，所以我们将尽可能多的信息展示出来，并安排了许多学生助手来帮助参试者放松。”

“对即将面对的面试是什么样的流程，也让参试者能够为他们的面试做好准备，也能一定程度上减少外界对牛津大学的不了解。”

面试会提问什么？

近日，牛津大学公布了最新面试样题。对于准备明年申请牛津的同学们来说，无疑又多了一个参考。真是棒棒哒！

小诺精心为大家搜罗了小伙伴们最爱选择的数学、物理、工程专业相关面试样题。快来瞅一眼，是不是像传说中那样“惊悚”？

Mathematics

Interviewer: Rebecca Cotton-Barratt, Christ Church

Imagine a ladder leaning against a vertical wall with its feet on the ground. The middle rung of the ladder has been painted a different colour on the side, so that we can see it when we look at the ladder from the side on. What shape does that middle rung trace out as the ladder falls to the floor?

This question tests whether you can do what mathematicians do, which is to abstract away all the unimportant information and use mathematics to represent what’s going on. I’d initially ask the candidate what shape they think will be formed, and then ask them how they can test this hypothesis. They might initially try sketching the ladder at different stages – this is fine, but ultimately what we want is something that we can generalise and that is accurate (you can’t be sure that your drawing is that accurate, particularly when you’re making a sketch on a whiteboard and don’t have a ruler). So eventually they will fall back on maths, and try to model the situation using equations. If they get stuck we would ask them what shape the ladder makes with the wall and floor, and they’ll eventually spot that at each stage the ladder is forming a right-angled triangle. Some might then immediately leap to Pythagoras’ Theorem and use that to find the answer (which is that it forms a quarter circle centred on the point where the floor meets the wall).

This is a fun question because the answer is typically the opposite of what they expect because they think about the shape the ladder makes when it falls (which is a series of tangents to a curve centred away from the wall and the floor). A nice extension is what happens when we look at a point 1/3 or 2/3 up the ladder.

Interviewer: Richard Earl, Worcester College

How many ways are there to cover a 2 x n rectangular grid with 2 x 1 tiles?

The question would typically be posed with the caveat – “I don’t expect you to have the answer straight away; try working out the answer when n = 1,2,3,4 say”. So here is something to investigate. Maths interviews are usually conducted over a piece of paper, sometimes at a white board and so diagrams will get drawn and the student will find the answers are 1, 2, 3, 5 for the first four cases. Some systematic care may be needed to explain why the fourth answer is 5 and why no sixth solution has been missed.

A relatively comfortable few minutes has been spent on this, but it’s also important that the student and I aren’t talking at cross-purposes. At this point I usually tell the student the next two answers at 8 and 13 – any thoughts on the emerging pattern? The answer is the Fibonacci sequence – where a term of the sequence is the sum of the previous two eg 8 = 5 + 3, though it’s not important if the student hasn’t met this before or has forgotten the name. The next stage of the interview is about understanding why that pattern should be appearing here.

When done with this bit of the interview hopefully the student has taken on board a few new ideas. So the question moves on to: 3 x n rectangular grids and 3 x 1 tiles, to 3 x n rectangular grids and 2 x 1 tiles. Hints will continue to be needed, but also there will be plenty of chance to see just how much the student has taken on board from earlier and how well s/he can adapt what’s been learned.

One of the reasons I found this a good question in the past was that its knowledge content is low, no more than GCSE. But its internal complexity is sufficiently difficult to test the brightest students, especially in the final part, whilst also allowing students repeated chances to show what they were learning and share their thinking.

Physics

Interviewer: Jeffrey Tseng, St Edmund Hall

A ball, initially at rest, is pushed upwards by a constant force for a certain amount of time.  Sketch the velocity of the ball as a function of time, from start to when it hits the ground.

Physics interview questions often start with a question like this which looks as though it could have come from the Physics Admissions Test. In this example, I've asked the student to sketch a graph, and then I’d help him or her to get through the problem. Students do make mistakes, and that’s fine as I don’t expect them to know all the material, especially as the interview progresses.  It's not assumed that a less-talented student will need more help on any given problem, and for this reason it can be difficult for students to judge how well they're doing during the interview.

If a student gets things correct straight away, I just move on, either to further aspects of the original question, or to others.  For instance, the above line of questioning could easily result in a discussion of satellites, orbits, weightlessness or dark matter.  It's usually a guided discussion rather than a matter of getting answers right or wrong straight away.  I want to see how students respond to guidance and how they correct themselves, hopefully less by guessing than by thinking through what they know and what I've told them.  Or in other words, while I am looking for a correct answer in the end, I'm even more interested in rigorous thinking.

Engineering

Interviewer: Steve Collins, University College

Place a 30cm ruler on top of one finger from each hand so that you have one finger at each end of the ruler, and the ruler is resting on your fingertips. What happens when you bring your fingers together?

This would never be the opening question in an interview - we usually start with a first question that gives the candidate an opportunity to get comfortable by discussing something familiar. We then ask more technical questions based on material in the GCSE and A-level syllabi. This question would come later in the interview, when we present candidates with an unfamiliar scenario and ask them to use what they know about familiar concepts (such as friction) to explain something.

Almost everyone in this example will expect the ruler to topple off the side where the finger is closest to the centre to the ruler because they expect this finger to reach the centre of the ruler first. They then complete the 'experiment' and find both fingers reach the centre of the ruler at the same time and the ruler remains balanced on two fingers. We like to see how candidates react to what is usually an unexpected result, and then encourage them to repeat the experiment slowly. This helps them observe that the ruler slides over each finger in turn, starting with the finger that is furthest from the centre.  With prompting to consider moments and friction, the candidate will come to the conclusion that moments mean that there is a larger force on the finger that is closest to the centre of the ruler. This means that there is more friction between the ruler and this finger and therefore the rule slides over the finger furthest from the centre first. This argument will apply until the fingers are the same distance from the centre. The candidate should then be able to explain why both fingers reach the centre of the rule at the same time as observed. In some cases, particularly if we have not done a quantitative question already, we might then proceed with a quantitative analysis of forces and moments. We might even discuss the fact that the coefficient of static friction is higher than the coefficient of dynamic friction and therefore the 'moving' finger gets closer to the centre than the static finger before the finger starts to move over the other finger.

Interviewer: Byron Byrne, Department of Engineering Science

How would you design a gravity dam for holding back water?

This is a great question because the candidate first has to determine the forces acting on the dam before considering the stability of the wall under the action of those forces. Candidates will probably recognise that the water could push the dam over. The candidate would then be expected to construct simple mathematical expressions that predict when this would occur. Some may also discuss failure by sliding, issues of structural design, the effects of water seeping under the dam, and so on. The candidate will not have covered all the material at school so guidance is provided to assess how quickly new ideas are absorbed. The question also probes the candidate's ability to apply physics and maths to new situations and can test interest in and enthusiasm for the engineered world.

看完这些面试样题，小伙伴们感觉如何呀？如果是你去回答这些问题，你会如何回答？自己模拟着回答一次吧！

最后，小诺衷心祝愿所有参加牛剑面试的培诺学子都能收获牛剑预录offer！实现牛剑梦想！