King’s College Chapel and the Gibbs Building across the river Cam

London, Sept. 17: Oxford and Cambridge universities are increasingly relying on interviews to select the best students because British school examinations fail to distinguish between bright and weak candidates, according to researchers.

As a result, many applicants could see their fate decided by their responses to famously bizarre questions put by Oxbridge interviewers to test their knowledge and powers of reasoning.

School exams alone are no longer a marker of students’ ability as record numbers now leave with a string of A grades, it is claimed.

Universities cannot even rely on references from teachers who are reluctant to criticise students for fear of being served with an official complaint.

Geoff Parks, the director of admissions at Cambridge, said interviews were becoming “more important” as other methods used to select students are eroded.

But according to Oxbridge Applications, which advises people applying to the institutions, interviews are more likely to benefit those from elite independent schools or state grammars. They are more likely to be “coached” by teachers to give the best answers, they say.

Last year, a student applying for a geography course at Cambridge was asked: “What is the population of Croydon?” Another applying for physics at Oxford was asked: “How high can I go up a mountain having only eaten a Mars bar?”

James Uffindell, the founder of Oxbridge Applications, said interviews often punished comprehensive school pupils.

Figures from Cambridge show that 34 per cent of independent school pupils and 31 per cent from state grammars who apply get a place. However, just 21 per cent of comprehensive pupils get in.

At Oxford, more than 32 per cent of independent school pupils who applied were admitted last year.

Uffindell said: “Tutors are understandably having to rely on the interview — what else do you do when a quarter of all A-level papers are now marked an A?”

“This means pupils from the state comprehensives and the less well-known independent schools will find it harder to get in. They don’t have the amount of knowledge of the Oxbridge interview process that perhaps they have in the big private schools, where many teachers know the type of questions going to be asked and can provide coaching.”

An Oxford spokesperson insisted the interview process was fair to all. “One of the reasons for asking questions that require some lateral thinking is to examine how candidates think, rather than how they’ve been coached or what they’ve been taught,” she said.