2019-2020學年
培諾收獲41封牛劍面試邀請
其中劍橋11封牛津30封！
而此時此刻
牛劍面試已落下帷幕
我們的培諾學子
早已走下“戰場”，準備啟程歸國
等待著牛津、劍橋拋出的橄欖枝
據牛津官網透露，今年一共有21500人申請牛津，約10000人收到面試邀請，實際錄取人數3000多人。也就是說，3個人里面，最終會錄取1個人！
已經擊敗了11500人
成功拿到面試邀請的培諾學子
能成為那3000分之1嗎？
答案是：Of course！
為什么？
因為我們是培諾牛劍面試團成員！
為了面試這一刻
我們很早就開始準備了——
我們有
畢業于劍橋大學等
世界名校的精英老師做輔導
我們有
暑期牛劍集訓營
面試真題+燒腦競賽題
進行各種拓展訓練
我們有
面試流程介紹
面試技巧分析
牛劍學長學姐面試輔導
我們還有
牛劍導師
一對一模擬面試
體驗真實面試場景
這一切
都是為了在牛津、劍橋面試中勝出！
縱使3個面試者里只有1個成功
我們也會成為那1個成功的面試者！
如今，拿到面試邀請的小伙伴已經完成牛劍面試，他們離終點僅有一步之遙。而仍在準備申請牛劍的小伙伴們，一定也期待著明年的這個時候能成功拿到牛劍面試邀請。
那我們該怎么準備才能離夢想更進一步呢？
小諾之前給大家“科普”過劍橋大學為什么要面試及如何準備面試。
今天，小諾就來說說關于牛津面試那些事兒！
牛津大學為什么要面試？
小伙伴們應該知道，在牛津大學，教學主要是通過導師制來實施的。通過面試，你的面試官（可能是你未來的導師）能夠有機會對你進行直觀的評估。
評估你的學術潛能，你在導師制教學方式下學習、思考的能力，以及你在學校或大學課程范圍之外接觸新思想的能力。
另外，導師也希望能通過面試，看到你對課程的自我激勵意識和熱情。
“面試能告訴我們申請者的一些重要信息，而這些信息無法被成績或考試分數反映。我們希望看到申請者是在獨立思考，而不是鸚鵡學舌。”
看，牛津大學要的，可不是只會埋頭苦學的“書呆子”，他們需要的，可不只是高分那么簡單。
那么，誰會被邀請去面試呢？
每年，牛津都能收到20000多份申請，但能夠入讀的學生卻只有可憐巴巴的3000多個。
申請人數那么多，根本無法面試每一個人，所以，牛津大學要“萬里挑一”，尋找他們認為最有潛力、最符合他們選擇標準的申請者。
咱培諾學子能拿到牛津面試邀請已經是相當厲害了！
面試官想要尋找什么樣的人才？
來聽一聽牛劍大學的導師怎么說——
‘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，其實沒有典型的“牛津生”。合格的申請者，無論來自于什么教育體系和背景，都應該在面試中靈活善變，有問必答，思維縝密。”
‘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.’
“言簡意賅，分析精準，靈活善辯，要對申請課程充滿激情，因為與生俱來的求知欲將激發學生思考與質疑。”
‘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.’
“對申請課程有極度且難以抗拒的興趣，擁有善于想象且思維嚴謹的大腦。最好狀態下的面試應該逐漸進入一種交談的氛圍，而不是變成一場問答會。”
小諾給大家總結了下，雖然沒有典型的“牛津生”，但牛津導師希望你：言簡意賅，靈活善變，思維縝密，熱愛你所選的課程領域。
怎么才能在面試中贏得導師的心？
1. 沒什么好害怕的，面試官又不會把你吃掉！
大膽一點，雄赳赳氣揚揚地邁進考場。沒什么好害怕的，我們又不是去拋頭顱灑熱血，面試官也不會把你吃掉。面試官很仁慈的，他們會讓你放松下來。
牛津大學本科課程招生與推廣主任Samina Khan說道：“面試流程被設立的能夠幫助到申請者，讓他們盡可能的感到放松。”
“在一個全新的、陌生的環境，被你從未見過的陌生人提問，可能會給你極大的壓力，所以我們會在面試開始的時候讓被面試者放松，并讓問題盡可能簡單的傳達給他們。”
“面試不會有那種帶陷阱的問題，我們在面試中所有的提問，都是為了讓參試者展示他們是如何思考，并以新的想法和信息回應問題的，而這一切學術問題相關的交談過程，跟牛津大學正式學習中，你會遇到的授課的形式極其類似。”
“我們希望了解的，是參試者的潛力，是參試者能否在他們喜歡學科的相關學術交流中穩住陣腳，亦或者是他們在個人陳述中提及的，他們關心的相關問題。”
“這里，我想分享的最重要的面試注意點，就是閱讀并理解面試提供的文本，以及你在PS中提到的問題，要知道，面試可不是你即興發揮的時候。”
2.思考的過程比答案的正確性更重要！
無論你被問到什么樣的問題，你都要記住：比起給面試官一個正確的答案，你整個思考的過程才是面試官最看重的。你不是去做卷子的，而是去向面試官展示你的能力的。
感知神經學教授，以及牛津大學學院（University College，牛津大學諸多學院之一）導師Nick Yeung教授解釋道：“每場面試中，我都希望對方不要立即知道問題的答案。因為面試中我們最關注的點之一，就是當面試者在還不知道答案時，是如何思考的。當然，我們已經做好準備給予他們一些引導，我們也并不想讓他們呆坐在那兒幾分鐘。”
“我認為在面試中，我們要做的是盡可能的給面試者思考的空間和時間，如果他們在回答時遇到一些小瓶頸，我們可能會要求面試者可以自言自語（thinking out loud），讓他們將一開始的想法和如何一步步將問題的答案推進到這一步的說出來。”
所以，即使你不知道問題的答案，也不要慌張，在教授的指引下，認真思考，一步步往前走就好。
3.看看牛津大學特別制作的面試技巧視頻吧！
牛津大學對同學們格外的好，特意制作了一個視頻，由3位招生官分享牛津大學的面試建議，并就可能被提及的問題給出了參考建議。
Khan博士補充道：“我們了解關于牛津大學的面試，民間有很多謠傳和誤解，所以我們將盡可能多的信息展示出來，并安排了許多學生助手來幫助參試者放松。”
“對即將面對的面試是什么樣的流程，也讓參試者能夠為他們的面試做好準備，也能一定程度上減少外界對牛津大學的不了解。”
面試會提問什么？
近日，牛津大學公布了最新面試樣題。對于準備明年申請牛津的同學們來說，無疑又多了一個參考。真是棒棒噠！
小諾精心為大家搜羅了小伙伴們最愛選擇的數學、物理、工程專業相關面試樣題。快來瞅一眼，是不是像傳說中那樣“驚悚”？
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.
看完這些面試樣題，小伙伴們感覺如何呀？如果是你去回答這些問題，你會如何回答？自己模擬著回答一次吧！
最后，小諾衷心祝愿所有參加牛劍面試的培諾學子都能收獲牛劍預錄offer！實現牛劍夢想！
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