Oxbridge Geography Interview Questions

The best way to prepare for an Oxbridge Geography interview is through mock interviews. As well as giving you general interview experience, they focus your mind on the types of questions asked at an Oxford or Cambridge Geography interview, teaching you to think in the way required for the real thing.

Below, we have compiled a list of questions of the type you will be asked in your Oxbridge Geography interview. Use them to give yourself an awareness of what's expected, plan out answers on your own, or give them to a teacher, friend, or family member, and ask them to conduct a mock interview with you.

Note: If you are doing mock interviews with us, we recommend waiting until afterwards to look through these questions, so that you aren't asked questions you have already prepared for (as you won't have that opportunity for the real thing!). If you haven't booked any mock interviews yet, you can do so here.

Geography Interview Questions

1. If I were to visit the area where you live, what would I be interested in?

2. How can volcanic eruptions change global climate, and at what timescales?

3. Why is Antarctica so much colder than the Arctic?

4. Why is biodiversity not evenly distributed around the world?

5. Why is it important to know the number of living species on Earth?

6. How can ICT help geographers understand physical process and natural hazard events?

7. What do you think about those who regard global warming as nonsense?

8. Are fair trade bananas really fair?

9. How do we know what is in the core of the Earth?

10. What percentage of the world’s water is contained in one watermelon?

11. What would happen if a 10 km wide asteroid smashed into the Pacific Ocean?

12. What would happen if the Earth had two Moons of equal size?

13. How do we measure sea levels? Why is this a poor method?

14. Why do we know so little about the depths of the Ocean? How could this be rectified?

15. Why do you think some people don’t take global warming seriously?

16. How does carbon dating work?What is the relevance of physical geography to human geography?

17. What would make anyone want to settle in a place such as Iceland?

18. How did the Ancient Greeks know that the earth wasn’t flat?

19. How do human and physical geography overlap?

20. Why should we conserve?

21. What are the limitations of hazard mapping?

22. What is culture?

23. What is Malthus’ principle of population’?

24. How do we know that dinosaurs once existed?

25. Would anything remain in geography if we took the notion of place away?

26. What are some environmental impacts of industrial agriculture?

27. How would you definitively prove that global warming was man made?Where should physical and human geography be looked at together?

28. What are the issues surrounding world debt?

29. How does drama relate to geography?

30. Why do you think Bavaria has the lowest breastfeeding rate in Germany?

31. What is the role of maps in modern day society?

32. What is the population of Croydon?

33. Is nature natural?

34. Could the great biblical flood have ever happened?

35. How can computers aid geographers in understanding physical processes?

36. Why is it that in some developing countries slum settlements have sprung up near high-rise buildings/wealthier neighbourhoods?

37. Why are glacier melting rates non-linear?

38. How do we know that Pangaea existed?

39. What is the relationship between global population and atmospheric CO2?

40. What are natural hazards?

41. What is the difference between a volcano and a mountain?

42. What is the impact of the economy/policy on social inequality? Do you think that access to education lies at the heart of development?

43. What is the point of conservation?

44. Where would you survive longer – in the Arctic or Sahara?

45. Why are temperatures rising more in polar regions than in tropical regions?

46. Why do rainforests contain so much biodiversity compared to the Sahara desert?

47. Would it matter if tigers became extinct?

48. Would you rather conserve Antarctica or the Amazon?

And that's all of them! Hopefully, you now have a sense of the types of questions you might be asked. To be even better prepared, try answering these and other questions with our tutors - you can book your mock interviews here.