Oxbridge Medicine Interview Questions

The very best way to prepare for an Oxbridge Medicine interview is through mock interviews. As well as providing general interview experience, they also get you accustomed the unique types of questions asked at an Oxford or Cambridge Medicine interview, training yourself to think in the way required for the real thing.

Below, we have compiled a list of questions of the sort you should expect in your Oxbridge Medicine interview. You can use these just 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.

Medicine Interview Questions

1. Why does your heart rate increase when you exercise?

2. Why is it a disadvantage for humans to have two legs?

3. How would you poison someone without the police finding out?

4. How can a fox

5. How many genes are there in the genome of a rice plant? tell the difference between spring and autumn? 

6. Can you describe an experiment to differentiate between a normal and multi-resistant strain of bacteria?

7. Why do we have red blood cells?

8. How is a city like a cell?

9. How would you design a better brain?

10. Why don’t we just have one ear in the middle of our face?

11. How many moles of H2O are there in a cup of water?

12. How would you simulate altitude in your living room?

13. How would you measure the weight of your own head?

14. If you are in a boat in a lake and throw a stone out of the boat, what happens to the level of the water?

15. Why can you not see many stars when you stand on top of a mountain?

16. How would you design an experiment to disprove the existence of God?

17. What leaves you drier if it’s raining: running or walking?

18. Why does your heart rate increase when you exercise?

19. What’s the greatest medical innovation this century?

20. How would you determine whether leukaemia patients have contracted the disease because of a nearby nuclear power station?

21. At what point is a person ‘dead’?

22. If urine was emptied into the small intestine instead of the bladder, what would happen?

23. What does the letter b stand for in b-lymphocyte?

24. How do prions actually affect the brain?

25. How does the body try to remove or recognise poison?

26. How would you restrict the spread of an epidemic such as Ebola?

27. In your opinion, what has been the most significant medical breakthrough in the last 10 years?

28. What do you think of the state of the NHS? What would you do to improve it?

29. Should patients be allowed to sell their kidney(s)?

30. How do vaccines work?

31. How does the body try to remove or recognise toxic substances?

32. Should the NHS treat smokers for free?

33. Is the health of a child more important than the health of an adult?

34. What are the ethical implications of boxing?

35. Is it ever ethical to withhold treatment from a patient?

36. What qualities make a good doctor?

37. How does the auditory nerve carry signals to the brain?

38. How would you measure the concentration of oxygen in a sealed room?

39. Viruses depend on human cells to reproduce, so why do they often harm their host?

40. If a virus’s reproduction number R changes from 0.9 to 1.1, what will happen to its spread?

41. Why might developing a fever actually help the body fight an infection?

42. A parent refuses a blood transfusion for their 7-year-old child on religious grounds. How would you handle it as a doctor?

43. Should a smoker have non-urgent surgery postponed until they quit? Why or why not?

44. There is one ICU bed left and two patients need it (a healthy 20-year-old and a 70-year-old with co-morbidities). How do you decide who gets it?

45. A patient asks to see all of the detailed case notes your team has written about them. What are the arguments for and against letting them?

46. Why do you want to be a doctor as opposed to another profession that is caring or intellectually demanding?

47. What traits do you believe you need to improve on in order to be a successful doctor?

48. Should doctors be permitted to strike?

49. You offer a woman who is severely bleeding a blood transfusion, but she declines. What explanation do you have for this? How would you approach the problem?

50. Do you believe that Class A drugs should be made legal?

51. Do you believe that doctors should be required to notify the police if any of their patients take illicit drugs?

52. What do you think of using animals to test new medications?

53. Do you think we should learn more about patient’s opinions on their physicians, their illnesses, and their treatments?

54. Would you give an unmarried 14-year-old girl who is having sex with her boyfriend the oral contraceptive pill?

55. How should doctors handle injuries or illnesses brought on by self-harm, smoking, or excessive alcohol use?

56. What part does a doctor play in enabling a patient to make an educated choice?

57. What moral dilemmas arise when a patient under the age of 16 refuses treatment?

58. Do you believe that complementary or alternative medicine should play a bigger part in the NHS?

59. Should medical students receive vaccinations as a requirement?

60. What would you do if a patient with an STI refused to disclose it to their partner but intended to continue having sex with them anyway?

61. What would you take into account before choosing which patient would receive an organ?

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