Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
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Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
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Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#2As a bit of background, you're not required to have any programming knowledge when applying although most candidates will have done D&D Maths which covers topics like graph and bin packing algorithms.
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#3As a bit of background, you're not required to have any programming knowledge when applying although most candidates will have done D&D Maths which covers topics like graph and bin packing algorithms.
One more thing to keep in mind: Cambridge and Oxford interviews are more about thought process than actual solutions. I've seen candidates with correct answers not get in while peers who never found an adequate solution make it.
Interesting questions, though.
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#4As a bit of background, you're not required to have any programming knowledge when applying although most candidates will have done D&D Maths which covers topics like graph and bin packing algorithms.
One more thing to keep in mind: Cambridge and Oxford interviews are more about thought process than actual solutions. I've seen candidates with correct answers not get in while peers who never found an adequate solution make it. Interesting questions, though.
I should hope that's true of interviews everywhere.
It's worth noting as well that Oxford is by far the most theoretical of all the CS departments in the UK.
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#5Could some kind UKer(s) please explain to this American exactly how Oxford, Cambridge, and the UK university system works? I'm familiar with what A levels are, and that you supposedly apply to a particular college at each of Oxford and Cambridge, but then I hear about university-wide "departments", and I put that in my American-style mental model. Googling hasn't helped me, but perhaps I'm being unimaginative in search terms.
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#6Also relevant is the pre-interview aptitude test:
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
One more thing to keep in mind: Cambridge and Oxford interviews are more about thought process than actual solutions. I've seen candidates with correct answers not get in while peers who never found an adequate solution make it. Interesting questions, though.
I should hope that's true of interviews everywhere. It's worth noting as well that Oxford is by far the most theoretical of all the CS departments in the UK.
Sorry, what is your source for this?
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#8I suspect the Oxford\Cambridge undergrad interviews have less to do with assessing technical competency and more to do with providing admissions with a reason to discriminate against state-educated kids. The amount of Oxbridge intake come from private schools is disproportionately high to be due to exam results alone, and is better explained by an ingrained negative view of those with a state education or old boys networks.
I've seen this in action, exceptional state school students turned down from Oxford, and utter buffoons (but with the correct background and accent) being accepted.
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#9I really like those questions - they seem very tricky until you think of some way to do it in a smaller subset or try to figure out the solution by doing the actual actions in your head. I think they're very different from the typical hiring interview logic puzzles you'd see in the companies, but I can't really express the difference...
Then again, I can't really figure out (an optimal) solution to the second one... [spoiler alert] Since you cannot know more about the function than the value itself, is there a better option than dividing the range into 3 equal segments, choosing the one with maximum and recursing? That would give 1/3^5 accuracy. On some values generated in a natural way, you could introduce bias to the segment-selection based on the values you get - but then you could prepare some data which would actually lower the accuracy that way...
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#10Could some kind UKer(s) please explain to this American exactly how Oxford, Cambridge, and the UK university system works? I'm familiar with what A levels are, and that you supposedly apply to a particular college at each of Oxford and Cambridge, but then I hear about university-wide "departments", and I put that in my American-style mental model. Googling hasn't helped me, but perhaps I'm being unimaginative in sear…
Oxford and Cambridge are a bit different from most UK universities. The college system is orthogonal to subject-specific departments. A college provides accommodation, social support. Academic staff are also associated with a college, and teach students from that college in small group tutorials. Lectures however tend to be organised by department rather than by colleges.
As students become more specialised, or if their college doesn't have many professors in their particular subject, they may have tutorials with academics in other colleges.