Product Description

'What happens if I drop an ant'? 'What books are bad for you'? 'What percentage of the world's water is contained in a cow'? The Oxbridge undergraduate interviews are infamous for their unique ways of assessing candidates, and from these peculiar enquiries, professors can tell just how smart you really are. John Farndon has collected together 75 of the most intriguing questions taken from actual admission interviews and gives full answers to each, taking the reader through the fascinating histories, philosophies, sciences and arts that underlie each problem. This is a book for everyone who likes to think they're clever, or who thinks they'd like to be clever. And cleverness is not just knowing stuff, it's how laterally, deeply and interestingly you can bend your brain. Guesstimating the population of Croydon, for example, opens a chain of thought from which you can predict the strength of a nuclear bomb ...and that's just the start of it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1183 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Review
'As well as putting your most smug relatives to the test, this book is an entertaining way of encouraging unusual thought and debate' --The Oldie

'Test your knowledge and see where you rank in relation to the nation's elite with this light-hearted and informative quiz book. Featuring actual questions taken from undergraduate admissions interviews' --Woman and Home

About the Author
John Farndon graduated from Jesus College, Cambridge with a degree in English Literature. Libby Purves OBE is a radio presenter, journalist and author. Best known for presenting BBC Radio Four's Midweek, she also writes regularly for The Times and has published twelve novels. She is a graduate of St Anne's College, Oxford, with a First in English Language and Literature.

Customer Reviews

Very entertaining
There are a whole lot of guides for sale on how to get into Oxbridge, but this isn't really one of them. It's not that it won't help you, but it's a whole lot more entertaining than that.

There are a lot of myths about the Oxbridge entrance procedures, a lot of them true (somehow I made it into Cambridge, so I know). But the greatest myth is that the questions they ask are somehow impossibly esoteric and unanswerable. In truth, the questions they ask relate to the subjects they teach, and test not just intellectual rigour, but intellectual curiosity.

This book will appeal to the intellectually curious. The rigour is there in the hands of the author, who has covered an impressive amount of ground in researching and contemplating the answers to interview questions from across the spectrum of subjects. (A quick Amazon search, and you'll see he's pretty well qualified to do so.) For every question, taken from real interview, you get a quick few pages' worth of insight.

This is fun, just for the drama of seeing the question, thinking, "God, how would I answer that", and then rolling on to a reassuringly clear and well thought out response, and then wondering, "could I ever have come up with that?". Always interesting, always entertaining, this is highly recommended. (And a good gift for anyone who might be applying.)

I'm starting to think...
This isn't just a book for Oxbridge hopefuls. It's great for anyone with an inquiring mind who likes the idea of firing intelligent comebacks to some of the most bizarre, interesting, and loaded questions that the Varsity's finest have come up with.

There's lots of fun to be had posing the challenging questions to friends and seeing how they cope. And John Farndon's conversational, often humorous tone keeps the book light enough to hold your interest without losing any of its sharpness. Reading `Do You Think You're Clever?' made me think that if I could answer just one of the abstract questions even half as well as the author, then I'd be very pleased with myself - perhaps even smug enough to answer an immodest `yes' to the title question!

x2 books presents for xmas
bought online , saved on postage v. prompt delivery. Bought for present so unopened as yet. many thanks