See if You Can Solve Oxford University's 'Ladder Problem'

The interview questions can vary dramatically depending on your field of study, and Oxford helpfully provides a few examples of what an interviewee might expect to encounter. When it comes to math majors, for instance, they highlight a particularly challenging word problem:

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 color 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?

In the 2016 article that accompanied the example, one of Oxford's tutors provides some context about what they hope this type of problem will reveal about the candidate. "This question tests whether you can do what mathematicians do, which is to abstract away all the unimportant information and use mathematics to represent whats going on," writes R ebecca Cotton-Barratt, PhD , a lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church College.

Cotton-Barratt goes on to say she might initially ask the candidate what shape will be formed, and how they'd test the hypothesis. A candidate might try sketching the ladder, for instancebut you can't be sure that your drawing is accurate. Eventually, they need to prove their answer using math equations.

"If they get stuck we would ask them what shape the ladder makes with the wall and floor, and theyll eventually spot that at each stage the ladder is forming a right-angled triangle," Cotton-Barratt says. "Some might then immediately leap to Pythagoras Theorem and use that to find the answer (which is that it forms a quarter circle centered on the point where the floor meets the wall)."

If that's still unclearand we can't blame you if it iswatch this video from mathematician Presh Talwalkar, the man behind the popular math and science blog MindYourDecisions, who breaks it all down with the help of a visual aid: