Congratulations on getting the interview. Because of your negative view, there is a real risk that *if* the process goes no further, then you will make wrong assumptions about the reasons. It could be as simple as PhD preferred and that gives the others a head start.

You say that there is no point in asking for feed back, and also say your name is mud at that institution. Ask for feedback. There is nothing to lose, they might say something to help and at worst ... well, can it get worse? You have mentally crossed that uni off your list of possibles. There is nothing to lose.

If you find the table settings seem to change all by themselves, one way is to convert them to pictures.
Be aware - this creates new issues for you to manage. You can't just edit the picture. It is important that you keep the tables in a new word document so you can edit them if required.

Copy table and paste into the new document, and save.
In your thesis document: Paste special the table using format "Picture Enhanced Metafile"
Do not include the table caption in the picture or it will not appear in the table of figures, list of tables, or what ever you call that list.

Another source of excel help is http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/. There are some really clever people there,

Yep, there are different concerns at different stages

Have a look at Pocket. You can open folders for different aspects of your research, and save all online articles into appropriate folder, and write a tag on each article to remind you why it was relevant

If you were editing a book with chapters written by various authors, then the solution is easy - each one stands alone. In your situation with one author writing one thesis, I would be inclined to keep the reference list to the end. What does your supervisor say?