Hi,

I applied for a PhD in English Literature and also for funding, and just had an interview this Tuesday. It was my first PhD interview and the project is proposed by me. I looked up all the questions that might be asked during a PhD interview (i.e. tell me about yourself, why are you the right candidate, weaknesses and strengths, why this project) and prepared for them, but on the day they dove straight into my project and asked me very detailed questions about the novels I want to work on (which of course doing a Master's I didn't have much time to think about them that far). So I was completely unprepared for this. But I managed to answer most of their questions. I said most because I couldn't answer two of them (I haven't read two out of five of the novels I said I would do my project on) and because I gave a wrong answer to one of their questions.

So my questions are I don't know whether it's normal that interviewers would focus only on the candidates' projects and nothing else and whether the fact that I couldn't answer some of their questions is bad and shows that I haven't thought about the project properly. If you guys have similar experience and are happy to share it with me, I'd be really grateful. It would really calm me down because I think the interview went really badly. Many thanks!