Undergraduate interview and portfolio submission process

For the current admissions cycle, candidates who are invited to attend an interview for our undergraduate Art courses at the University of Reading will be offered the opportunity to attend either an on-campus interview or an online interview. Candidates who are invited to attend an interview will also be required to provide a portfolio of their work. 

Eligible candidates for our undergraduate Art courses will receive an interview invitation via email, which will contain instructions on how to book a date for their interview. Further information about the interview process, including details on how to prepare and submit a portfolio, is provided on this page. 

If you choose to attend an on-campus interview, please bring with you a physical portfolio of your work, including sketchbooks or anything else you use to think and plan your work. Large scale and 3-dimensional work should be represented photographically. Please bring your own laptop, tablet, or phone to show video, digital, or sound works, or send us an online link before the date of your interview by emailing the School of Art.

After your 30-minute interview, you will have the opportunity to join a tour of the School of Art's studios and workshops with one of our current students, and explore the wider campus. 

Where will the on-campus interview session take place?

The on-campus interview will take place at the School of Art, which is located near the Pepper Lane entrance to the Whiteknights campus at the University of Reading. The School of Art is Building number 310 on the Whiteknights campus map, next to car park 11.

We would advise you to travel to the University by public transport, where possible, as limited parking is available on campus.

If you are able to find an available space to park on campus, please collect a parking permit from the main office within the School of Art on arrival and display it prominently in your car windscreen for the duration of your visit.

Alternatively, Car Park 1A is a visitors Pay & Display car park, which is located near the Shinfield Road entrance to the Whiteknights campus. Currently, it costs £1.50 per hour to use Pay & Display parking in Car Park 1A, which is approximately a 10-minute walk from the School of Art.

The sat nav postcode for the Pepper Lane and Shinfield Road entrances to the Whiteknights campus is RG6 6UR.

If you choose to attend an online interview, please send a digital portfolio of your work to the Admissions Support team no later than 48 hours before your interview.   

Please note the following information regarding digital portfolio submissions: 

• All portfolio images should be arranged into one single PowerPoint or PDF file, and not as separate files/folders. You can save images as viewable onscreen, rather than print quality to help manage file size.
• If you have a website containing a portfolio of your work, you can send us the link to your website.
• Please ensure that all images are clearly captioned with the name of the artist (including yourself), title of work, media, date, and dimensions of each piece, and any other relevant information, such as work in progress or preparatory sketch.

The online interview will take place via Microsoft Teams, which is the platform used by the University for remote communication. 

Closer to the date of your interview (around two days before the date of your interview), you will receive a Microsoft Teams meeting invitation via email.

Once you have received the email, please follow the steps listed below:

• Open the email containing the Microsoft Teams meeting invitation and select "Yes" to accept. 
• Once you have accepted the meeting invitation, you will need to open your email calendar to access it. Please go to the date and time of your interview in your email calendar to locate the meeting invitation, and click to open it. 
• On the day of your interview, please open the meeting invitation in your email calendar and select the “Click here to join this meeting” link to join your online interview at the appropriate time. 

Please note, occasionally, our emails could arrive in your junk/spam folder. We therefore recommend that you check your junk/spam folder on a regular basis for emails relating to your online interview.

If I am applying for a joint honours degree, will I also be interviewed by the other subject’s department?

No, you will have just one interview in the Art department, in which we will ask you to discuss your interest in the other subject.

I have not studied Art A Level / post-16; how should I prepare my portfolio?

If you have studied other creative subjects such as Textiles, Photography, Film, Design, or Media, etc, do include selected works you have made in these, as well as any independent art, design, or craft projects.

Many museums and galleries put on free or subsidised art and making workshops at weekends, often in relation to specific exhibitions, which you could attend to develop portfolio material and which can provide interesting discussion points for interview. Also check whether there are evening drawing, ceramics, or other making classes in your area, often as part of a subsidised local authority offer; this can be a great way to build up skills.

If you studied Art at GCSE level, you may include a few pieces from this; but we really also want to see examples of recent work.

Other suggestions for economical art making:

• make collages
• create a work from the contents of a bag, or cupboard
• draw the backs of heads on your journey to school or work
• make prints using vegetables
• create papier mâché sculptures
• try drawing in the dark, with your teeth, with charcoal tied to the end of a stick
• photograph all the white shoes you see in one day
• write a series of instructions for other people, paint the words.

Is there a minimum number of pieces to include in my portfolio?

There is no set amount of work to include and not all the work needs to be completed projects. You could also include sketches, research, and material experiments. We recommend that you try and show at least one example for each of the portfolio preparation guidelines.