What is the most important thing to bear in mind when approaching the entry exams or the interviews?

Having done it myself and experienced a year of teaching this year, it is very clear that the most important thing to do is answer the question that is being asked of you. It will do you no good to provide any information that is irrelevant to the question because they will view this as a misunderstanding of the question, or an inability to answer it; if I were to be asked what is the significance of freewill for the surrounding morality debate, then it does not matter how much I know about determinism, it will not help me in answering the question. In the case of interviews and entrance exams it is not expected that you have knowledge about anything in particular; they are looking for your reasoning and analysis skills. There are some very simple and easy ways to ensure that you show these. The most important thing to do is read the question very carefully and critically. This means more than simply just reading every word; it means that you should consider every word and what it means to work out exactly what this question is asking you to address, and whether there could be any ambiguity in the question that should be dealt with to ensure the question is answered fully. Then your answer should be formed on the inferences you have made; if there is a definition of a word that is important to the interpretation of the question then clarify it (commenting if there could be more than one interpretation and how this might affect the response). Then, at the end of every argument presented, it is important that you explain its relevance back to the question so there is no doubt of the relevance of what you have done. If you cannot do this for an idea/piece of information or evidence, then you should not include it in your response because you can not show how it refers to the question so are not doing what they asked you to do.