Abstract This article explores how candidates discuss cultural topics that overlap with their sociocultural background during the Cambridge undergraduate admissions interviews, an academic gatekeeping encounter. On the one hand, discussion of this kind can be a source of epistemic authority for these candidates. On the other hand, such an affordance does not insulate them from the intercultural phenomena we see attested in other encounters, such as job interviews. Candidates may attempt to signal likeminded sociocultural values to their interviewers, typically by disassociating themselves from the stigmatic aspects of their sociocultural background. Less commonly, interviewers may also engage in foreignizing behaviour. Interactional data from three interviews are used to exemplify how the imbrication of interculturality and institutional power patterns out in different ways, and how this impacts the evaluative outcomes of the candidates in question.