Arts-Humanities Admissions Assessment; 2x interviews
Interview 1: general, personal statement; Interview 2: subject-specific, thinking about history
Have a motto prepared to think of if you get stuck.
Reviewed past papers with a friend.
Arrive in plenty of time!
Remember this advice isn't official. There is no guarantee it will reflect your experience because university applications can change between years. Check the official Cambridge and Oxford websites for more accurate information on this year's application format and the required tests.
Also, someone else's experience may not reflect your own. Most interviews are more like conversations than tests and like, any conversation, they are quite interactive.
Test taken: Arts-Humanities Admissions Assessment (AHAA)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 20-30 minutes
Length of interviews: 30-40 minutes
Online interview: No
Both of my interviews focused heavily on my personal statement (I had a general interview and a subject interview). My degree subject is part language, part literature, and part history, and since I didn’t do A-Level History (instead took French, German, and English Lit), both interviews pushed me to think about that in depth - but only at the end of the interview. The interviewers were incredibly friendly, patient, and cheerful throughout, and both started off within my comfort zone (i.e. leaning heavily on what I had in my personal statement) and then gradually pushing me further and further with more challenging questions. But it was so gradual, it didn’t feel like a challenge or a test anymore; just a friendly discussion.
I sought advice from my
From a post-interview perspective though - teachers, especially if not familiar with how interviews at Oxbridge work, may advise you based on rumour or stereotype. Horror stories about how badly things can go wrong and how much they will try to test you. The trick: they aren’t testing how much you know - they’re trying to find out what you will be like to teach. Practice saying/explaining your thought processes aloud when doing homework or solving problems; get used to walking people through how you approach difficult questions or things you aren’t familiar with. If you can nail that, it’ll be a breeze.
Past papers, reviewing them with a friend to help each other improve on the things that we got wrong
Give yourself plenty of time when you arrive to find your way to and around the college! I arrived about ten minutes before my first interview and was very tired and out of breath when it started. Hold your head high, take deep breaths, find something beforehand that helps you keep calm and practice that in your interview (could be a motto to repeat in your head, could be a memory that inspires or motivates, could be having something to fiddle with to release nervous energy i.e. a hair tie - I promise the inteviewers are more interested in what you say than whether or not you're fiddling! They know you’re nervous!).