Chemical Engineering @ Magdalene, Cambridge in 2018

Interview format

Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment; 2x interviews

Interview content

Interview 1: personal statement, tackling a given question; Interview 2: chemistry questions

Best preparation

Chemistry Olympiad questions

Final thoughts

Take your time while answering questions!

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.

Interview Format

Test taken: Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 4 hours
Length of interviews: 30 mins
Online interview: No

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

Interview 1: Interviewed by two Chemical Engineers. Questions were largely conceptual engineering (mostly but not limited to) chemical engineering, including discussing things I mentioned in my personal statement. A single question that required working on paper was asked. The interview was very relaxed with both interviewers being quite friendly. There didn't feel like there was a lot of pressure in it.

Interview 2: Interviewed by a Chemist and a Materials scientist. The Chemist asked me first some questions with a lot of the content being based on A Level Chemistry. The Materials scientist then asked a much more difficult question where he demonstrated a fairly unfamiliar method for solving a maths question, and then asked me how to do it for a slightly different scenario.

The interviewers helped me a lot more in this interview as the problems were a lot more conceptually difficult. There was more of a feeling of being rushed as it was towards the end of the day and the interviewers were clearly tired, despite still having more people to interview.

How did you prepare?

I prepared for the test mostly though doing past papers under exam conditions. Chemistry Olympiad past paper questions are a good preparation for section 2 chemistry questions.

The main way I prepared for the interview was through doing a mock interview with some friends of my teachers. While the style of question was quite different, it did help prepare me to answer questions under pressure when and get used to explaining my thinking out loud. An interview the week before at Imperial also gave me some practice, although the questions were significantly easier.

The only other preparation that was of use was re-reading my personal statement and making sure I was able to recall things I mentioned in it.

Looking back, what advice would you give to your past self?

Taking my time while answering the questions would have helped me more, but its invaluable to ask for help if you're struggling and to explain how you're thinking.