Written and oral tests; 3x interviews
Interview 1: personal statement, reasons for applying; Interview 2: submitted essays; Interview 3: using analytical skills to answer questions
Identified why the subject particularly appealed
Started learning basic Latin grammar
Explore ongoing debates about Classical issues
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: Prelims classics language aptitude test, written and oral
Number of interviews: 3
Time between interviews: A few hours
Length of interviews: 1 hour
Online interview: No
For my first interview, it was more of a personality interview, with lots of discussion about my personal statement, why I picked the college, what I wanted to contribute to college life.
My second one was subject-based so it was focused on my submitted essays and my reading around the interview that I mentioned. It was a lot more fun.
My third was at another college and that was far more analytical of my skills within the subject. That was probably the most difficult interview of them all, as it made me do some analysis of material I had never seen before.
The language aptitude test was a little nerve-wracking, but so long as you read diligently, it is fine. The oral part of the test was actually quite a bit of fun, as I just got to talk about grammar with someone who was just as interested in it as I was.
I read and reread my personal statement so I could answer any questions they had - I was super surprised at how much of my interview was purely based off the content of my personal statement. I wrote up some questions to ask the interviewers at the end. I really tried to be friendly and I made a couple of jokes about my nerves or the college I was in to lighten the mood. I really thought through the miniscule details as to why I wanted to do Classics, and why I picked that college (even though I am at a different one now which I adore). When they asked me for my ideas, I didn't just cite off the most recent introduction I had read, but I really tried to give an opinion of my own that I could back up. When they used my submitted essays for comparative questions on the texts I had mentioned in my personal statement, I didn't focus as much on detail but more on interpretation of the details I picked.
I looked up different terminology used in Latin grammar texts, started learning the bare basics of Latin morphology and read a couple of the most famous classical texts like the Odyssey and Iliad.
Do some reading on schools of thought within Classics to help give you an idea of what people are still debating to this day, and where there are gaps in all our knowledge. The interviewers surprised me with some archaeology stuff which I had never done before, so I wish I had spent a tiny bit of time just looking at what the archaeological discussion was at the time.