My interviews were in early December. Since they started relatively early and I had a way to travel I came up with my mum the day before and stayed the night in a hotel [Editor's Note: most colleges will provide 1 night's accomodation for free]. Looking back, this was a really good idea because it meant I could concentrate completely on preparing for the interviews.

The next day I arrived at the college and signed in where I was given a map, schedule, and a poem to read through (in Latin) which I was told would be covered in my first interview.

The first two interviews were in the morning with a short gap between them. These were both with two college fellows. I then had a timed written test (one hour) which involved translating a passage of Latin into English. After this I had a bit of a wait until my third and final interview which was at another college (Homerton). This also involved talking with two of the college fellows.

In my first interview we discussed the poem that I had been given to read through (I had had half an hour of reading time). They first asked to translate it for them and they asked me a few questions about the content. Then they asked me questions about my personal statement and one of the written pieces that I had submitted. We discussed a few other topics that were linked to these two things.

My second interview followed mostly the same structure in that they asked about my personal statement and the other piece of written work. I was pretty nervous in both of these interviews and had to do some guesswork with the questions but they mostly allowed me to make mistakes and figure out what I was saying.

In my last interview they had only been given my personal statement so we talked about that and then the interviewer asked me to translate a section of Greek. We went through it slowly and she let me think it through as I went. At the end of all of the interviews they asked me if I wanted to talk about anything else or if I had any questions.

Whenever I wasn't doing school work I tried to make good use of my time by listening to radio podcasts about different topics of classics (mostly In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg). This meant I was constantly thinking about Classics and it helped me explore topics I hadn't thought about before. If I found an area of the subject particularly interesting I would try and read more about it and make notes so that I could talk about it if it came up or weave it into an answer. I did lots of translations and made sure I knew my grammar really well because I knew that the written test would be important. I also did a few mock interviews with my teachers so that I knew roughly what to expect.

Just remember that you're sitting down with people who love the same subject as you and who have devoted their lives to studying it. This is a really exciting opportunity and you should try and get the most out of it that you can, regardless of what the outcome is.