Thinking Skills Assessment (TSA); 1x interview
Interview 1: reasons for applying, maths questions
A Level Critical Thinking past papers
Be prepared to show evidence of your interests within the subject
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:
Number of interviews: 1
Length of interviews: 30 minutes
Online interview: No
I walked in and was greeted in a friendly manner by the interviewer. The interviewer briefly explained how the interview would be structured and then dived straight into asking me about why I wanted to study engineering. I referred to a particular example I spoke about in my personal statement and the interviewer then prompted me to explain the example in more depth by drawing a diagram. This whole stage took about half the duration of the interview.
In the second half, I was asked a standard mathematical question which I found a bit tricky, but managed to work through with the help of the interviewer. The interviewer then asked if I had any questions. I asked the interviewer if they could give me another technical question as I thought I could do better than I did before. I was lucky that the interviewer humored me and gave me another question. This one did go a lot better, however the interviewer made it clear that the result of the interview wouldn't be based specifically on how many questions I answered correctly.
I found it useful to look through A Level Critical Thinking past papers.
Practice for technical interviews. Be extremely clear about why you want to study the subject of the course you are applying to. Be prepared to qualify your motivations with genuine examples of things you have read/done that prove you have an interest in the area. The best thing I did was after reading an interesting engineering article about a new medical device, I emailed the academic who wrote the article with some questions and was lucky enough to get a response that helped clarify and augment my initial understanding. Speaking to real academics/professionals that have gone through the course you are applying is something I found useful.