Engineering @ Pembroke, Cambridge in 2019

Interview format

Engineering Admissions Assessment; 2x interviews.

Interview content

Both interviews: subject-related problem sets.

Best preparation

Revising A Level content, knowing your personal statement, talking through the solutions of A Level problems.

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: Engineering Admissions Assessment (ENGAA)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 4 hours
Length of interviews: 30 minutes
Online interview: No

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

Both interviews pretty much entirely involved working through problems set by the interviewer. I'd either know how to approach it straight away, or I'd have to just start by talking about what I knew from the question and what I had to work out. When I got stuck on questions the interviewer would give small hints or say something like 'look at this part again' or 'what can you apply from X topic?'

How did you prepare for your interviews?

Reading my A Level content was probably the most useful thing.

I spent a fair amount of time looking over my personal statement and making sure I was confident talking about the books I mentioned but that was ultimately not useful, probably would have been better to practice talking through problems that were A Level standard and making sure I could coherently explain each step of the solutions.

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

practice papers timed, lots of practice physics questions

What advice would you give to future applicants?

Go for it! I was very tempted not to apply because it seemed like such a big process with small chances of getting in, but I'm so glad I did.