Engineering @ Christ's, Cambridge in 2018

Interview format

ENGAA; STEP; 2x interviews

Interview content

Interview 1: personal statement, engineering generally, working through questions; Interview 2: specific engineering questions

Best preparation

Past papers!

Advice in hindsight

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Final thoughts

Practice interviews

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), STEP

Number of interviews: 2

Skype interview: no

Time between interviews: 2 hours

Length of first interview: 30 minutes; Length of second interview: 30 minutes

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

In my first interview we discussed my personal statement and interest in engineering. We then had a conversation about engineering in society which then focused on green energy problems/solutions. The interviewers gave me control over what to discuss instead of presenting a conversation topic. We then did two written maths/physics problems.

The second interview was very similar but focused more on discussing engineering problems and less on personal statement.

How did you prepare?

Practice using past papers

What advice do you have for future applicants?

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

The best form of preparation for me was doing practice interviews (with teachers/parents etc). I also did a lot of practice questions. The interview contained a lot less about my personal statement and what I have and haven't done than I expected, and was more focused on how I thought about questions.