I had two interviews. One electrical one (one interviewer) and one mechanical one (two interviewers). Both interviews were focused on technical questions rather than work experience and personal questions.

Before the mechanical interview I was given a pack of 11 questions to go through and had to pick one I wanted to talk about in the interview.

I had an hour to go over the booklet and I think the interviews were about 30-40 mins.

The booklet was really chill. There were lots of people in the room preparing for different subjects and it was a relaxed atmosphere. The questions were basic A-Level questions and a broad range of physics / applied maths topics (mechanics, circuits).

All my interviewers were very friendly – that almost threw me off. The electrical interview started with a basics circuits question and stepped through with the difficulty. We also did some maths questions. One question was on the official Cambridge example interview video so that helped. The interviewer got me to talk through as I analysed each question. He was really nice and guided me through the parts I didn’t know or got wrong.

In fact, the most stressful part of the day was finding my mechanics interview (I wasn’t given a map or student helper to find them and got lost a few times). Again the interviewers were really nice and both kept joking with each other. I was asked to was shown a musical object and asked to speak about it. We then went through my booklet but it turns out I had misread the question and answered the wrong thing. He was fine about it. We redid the the analysis and he asked some questions about the principles and ideas. Finally we talked a little bit about my work experience and personal statement.

The best preperation was isaacphysics.org and i-want-to-study-engineering.org . At first their questions seemed easy but they become harder and knowing I had done them settled my nerves on interview day.

I came with my school to a few Cambridge open days. They were really good as an opportunity to get to know the colleges. It was nice to be familiar with Corpus in before the interview and there’s a chance you’ll meet some of the people interviewing you in advance.

I had my Imperial interview just before so that was really helpful in terms of getting used to talking though technical questions. My school did mock interviews too which were good.

I read engineering books which wasn’t that helpful but it was a nice confidence boost / backup for the interview.

I didn’t find it that useful talking to current students except about picking colleges.That was very helpful because at school you value different things in a college than what you actually care about when you’re here. Each college has a different character and the best way to find that is by speaking to students, and coming here multiple times to walk around and see the place.

I made stupid mistakes but I think the biggest thing is how you deal with them. Sometimes interviewers will ask if you’re sure about something you’ve said. I think it’s important how quickly you pick up on that and accept you may need to reconsider your approach.

I think it’s tough. At school you are used to always doing well but at Cambridge you get used to not knowing how to do all your work. I think you see that in the interviews too.