2x interviews (30 mins each)
Extended maths and physics questions; problem solving focus
Use resources to find example interview questions
Think out loud about what you're doing and why
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.
I had two separate half-hour interviews during a single morning in the December interview session. Each time I was with two college
Because I was travelling a significant distance from home to the interviews, I arrived the day before and stayed in a college student room overnight. The college provided all the food and accommodation, though
Both my interviews only contained extended maths and physics questions: there were no questions based on reading around the subject, or why I wanted to apply for this college and subject. I was told that the purpose was to see how I went about problem solving, and whether I would suit the teaching environment at Cambridge.
We worked through about four extended questions in each interview, mainly using the content I had covered in A level. “Working through” is a good description: it wasn’t simply them asking a question, then sitting in silence while I worked it out. We had a conversation, where I gave ideas on how to solve the problem and they either encouraged me to go ahead or suggested alternative approaches.
The questions all took roughly the same amount of time to do and covered a wide variety of areas: curve sketching, momentum, perfect gas laws, electrical circuits, structures and conservation of energy. For some of them (particularly the electrical questions) I was taught new methods to solve the problem during the interview and asked to understand and apply them.
All the questions were similar to those given on http://i-want-to-study-engineering.org/, and I would strongly recommend working through plenty of these before the interview.
Far and away the best preparation was working through as many of the interview questions on http://i-want-to-study-engineering.org/ as possible. These are much more similar to interview style engineering questions than anything that comes up in A level exams. Being familiar with this type of trickier, more thought-provoking question made the interview much easier.
I think the most important thing in a good interview is to vocalise your thought processes. The fellows want to see how you think and learn, so don't sit there in silence: explain what you're thinking and why you're thinking it throughout the interviews.