Test taken: Engineering Admissions Assessment (ENGAA)

Number of interviews: 3

Skype interview: no

Time between interviews: two in one morning, the third the next day

Length of first interview: 30 minutes; Length of second interview: 30 minutes; Length of third interview: 10 minutes

My first two interviews were very much focused on the content of the course, asking me mostly questions that were comparable to the ones asked at A-Level, with the occasional question thrown in from the first year of the course. While I was being asked questions, the style of the interview was quite informal, with the questions forming more of a general discussion about the content.

The third interview was more about myself and my general interests and activities outside of my study, and was a much more relaxed and informal discussion.

To prepare for the test I tried lots of ENGAA past/practice papers available on the Engineering department website, then worked through my answers with the mark schemes to work out where I went wrong, and to learn about the questions that I did not know how to answer.

To prepare for the interviews, my school organised a few practice interviews with previous cambridge students, teachers, and other parents at the school who could help. I also organised a few myself with other family friends.

While these were helpful at building my confidence, they did little to prepare me for how informal the interviews were, and were either too academic, focusing on difficult questions, or were too much of a discussion about why I wanted to take the course.

Looking back I would advise myself to spend less time worrying about what I should say if I were to be asked questions like 'Why do you want to take this course?' and 'Who is your biggest inspiration?' as this caused my lots of unnecessary worry. For me, this style of question did not come up as the interviews were a much more informal discussion, where pre-prepared answers would not have been useful.