Engineering @ Trinity, Cambridge in 2018

Interview format

ENGAA; 2x interviews

Interview content

Interview 1: Reviewing answers to problem sets; Interview 2: Discussing new subject-related concepts

Best preparation

Practice papers - useful for time management

Advice in hindsight

-

Final thoughts

Show your teachability and dedication to your subject

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

Skype interview: no

Time between interviews: 1 hour

Length of first interview: 20 minutes; Length of second interview: 20 minutes

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

We firstly had to sit a physics and maths style test, then the first interview was sitting with the interviewer going through the answers with you straight after you had taken that test, focusing on the ones you had completed and were more confident on first.

The second interview involved talking through a different type of concept applied to my existing A-Level knowledge; we were trying to talk through different ideas for that concept.

There was no mention of my personal statement or my application in either interview.

How did you prepare?

ENGAA practice papers, some PAT (Physics Aptitude Test) papers

I believe my preparation did make a bit of difference, especially with time management on the ENGAA assessment.

What advice do you have for future applicants?

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

The interview test wasn't meant to be revised for and I don't think that if I had done any preparation for that, that it would have helped at all, given the questions were in a different sort of style to anything else I'd seen before, designed to push you.

I think my expectations were that I'd be grilled on my personal statement and asked about that to no end, so I was surprised to find that they didn't do that at all. I think that in the sciences especially, the focus is on how well you'd fit in with the teaching style and how dedicated you are to your subject instead of how much work experience you've done or how many societies you joined in school.