English @ Clare, Cambridge in 2019

Interview format

English Literature Admissions Test (ELAT); 2x interviews

Interview content

Interview 1: unseen passages; Interview 2: discussion of recent reading

Best preparation

Read critical articles about recently read texts

Test preparation

Practised ELAT papers to time

Final thoughts

Trying to cram ideas into your head is less useful than being relaxed and able to think clearly

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: English Literature Admissions Test (ELAT)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 4 hours
Length of interviews: 30 minutes
Online interview: No

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

Both interviews started with questions on passages of text - I had been given them a few minutes before and had a chance to read and annotate them a bit, and I had been told in advance to expect passages. The second half of each interview, done by the other person of pair interviewing me (each of my interviews was with two people at the same time) was a discussion about texts from my 'recently read' lists - these were mainly based on single texts, but a couple were comparative questions. I was only asked about one of my A Level texts, which I had mentioned in my personal statement as well. Overall, out of approximately 15 texts which they realistically could have asked about, we only had in depth conversations about 4/5 total, a couple in each interview - and when I started running out of things to say, they either prompted me or changed to a different text rather than leaving me to struggle.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

Over the weekend before my interview, I re-read the majority of my A-level English notes, as well as finishing a coursework draft (conveniently the deadline was the day before my interview) so I was prepared to talk about anything in my A Level. I also searched online to find critical articles about the books I had said I had recently read (I had to submit a list about a month before) in order to be prepared to discuss those texts. Essentially, I just did a decent amount of reading around the texts that were likely to come up

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

Practised ELAT papers (accessed online), got feedback on a couple from teacher but also did about six others which were just useful practice for timing etc.

What advice would you give to future applicants?

Don't over-stress about preparing for every possible text they might ask you about - ultimately, anything you study in your school course, you probably know far better than you think anyway, and anything recently read you won't have forgotten. Also, don't stress on the day of interviews - I was really stressing before my first interview, but then I just realised that there was no point, certainly for a subject like English, trying to cram ideas into your head is less useful than being relaxed and able to think clearly on the spot.