ELAT, 2x interviews
Interview 1: discussion of pre-reading, personal statement and submitted essays Interview 2: discussion of a poem, personal statement and submitted essays
Re-reading texts mentioned on personal statement, and watching advisory YouTube videos
Past papers and watching YouTube videos
Try to relax after the interviews and not overthink everything you said
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.
Test taken:
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: A couple of hours
Length of interviews: Around 40 minutes
Online interview: Yes
Both interviews made reference to my personal statements and submitted essays. The first interview focused on an extract I had read 20 minutes before the interview, while the second involved me reading and analysing a poem on the spot. I found the latter particularly difficult, as I had never experienced anything like it.
I re-read every text/source/essay I referenced in my personal statement to strengthen my confidence, and nervously binged a lot of advisory YouTube videos. I wish I'd had the resources to conduct a practice interview, as being from a large state school meant I had little experience with
Analysing extracts from past papers and watching a lot of advisory YouTube videos.
I couldn't believe my interviewers were so kind and chatty. I had expected a very sterile, stuffy conversation in which my every action was loudly critiqued, so if I could tell myself that the interviewers were real people who would actually be quite nice to talk to, it would have helped me relax!
I put an intense amount of pressure on myself to ace the interviews, and remember physically shaking as I clicked to join the call -