History Admissions Assessment (HAA); 2x interview.
Interview 1: personal statement. Interview 2; pre-interview article
Practice communicating ideas with clarity; listen to podcasts.
Practice papers; A-Level sources
It is not how much you have read, but how you reflect on what you have read. Make links. Be comfortable, and that leads to confidence.
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: History Admissions Assessment
Number of interviews: 2
Length of interviews: 30mins
I had two interviews: one was on my personal statement and one was on a twenty page article I had been sent a few weeks before.
For my personal statement interview it mainly focused on my EPQ.
For the interview on the article I was sent I printed it out and annotated it in advance and was allowed to bring this to the interview itself. I also summarised the key points in bullet points on the front cover. They are *not* assessing you on your knowledge of the period- that’s why they pick a random article. What they will look for is how you identify what sources the historian uses, from what angle they are writing (e.g. Marxist, Feminist) and how they structure their argument- maybe by setting it up against previous scholarship. Don’t be afraid of extrapolating but make it clear this is only a potential reading if you lack the background in the period. It is good to note how the article takes a similar approach or contrast other history you have read- even on a different period.
I spoke to my history teacher and asked him to do a
I also found it useful to listen to the 'In Our Time' history programme to expand on the sort of history I interacted with.
I thought about how my other subjects interacted with history. For example, how the books I studied in English Literature were informed by historical events and the contemporary politics they spoke to.
For one of my interviews I got sent a source in advance- so I printed this out and spent time annotating it and summarising the key points on paper. I also tried to explain its argument to someone who knew nothing about the topic. Clarity is really important- your interviewer may be a medievalist and not know much about, say, a modern period you have studied. That does not put you at a disadvantage- what you need to be able to do is communicate ideas clearly, and be able to argue, backing up any claims you make.
I prepared with practice papers and by doing source questions from A-Level papers on topics I had not studied, to practice responding to sources without context. I also looked on the Cambridge history faculty website for advice on responding to sources and they had a few examples there.
There is no set thing you need to know for history- in the tripos you get choice over the papers you take and what period they cover.