History @ St John's, Cambridge in 2018

Interview format

History Admissions Assessment (HAA); 3x interviews

Interview content

Interview 1: general interests; Interview 2: submitted essays, source analysis; Interview 3: personal statement

Best preparation

Read and annotated articles

Test preparation

Practised source analysis

Final thoughts

You don't have to know everything to do well in the interview!

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: History Admissions Assessment (HAA)
Number of interviews: 3
Time between interviews: 1 hour
Length of interviews: 30 minutes
Online interview: No

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

My first interview was very much about me as a person, what I enjoyed as a person and why I chose the subject, just introductory questions and not very academic.

My second interview was about the essays that I submitted and also some brief source analysis work. This was interesting and there were no right and wrong answers, it was more about your thoughts than anything.

My third interview was more about my personal statement and led on to discussion on broad themes like architecture and ideologies which was also quite interesting. The rooms were very comfy looking and not at all formal and each interview had two interviewers although they asked you questions separately.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

I went over essays I had to submit prior to interviews, I went over personal statement and did quite a few interview practices with teachers from school. I read articles and annotated them with my thoughts and went over my reading journal every so often to make sure I had my facts right.

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

Practice papers from both Oxford and Cambridge, source analysis work on articles.

What advice would you give to future applicants?

Don't stress! I definitely over-prepared for the interview because I thought it would be like an exam, but it really is just a conversation about the subject you love. Of course go over content and facts you know but you don't have to know every historian or every single British politician ever to be able to talk to them. Have fun with it!