History Admissions Assessment (HAA); 2x interview
Interview 1: submitted essays; Interview 2: discussing a given text
Revised A Level topics
Practice papers
Try to relax 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.
Test taken:
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 1 hour
Length of interviews: 20 minutes
Online interview: No
My first interview focused mainly on my submitted essays. We talked through them, with the interviewers challenging some of the things I had written, meaning I had to either modify or defend what I had written. The final 5 minutes were spent discussing my personal statement.
My second interview was mainly about a text I was given to read and annotate beforehand. We also briefly spoke about my personal statement.
I revised my A Level topics as I’d taken a gap year. I studied and discussed with a teacher the essays that I submitted. I did some extra reading around the topics in my personal statement.
Practice papers
Try your best to be relaxed during the interview itself. They’re not looking for a right or wrong answer, so as long as you can be confident in yourself and back up your ideas, you’ll be fine.