History @ Fitzwilliam, Cambridge in 2019

Interview format

History Admissions Assessment (HAA); 2x interview

Interview content

Interview 1: submitted essays; Interview 2: discussing a given text

Best preparation

Revised A Level topics

Test preparation

Practice papers

Final thoughts

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.

Interview Format

Test taken: History Admissions Assessment (HAA)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 1 hour
Length of interviews: 20 minutes
Online interview: No

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

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.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

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.

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

Practice papers

What advice would you give to future applicants?

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.