History @ Homerton, Cambridge in 2021

Interview format

No admissions test, 1 interview

Interview content

Questions on pre-read source analysis; Questions on personal statement and wide reading

Best preparation

Went over and revised for questions on personal statement; Read through journal articles, reviews, etc.

Test preparation

N/A (no admissions test taken)

Final thoughts

Prepare strategically and remind yourself that your interviewers want to get the best out of you.

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: None
Number of interviews: 1
Length of interview: 40 minutes
Online interview: Yes

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

I only had 1 interview but it was 40 minutes long and with 3 interviewers. The first 20 minutes were dedicated to source analysis. 5 minutes before the interview, I was sent a collation of primary sources. I had 10 minutes to read and analyse them before being questioned on them. This was definitely the more challenging half of the interview as I had been sent 5 pages of sources and missed out on some provenance links while rushing to get through them all. 

However, the second half of the interview was focused on my personal statement - specifically my wider reading - and I managed to redeem myself with this.

Before going into the interview, I was scared of facing vague, philosophical History questions that you may see online. But, I realised that those questions are often taken out of context.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

The most useful preparation I did involved replacing every full stop in my personal statement with a question mark, and then preparing answers for such a question using flashcards. This meant that I covered all the bases for potential questions about my personal statement and also got me naturally familiarised with my statement.

Just as important was reading through journal articles, reviews, chapters of books that I’d mentioned in my personal statement and listening to History podcasts - doing this meant that I was in the historical mindset and could link my question responses back to the wider historical debate and reference my reading confidently.

What advice would you give to future applicants?

My best advice would be to prepare strategically and remind yourself that your interviewers want to get the best out of you.

I split my preparation into components: wider reading, personal statement, submitted essays and source analysis. This meant that I’d covered as much of what could potentially be questioned - although I overdid it on some fronts.