History @ Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 2022

Interview format

History Admissions Assessment (HAA), 2x 25 minute interviews

Interview content

Both interviews: discussion of written work and personal statement, then moving to broader discussion with challenging questions

Best preparation

Going over personal statement and written work, practice talking about history

Test preparation

Past papers, planning out ideas, looking at online resources

Final thoughts

Make sure you're familiar with A-level topics and everything you've mentioned on your personal statement

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: 25 mins
Online interview: Yes

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

Both of my interviews were mainly based around the essays I had submitted, potentially because they were related to the special interests of one of the interviewers in each interview. The discussion started there, but began to drift into other areas (also dictated by the interviewers' special interests!), though aspects of my personal statement (e.g. historical interests I had mentioned) also came into discussion.

I found that the interviews did ramp up slightly in the intensity of questions until I felt I couldn't provide a satisfactory answer anymore, at which point the topic changed and the intensity reset. One interview did also feel like it was pushing me more out of my comfort zone than the other, and this may have been a "good cop, bad cop" kind of thing.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

In my school, we had Oxbridge preparation sessions for History, which involved presenting a topic to the class and discussing it together, which helped in being able to know how to present our ideas clearly and answer tricky questions. I also made sure to know the content of my personal statement and where discussions related to what I mentioned could spiral towards if they were brought up. Finally, for the essays I submitted, I made sure to know what I had argued and the surrounding areas of the topics of the essays. Also, knowing the special interests of your interviewers can be very useful for knowing where they might try to direct the discussion towards!

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

I mainly used past papers for the HAA to get an idea of what the sources were like, and planned out ideas (I don't think I actually wrote out any answers in full) - I also found a useful document someone had written (I think on TheStudentRoom?) about the best ways to approach the HAA to get an idea of how I should structure my answer. 

What advice would you give to future applicants?

Do make sure you know the content of your A-level topics (for History at least), especially if you have submitted history essays. Also, refreshing yourself with the arguments and content of books/articles you mentioned in your personal statement is very useful if it's been a while. Being aware of the interviewers' special interests was quite useful as it helped give an idea of what might be discussed and the direction the interview might go.