History @ Emmanuel, Cambridge in 2018

Interview format

History Admissions Assessment; 2x interviews

Interview content

Interview 1: personal statement; Interview 2: discussed pre-reading

Best preparation

Doing past paper questions

Final thoughts

Reading about a topic you love

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

Number of interviews: 2

Skype interview: no

Time between interviews: about 1 hour

Length of first interview: 30 minutes; Length of second interview: 30 minutes

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

One interview was based off of my personal statement - talking mainly about my EPQ. It was a very relaxed environment. The other was based off of some pre-reading which was really challenging material and I felt that the interviewer was pushing me a lot more with his questions.

How did you prepare?

I practiced HAA (History Admissions Assessment) papers, which I then reviewed with my history teacher as well as more general thinking assessments.

Looking back, what advice would you give to your past self?

Practice interviews are helpful in the sense of learning to take your time and not panic, but they probably won't be similar to your actual one. A good thing to do would be some extra reading on a topic you love and maybe looking at some basic historiography. It's a good idea to be prepared to talk and engage with the interviewer - it doesn’t matter if you get something wrong.