Human, Social And Political Science @ Queens', Cambridge in 2019

Interview format

Arts-Humanities Admissions Assessment; 1x interview.

Interview content

Discussion on sociology, politics, international relations, and a previously-submitted topic.

Best preparation

Mock interviews, preparing for questions about the personal statement, reading subject-related articles.

Final thoughts

Take your time in answering; don't be afraid to ask for clarifications; try to offer nuanced explanations of your ideas.

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: Arts-Humanities Admissions Assessment (AHAA)
Number of interviews: 1
Length of interviews: about 20 minutes
Online interview: No

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

One part of the interview was sociology-based, the other was politics/international relations-based. I wasn’t given any sources to discuss but had been asked before the interview to give 3 topics that I would be happy to discuss and ended up discussing one of them at interview.

There were 2 interviewers, both were very nice but gave no indication of whether what you were saying was right or not - it’s important not to be thrown off by that because they’re just keen to see what your thoughts are.

The interview was more of a conversation than separate questions - the interviewers would ask me follow up questions/ask me to link certain ideas and concepts together.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

Mock interviews, reading over my personal statement, reading articles about topics I was interested in, asking family members/friends to look at my personal statement and ask me questions about it.

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

did lots of past papers to time, made essay plans

What advice would you give to future applicants?

Take your time to answer questions - it’s not a race and you would rather give a well thought-through answer than a rushed answer with not much substance.

If there are certain terms/questions that you’re not sure about, don’t be afraid to ask for clarification - the interviewers are there to help and don’t want to trip you up.

It’s much easier said than done but take some deep breaths before going in and try to be calm - it’ll be much easier to relax and think with a clear head.

Try to offer examples/nuanced explanations of your ideas so that the interviewers know your thought process -linked to the above, don’t be afraid to think out loud!! The interviewers are trying to see if you would be suitable in the Cambridge supervision environment and a big part of that is discussing your thoughts on a topic

Good luck!