Human, Social And Political Science @ Murray Edwards, Cambridge in 2020

Interview format

Murray Edwards specific exam; 2x online interviews

Interview content

General questions relating to subject, discussion of a visual source.

Best preparation

Get friends/parents/teachers to help you practice speaking out loud.

Test preparation

Read relevant texts and summarise their arguments and your thoughts on them.

Final thoughts

Be willing to ask for clarification or take a few moments to think!

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: College specific HSPS exam
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: A couple of hours
Length of interviews: 30 minutes
Online interview: Yes

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

In both interviews I was shown a visual source related to HSPS and asked questions about its content, purpose etc. Then I was also asked some general questions about specific themes to do with politics, sociology and anthropology. Relatively little of the discussion was based on my personal statement and the question that was asked was relatively tangentially related to my personal statement.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

The most helpful thing was getting parents, friends or teachers to do mock interviews - either based on questions they came up with (including analysing texts or pictures) or using lists of questions online. This gets you used to thinking on the spot out loud, as well as getting used to ordering your thoughts before you say them.

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

There are no practice papers so the best way I prepared was reading excerpts of academic texts by political thinkers and practising writing out both a short, condensed summary of the main argument and writing a paragraph explaining whether I agreed or disagreed with it to get used to critical thinking.

What advice would you give to future applicants?

Get as much practice as you can, even if it’s just recording yourself answering questions and listening to them back. Be willing to ask for clarification or take a few moments to think - I did! Once in the interview, try not to stress and instead just focus on calm breathing and answering to the best of your ability.