I had two interviews, both on the same afternoon in the same building.

The first interview was politics-based and was with one of the Directors of Studies for politics. The second was with two people, a social anthropologist and an archaeologist, who focused more on the ‘human’ side of things.

They were both 20 minutes in length – which went by very fast – and they were about an hour apart.

I had to submit an essay (marked by a school teacher) in advance, but we didn’t talk about it in either interview.

For the second interview I was given an article from the BBC website about the government response to a recent situation and we very briefly discussed what I had taken from it at the end of the interview. I was not told I would have any reading before either of the interviews so only arrived 5 minutes before the allotted time. This meant I didn’t have long to read the article (which luckily wasn’t very long). So a tip would be to get the waiting space outside the room at least 10 minutes before the interview in case there is any reading they haven’t told you about!

In the first interview we talked generally about why I wanted to study HSPS and political events that had shaped my life. We then moved on to relatively generic questions about what aspect of the history course I had enjoyed at school and also talked about current affairs. It’s important to note she based it around what I enjoyed at school and then asked questions following on from that – they weren’t just random! She asked if I had any questions at the end.

In the second interview, we talked about my EPQ. The questions were all on things I knew about from my EPQ (which was on identity formation and nationalism) – they weren’t trying to catch me out! For the last minute or so they asked about the article they gave me before I went in.

The second interview was more ‘conversational’ than the first interview – which was much more generic and based on more clearly pre-determined questions. An interesting point they made in the second interview was that because both interviews are effectively only 18 minutes long they were looking more for a general overview and to get to know you as a person than to go into things it great detail.

Without question the best preparation I did was reading. My EPQ made me read a lot of books and papers (e.g. on JSTOR and online) about issues that are often covered in HSPS. This meant I was thinking about the sort of things that the academics think about all day, and that made chatting very easy!

I also found listening to podcasts (like Talking Politics – the Cambridge University politics podcast) really helpful. The way they speak on the podcast is quite similar to an interview – basically just a conversation about HSPS!

I know everyone says this, but it’s really not as bad as you think. If you are genuinely interested by the subject you are applying for and you can make this enthusiasm clear in the interview you’ll stand as good a chance as any! They aren’t trying to catch you out about specific facts or subjects you don’t know about, but actually see how you speak about things you already know about! They’re looking to see that they can teach you, not that you know everything already.