I had two interviews, both of which took place on the same day in December and were both held by two lecturers from the college. When I arrived I was led to the JCR by signs and then assigned a current student to guide me to the interviews which were spread across college. They tend to do a good cop and bad cop interview and my first was the good one: I was greeted warmly and led to a sofa, it was pretty chatty in nature. In the second I had to prepare a text before hand within a time limit of about 5 minutes and then I was asked questions about it. The second interview was much more formal, across a table with serious faces greeting me.

Both interviews focused mainly on the reading I had undertaken previously and mentioned in my personal statement. In the first, I was asked about things I had done to explore HSPS e.g. reading. I was then given a picture and asked to describe what was going on in it as I was interested in anthropology.

In the second interview I had a prepared text I was briefly asked about; then the interview was based mainly on the books I'd read and I was asked if I had noticed any similarities between them. They also got me to debate a topic, with the interviewers playing devil's advocate.

Reading anthropological books and then taking notes and noting similarities to other works. I also regularly listened to BBC Radio 4/World Service and read the news. I also talked to current Cambridge students and got tips at a conference.

They always ask if you have a question at the end. It's a trick question because you can't not ask a question. Look up the lecturers and ask them something they're interested in.