Law @ Sidney Sussex, Cambridge in 2018

Interview format

    CLT; 2 x interviews

Interview content

Interview 1: Scenarios; Interview 2: Personal statement questions, extract

Best preparation

Think of questions your personal statement could lead to

Advice in hindsight

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Final thoughts

Stay calm even if you think it's gone badly

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: Cambridge Law Test (CLT) and LNAT

Number of interviews: 2

Skype interview: no

Time between interviews: 3 hours apart and then the CLT 1 hour after the last interview.

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

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

In the first interview, there was a general question about "why law". Then I was given a short, one or two sentence piece of law and around five different scenarios to see in each situation if I thought the law had been broken.

In the second interview, there was a question about something from my personal statement, followed by a couple of further questions raised by my answers. I was also given a page long scenario and short paragraph of law, again to see if I thought the law had been broken.

How did you prepare?

Find a mock interview or problem sheet on the interview and record yourself working through the problem line by line - apply each part of the law to the given scenario. Find every piece of advice about what interviewers are looking for and make your own checklist of things to demonstrate: ability to build up arguments, draw fine distinctions, evaluate differing points of view, offer suggestions to the law.

Try to arrange mock interviews with teachers or apply for programmes (such as Access Oxbridge) which offer student mentors to conduct mock interviews. Go through your personal statement clause by clause, think of every question that could be asked and prepare some kind of answer.

What advice do you have for future applicants?

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

Always stop and think! Take two seconds to think before responding to any question. Genuinely don't be put off if you leave an interview and think it went badly - after my second interview I thought I had misread the pre-reading, had no idea what was going on and thought lots of what I said was wrong.

Talk to someone in between your interviews who will calm you down: a friend from home, a family member.

Try to get ahead with A Level work by a couple of weeks so you can really focus on your interviews without neglecting the grades that any offer will ultimately be based on.

Always know that Oxbridge is not the one, it suits some people but not others.