Linguistics @ Newnham, Cambridge in 2020

Interview format

Linguistics Admissions Assessment, 2x interviews

Interview content

Interview 1: discussion of schoolwork and super-curricular activities, then analysis of Old English passage Interview 2: discussion of linguistics problems

Best preparation

Reading about linguistics, practice talking about it

Test preparation

Practice questions, both from past papers online and similar ones from UK and International Linguistics Olympiads

Final thoughts

Enjoy the opportunity to talk about linguistics to people who are also passionate about it!

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: Linguistics Admissions Assessment (LAA)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: A few hours
Length of interviews: c.30 minutes
Online interview: Yes

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

The first interview was with someone from my college, and was a "personal" interview - we talked about my school work and the EPQ-like project I was working on, my favourite books I had read about linguistics (I ended up saying that I'd engaged a lot with material like blogs, YouTube videos, and podcasts because I forgot every book I'd ever read!), and what areas of linguistics I was interested in. I was also shown a passage of Old English with a line-by-line translation and asked to comment on things I noticed about, e.g., verb forms in Old English.

The second interview was a "subject" interview with some folks from the department. We went through a series of problems that I had to look at on my screen and answer verbally - I don't remember them super well, but one involved discerning how many vowels and consonants each word had. 

How did you prepare for your interviews?

I was able to speak to a former pupil at my school who is now in an associated department at Cambridge, who advised me that the most important thing was to show my passion for linguistics. I read a few books (one by Gaston Dorren, one by Daniel Everett, one a rather dense textbook on sound changes in Romance), although I don't feel this was necessarily super helpful other than generally showing I loved reading about linguistics.

The day before, I also had a last-minute practice interview with one of my teachers, which helped me feel a bit more comfortable with being interviewed in general (and made me aware of all my fidgety nervous habits to try and keep to a minimum!)

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

There were practice papers available on the department/faculty website. It's also useful to practice as much as you can using papers from the UK and International Linguistics Olympiads, which are often quite similar.

What advice would you give to future applicants?

As long as you're passionate about linguistics, you'll be fine. Just enjoy the opportunity to talk about it with people who actually get what you're on about - linguistics often draws blank looks from those not in the know! Interviewers want to know that you like this subject enough to commit for three years, as well as that you have some degree of technical facility in understanding the patterns underlying language.