Test taken: Biomedical Admissions Test (BMAT)
Number of interviews: 3
Time between interviews: 1 hour
Length of interviews: 30 minutes
Online interview: No

My first interview was rather unorthodox. Prior to the interview, I was given a question sheet with case studies, which I was given a couple of minutes to complete. The questions on this sheet were both academic and non-academic but didn't require me remembering any information from my school syllabus. Once my time was up, I entered the interview room to discuss the answers to the questions with the interviewers.

My second interview was more of a "personal" interview where the interviewers asked me questions about my motivations, goals, strengths, and weaknesses. They also asked me some academic questions, but these didn't involve me remembering content from my school syllabus; they were more so critical thinking questions.

My last interview was the most academic interview. A lot of the questions in this interview required me to use science knowledge from my school syllabus while the remainder of the questions were either critical-thinking questions or "what would you do" scenario questions.

My preparation for interviews was more minimal than most applicants. Like the majority of applicants, I spent a couple of days before my interview date reading through my school syllabus, but I definitely didn't approach this revision in the same way that I would approach revision for an exam. Once you begin approaching the interview process as an exam, you tend to get stuck inside your own head and lose sight of what's really important in the interview process: you. While there certainly is an academic aspect of the interviews at Oxbridge, your interviewers already know that you're good at studying; they've seen your school results and the results from your pre-interviews exams. What interviewers are really looking for is who you are. This of course includes how you think critically and logically, but interviewers are also interested in your personality and your attitude. In most cases, your interviewers will be your supervisors if you're accepted, so they're looking for applicants who they'd enjoy teaching. As such, mock interviews with your teachers, family, or friends is arguably the best way to prepare for interviews. Mock interviews not only force you to think out loud and articulate your thoughts but also help prepare you for having an academic conversation and thinking on your feet.

Being an international student, I received substantially less support to prepare for the BMAT than many of my fellow UK offer holders. In fact, I was the only person in my school to take the BMAT, so all of the preparation I did for the test I did independently. I would recommend everyone to sit the August BMAT instead of the October one. As an international student, I wasn't able to take the August BMAT, but there are multiple reasons why sitting the August BMAT is the more beneficial choice. Firstly, sitting the August BMAT means you will receive your BMAT scores prior to the application deadline for Oxbridge, which will allow you to gauge the strength of your application before you submit it. Additionally, the timing of the August BMAT gives you a lot of study time during the summer between Year 12 and Year 13, where the workload will be lighter than when school starts again in September.

When it comes to BMAT preparation, one of the most important things to do is to create a prospective revision schedule for yourself. Everyone will need a different length of time to study for the BMAT (I personally started studying for the BMAT two months prior to the test date), and this will greatly depend on a myriad of factors. For example, how many hours per day do you plan to study for the BMAT? How much of the content in the BMAT syllabus is new to you? How much workload from school will you have while studying for the BMAT? Depending on your answer to these questions, you will ideally need to set aside more/less time to study for the BMAT. In particular, many students will not have taken Physics at A-Level, and will need to take that into account when creating their prospective revision schedule. Once you have covered all of the content that will appear in the BMAT, then comes the time to practice. Practice papers are, in my opinion, the best free resource to use when practicing for the BMAT. These past papers are available on the official BMAT website online, and are really helpful in both preparing you for the types of questions that appear in the BMAT and giving you an understanding of the number of questions in each of the BMAT papers. Apart from past papers, there are many other resources online which you can use to practice for the BMAT. I found Medify's online BMAT course quite helpful, but alternatively the free BMAT Ninja online question bank is useful. I would recommend to use questions from question banks when casually studying for the BMAT, as these will help familiarize you with the types of questions that appear in the BMAT. Every once in a while (e.g. every week), sit a past paper exam (under timed conditions) to get an idea of how fast-paced the BMAT is. You can also use your scores from the past papers to keep track of how you're progressing and improving the more you study. 

Keep in mind that the interview process is not a test; it's merely an opportunity for your interviewers to get to know you better, both in terms of your academic aptitude and your general attitude. Your interviewers want to see you succeed, so don't feel intimidated when they ask you challenging questions: in most cases, they will help you reach the answer to their questions. At the end of the day, your interviewers are trying to see how "teachable" you are, so not immediately knowing the answers to all of their questions is not at all a bad thing.