Test taken: Biomedical Admissions Test (BMAT)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 30 minutes
Length of interviews: 30 minutes
Online interview: No

First interview was mostly medicine-based, where we were asked about NHS funding, which was quite a big issue at the time as a drug for cystic fibrosis was being withdraw from NHS funding I think. This was asked by the first interviewer and he was really nice and friendly. The first interview also had a second interviewer asking me about adapting a certain curve related to respiratory physiology, basically manipulating A-level biology. You could prepare for this a bit more by just reading around the A-level syllabus. He was a bit gruff but knowing him now he's also a really nice guy. The room was quite tense at first, but it only stayed that way for as long as I was nervous, it became more chill afterwards.

The second interview started with a PhD student asking me about diabetes, again more A-level biology taken slightly further. She was nice again and this interview was more relaxed. Then the second interviewer in the session showed me a graph about antibiotic resistance and asked me some questions about it. Overall, the interviews were mainly seeing how you can develop A-level biology and chemistry ideas and only were awkward when you made them so.

The first thing was making sure I remembered my BMAT essay in case they asked me about it, I noted it down after my exam. I also made sure I had concrete knowledge of my A-level subjects, as well as being 100% certain about any literature or ideas put forward in my personal statement.

I also read a book on medical school interview questions, which I had done for all my previous medical interviews. I can't remember the name of the book but it should be the first one on Amazon (with a scalpel and stethoscope on the front).

I also practised with a pair of Cambridge-educated doctors I knew but anybody could do this, there are lots of example questions online.

Used a practice course on medify.com, they had lots of online exercises and then I went through all the past papers of the BMAT often with a friend who was also doing the test.

Don't sweat interview preparation as much as test prep, I feel the tests were really important. The interviewers are just looking for logical people who are interested, so read around and have something to say. Questions should be difficult but just chill and either you'll get it or not, they won't really care about one question but more about the overall impression.

One thing I would do differently is more research about the college you're applying to. Not really about finessing application statistics, but more about how close it is to sites, any perks like a bar or laundry and just the general vibe you get from the place. I was lucky Emmanuel is the best college in Cambridge, but I basically decided randomly when applying and could have ended up somewhere else.

Expect the interview to be hard, but not impossibly so, more just a stretching of your knowledge than it would usually be at school. Enjoy the experience as well, you'll probably only ever do it once and it should be fun to try and challenge yourself. It should all be pretty achievable if you're interested in your degree, so just go for it, but do do some revision. I probably revised for the test and interview for 20 hours, but that's only a couple of long weekends.