Medicine @ Emmanuel, Cambridge in 2018

Interview format

2x interviews

Interview content

Statistics; describing an image; general thoughts on medicine

Best preparation

Would have done a mock interview; Read the news carefully

Final thoughts

Everyone else was lovely!

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

I was met at the porters lodge and taken to a room to sit with other students while I waited for my interviews. I met no other perspective medical students but talked a lot to students from other courses. Two interviews a couple hours apart. At each interview there were two interviewers. Each interview was split in half as one interviewer would talk as the other wrote before starting.

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

It varied from being asked questions involving basic statistics to being shown a photo and being asked to describe it with little prompt. One portion of the interview involved giving my thoughts on the subject more generally.

How did you prepare?

I did very little preparation specifically for my interview other than familiarising myself with the lecturers. I sadly missed my mock interview as I was ill. In general I liked to read up on my subject in the news anyway but was careful to take more in in the weeks coming up to exams.

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

All the other students were lovely and helped to calm each other down.