Medicine @ Girton, Cambridge in 2009

Interview format

2x interviews (30 mins each)

Interview content

One largely based on specific area; the other more general medicine/work experience

Best preparation

Know how to stay calm

Final thoughts

Stay grounded

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 waited in the JCR and was taken to my interviews by students. 2 interviews with 2 interviewers, each for 30 minutes separated by a couple of hours.

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

One was centered around cardiology, and the other chemistry and general medicine/work experience. I enjoyed my interviews as I saw them as an opportunity to talk to very intelligent and knowledgeable doctors. The questions are designed to get you to think so they can see how you work things out. I tried to make sure I thought out loud, so to speak, and voice all my reasoning.

I answered some questions so stupidly initially and then had light bulb moments that we all laughed about. We talked about materials used in cardiology, specific diseases and the future of medicine, as well as a test I mentioned in my personal statement.

How did you prepare?

Practise keeping your cool in interviews that put you on the back foot (even if that isn't relevant academically). My best practice was an interview in which the interviewer told me I had no team working skills, so I had to respond by countering that actually I had demonstrated team working skills in X ways.

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

Enjoy it and try not to pin all your hopes on it! It's a great opportunity to talk about a subject you hopefully find interesting but if it goes badly, it's not the end of the world. At the end of the day, there's an element of luck to it, so if you don't get in, it doesn't mean you're stupid or that your career will be stunted. Though we wouldn't trade it for the world, many Cambridge students perhaps would have flourished moreat other universities anyway.