Modern And Medieval Languages @ Emmanuel, Cambridge in 2017

Interview format

2x interviews (30mins); 1x test (1hr)

Interview content

1st interview: personal statement, text in target language; 2nd interview: book of interest

Best preparation

Online resources & mock interview

Final thoughts

Don't overanalyse after

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 had a one hour exam at 9am and then two 30min interviews in the afternoon, one for each language. All MML interviews at my college involved 20 mins of pre-reading a passage in the target language (or in English for ab initio). No dictionaries are allowed.

Then in the interview you discuss the passage, read bits allowed, translate bits etc. Afterwards, there's more discussion/argument on issues you're interested in, or things you've read.

I arrived in college the night before all of this, but the porters gave me basically all the directions I needed, and the waiting room/sign in room/hall etc were all signposted. We were called in groups out of the waiting room for the morning exam, given times to go to the reading room before interviews, and shown to the door interview rooms by student helpers.

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

I was super nervous during the interviews because with humanities they tend to try and challenge your opinion a lot to see how you deal with it.

In both interviews, we discussed translation of the passage a good bit and they had me read out a lot as well. There tends to be a lot of new vocab so just ask them what it means if you're not sure, no matter how many words you don't know (I got caught out a bit on this but managed to redeem myself somewhat lol).

In terms of other questions, my first interview kind of grilled my personal statement and the interviewers just tried to argue with the opinions that were in it! What you'll get totally depends on the things you've read up on, but be ready to think critically any points you've mentioned and to talk about supercurriculars too.

In my second interview, they just asked me to start talking about SOMETHING I've read, which is super vague, but gave an opportunity to talk about the things I was most interested in. They jumped in with questions about how the book I'd read might have been perceived differently in other contexts

How did you prepare?

The Cambridge website for the course will had a lot about what they look for in candidates, and books on the course reading lists if you want a bit of inspo. I didn't find a whole lot available online but I got in touch with some current students from near me which was so helpful; even if it's someone you barely know, people are normally really happy to help out/give advice.

I also put all my interview/test prep in one notebook which was really handy last minute. There are 4 or 5 past papers on the Cam website for practice which were really useful too.

My school didn't hold mock interviews but I just asked my teachers to do them with me - likelihood is that it probably won't be anything like the real thing, but it helps with getting used to thinking on the spot and dealing with nerves.

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

As easy as this is to say in hindsight, try to enjoy the experience and see it as an opportunity rather than one huge test, and once the interviews are over, try your best to not overanalyse and just enjoy Christmas break :) people are generally really bad at guessing how their interview has gone, there's zero correlation between how people think they did and how they actually did!