Modern And Medieval Languages @ Selwyn, Cambridge in 2016

Interview format

1x general interview (15 mins); 1x test of comprehension and analysis (1 hour); 2x subject interviews

Interview content

Interview 1: unseen passage, personal statement, general literature; Interview 2: personal statement, new topics

Best preparation

Mock interviews; further reading outside personal statement

Final thoughts

Nope!

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

One 15 minute general interview on interests and a little bit on personal statement topics, which wasn’t very important.

A one hour long testbased on text comprehension (this part written in my modern language) and analysis (in English).

Then two subject interviews, one for each language.

All spanned over 3 days in mid December.

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

One interview with 15 minutes to prepare a passage of peculiar but not too challenging German to discuss in German, followed by a 30-45 minute interview on the passage, personal statement topics and more general discussion of literature (the latter two discussed in English). First question on the passage was unexpected - about the themes of the passage. Then some questions on the tone and also grammatical questions. The general questions were about ideas expressed in books I had read and gradually became more and more specific and challenging to answer.

Then a 30-45 minute interview for Latin, in which we discussed personal statement topics - such as Latin poetry - and a variety of topics which were completely new, including questions about classical linguistics.

How did you prepare?

Mock interviews with people I didn’t already know because it recreates the situation far better than with a teacher. Also reading something around the time of the interviews so you have something fresh to talk about which isn’t necessarily on your Personal Statement.

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

Nope.