Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA); 2x interviews
Interview 1: personal statement; Interview 2: chemistry and biology questions
Revised A Level content
Past papers
Don't worry if you get pooled, you'll likely be happy wherever you end up
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.
Test taken:
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 1 hour
Length of interviews: 35 minutes
Online interview: No
First interview was knowledge based, but focused on two of the scientific topics in my Personal Statement. Each interviewer took one topic and grilled me on it - they were each a researcher specialising in the respective topic so there was no room for error really. It was quite intense and I didn't feel it went particularly well, but not particularly badly either.
The second was split half and half into Chemistry and biology, and did not cover my personal statement. These were fairly random questions (although not the typical crazy ones you hear of, just random topics that required some creative thinking) but I felt it went very well -
I revised all my A-level content and recapped anything subject-related I'd talked about in my Personal Statement. I also had two
Lots of past papers - did them timed to see how much I could complete then finished them untimed. Also went through the specification in detail, revising things as I went along, as a lot of the A-level content isn't in there and some of the content is GCSE stuff you won't have done recently.
Try not to overanalyse how interviews went - you can never really tell! Make sure you are confident on your personal statement - I didn't expect to be asked about it as many colleges and subjects don't so felt less prepared than I could have been. Don't worry if you get pooled, I wasn't happy with my pooled college when I found out but I really like it now, and either way you made it!