Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment; 2x interviews.
Interview 1: biology-related questions; Interview 2: maths, chemistry-related questions.
A Level revision, practice interviews.
Do your revision; get there on time; talk through your thought process.
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: First one was early in the day (10-11ish), second one was in the afternoon (2-3ish)
Length of interviews: About 45mins
Online interview: No
Biology stuff for me in the first interview, on disease. Second was a maths and chemistry-based interview (differentials, rate equations and stuff).
We didn’t talk that much about my personal statement. Interviewers were very friendly, but I don’t think it’s the sort of thing you can relax into though cause it’s a
It’s okay to completely mess up, I know I did, you just have to be willing to learn. I walked out of my interviews absolutely convinced I had failed, just to get my offer later on in the year.
I briefly went over my A level notes. I also did a couple
Practice questions. The questions on the test were very different from normal A level ones. My (a level) college ran weekly sessions on advice to get into oxbridge, one of the things they’d do was give us practice questions so we could get used to the language/type.
I’d advise myself to revise a bit more. I’m a lazy person and I kept putting revising off until the last moment, and it led to unnecessary stress.
I’d also say to get to the interview with plenty of time to spare. I ended having to run to get to my first interview because we had left too little time to get from home to Cambridge and it was quite stressful.
The interviewers aren’t out to get you. They’ll encourage you to the right answer, and just genuinely want to see how you think (talk through what you are thinking).