Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA), 2x interviews
Short questions about personal statement, then physics-related questions, and sketching functions
Being familiar with Year 12 content, practicing talking about the subject, watching relevant videos
Timed practice questions
Practice explaining your thinking out loud
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: Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: c.45 minutes
Length of interviews: c.30 minutes
Online interview: No
They are digging to find out how you solve problems. They started by asking a very short question about my personal statement then quickly moved on to asking physics-related questions. They ask small questions at a time which all build upon each other to an interesting final question that will challenge your current understanding. It’s important to explain each step you take and what you are thinking out loud. They also love getting you to sketch weird functions by combining functions you know in a way you won’t have seen before so practice this. E.g. plot sin(x^2)
Make sure you understand Year 12 content as you go through the year as it’ll make it easier when it comes to the interviews. They want to see you talking through your ideas and will nudge you back in the right direction if you go off topic. Showing your ideas like this takes practice so try and have a few attempts with teachers/family/friends if you can. Watch some online videos about Oxbridge interviews as well.
Practicing for this test is vital - for the multiple choice section practice timings, it is very rushed and easy to run out of time so you need to know how to keep moving through the paper. The content is all stuff you’ll have covered so far in levels and itself isn’t too hard but the style of questions is slightly different to a-levels so again make sure you practice. There are loads of papers online and other books you can buy cheaply on Amazon with loads of questions…. Churn through them all.
Spend time practicing how to explain your thinking out loud, so long as your ideas make some sense they’ll be happy to hear them. Remember they want to see you succeed… when I got one of the questions my interviewer's face lit up with excitement and then asked an even deeper question.