Natural Sciences (Physical) @ Downing, Cambridge in 2019

Interview format

Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA), 2x interviews

Interview content

Interview 1: graph sketching, approximation questions, spectroscopy Interview 2: chemistry questions relating to personal statement

Best preparation

UKChO questions and revising things mentioned in personal statement

Test preparation

Past papers

Final thoughts

Revise personal statement, and consider reading relevant books

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

Test taken: Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 90 minutes
Length of interviews: 60 minutes
Online interview: No

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

The first interview was the "physical" one although I didn't do physics A level so they mostly asked me questions on maths (graph sketching and approximation questions) and some on spectroscopy which were a bit more challenging.

The second interview was more specifically chemistry and they used it to challenge me on the topics in my personal statement (mostly about chemistry). They asked me to explain how certain reactions work and about other information/reactivity about sets of molecules/systems.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

Mostly by doing UKChO (UK Chemistry Olympiad) questions and by rereading the material I spoke about in my personal statement

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

Basically just did all the past papers as well as my usual other studies in chemistry/maths

What advice would you give to future applicants?

Revise what you said you know in your personal statement! And if you study chemistry read the book "Why Chemical Reactions Happen" by Keeler and others, it will change the way you see chemistry in the same way 1st year would and to talk about it the way you would after reading it would very much impress the interviewers.