Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment; 2x interviews.
Interview 1: A-Level physics content; Interview 2: chemistry, maths, explaining logical process.
Be familiar with your personal statement to boost confidence.
Plan how you will use your time.
Explain your process out-loud and communicate with the interviewers. Don't be afraid of making mistakes!
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: 1-2 hours
Length of interviews: ~30 minutes
Online interview: No
There was a little talk about my personal statement in one interview but not the other. It mostly felt like small talk though and I was definitely
In my first interview I was asked a couple of physics questions and then worked through them with the interviewer. The questions were all things I’d explicitly covered in A-Level and if something came up that I hadn’t done yet we just skipped past it. I definitely got more confident as it went on. My interviewer was very helpful and asked a lot of questions to help me work through the questions.
My second interview was less collaborative and involved responding to a few chemistry questions and then doing a little bit of maths and explaining the reason behind what I was doing.
I had no idea what the interview would be like. I did one
I did one or two practice papers. The most useful thing I did was looking through papers and strategising how to spend my time (e.g. in the multiple choice section the chemistry questions didn’t need working out as much so I did them first for quick marks).
Explain what you’re doing. Also, if you don’t understand something or don’t know what to do next it’s fine, just say that and they’ll try and help you through it. Also also, don’t get stressed if you make mistakes. Like 5/6 times I had to integrate/differentiate something I did it wrong and I still got in.