Natural Sciences (Physical) @ Selwyn, Cambridge in 2019

Interview format

Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment; 3x interviews.

Interview content

Interview 1: personal statement, work experience; Interview 2: subject specific.

Best preparation

Make you're confident in basic maths calculations and practise thinking out loud.

Test preparation

Check out the specification and use practice papers.

Final thoughts

Try to enjoy yourself and say what you think!

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: 3
Time between interviews: 20 minutes 
Length of interviews: 20 minutes
Online interview: No

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

My first interview was general; I got asked about some work experience I had written about on my personal statement. The questions I was asked got quite technical, so make sure you know what you wrote on your personal statement.

My second two interviews were subject-specific so I got asked maths, chemistry, and physics questions. Don't rush when answering but make sure you verbalise everything, then the interviewer can help you and guide you through the problem.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

I did lots of reading around what I had put on my personal statement and thought about what sort of thing I would say to common questions like 'why Cambridge, why Selwyn, why natural sciences'. I also revised A-Level material, practised maths without a calculator, and learned relevant formulae from A-Level data books.

Do one or two practice interviews if you can, but you can also just find some hard problems and try to explain the answers out loud to yourself.

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

I went through the specification a bit but mostly did lots of practice papers like the online past papers and book questions.

What advice would you give to future applicants?

Be confident in what you know. Say everything out loud and treat it as a fun experience. Enjoy the interviews!