Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment; 2x interviews.
Use the inputs or hints from the tutor/supervisor and incorporate them into their solutions!
Textbook revision and example questions from Trinity college website.
Past papers from Cambridge undergraduate website!
Look at college specific information for your course to prepare!
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: None
Length of interviews: 20 minutes
Online interview: No
*FYI: I took American Advanced Placement (AP) classes instead of British A-Levels in high school.
For Trinity, the Mathematical Fluency Test completely replaced math interviews and only science questions were asked during the interview; for some other colleges, that might not be the case. I also took a 55-Minute Interview Preparation Paper which included four Physics Questions, four Chemistry Questions. My solutions were sealed up in an envelope to be taken to the interviewers for immediate review. I resumed work on the problems during the interviews, according to the guidance of the interviewers.
I then had a 45-Minute Subject Interview with two interviewers (one Physicist and one Chemist). I was asked if the difficulty of the Mathematical Fluency Test felt adequate; I answered yes, since they were in line with what I had learned at school. Brief discussion of an interesting point mentioned in personal statement - I mentioned the Pauli Exclusion Principle in the context of electron degeneracy and white dwarf stars).
One physics question and one chemistry question from the Interview Preparation Paper were reviewed during interview. The physics professor chose my physics question after reviewing my solutions and the chemistry professor allowed me to choose whatever I want. Like other UK interviews, the interviews are structured like Oxford
I reviewed the math (James Stewart's Precalculus and Calculus), physics (Halliday's/ Physics), and chemistry (Zumdahl's Chemistry) textbooks I used in high school and the example questions uploaded to the college website.
I used the practice papers and past papers on Cambridge's undergraduate admissions site.
The questions were of almost the same type/number/difficulty as the samples given at the Trinity College website. Use the samples given by the college as a helpful guide when preparing for the interview, regardless of the content of your application. https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/courses/natural-sciences/
Other Cambridge colleges have vastly different interview formats, even if you are also applying for the same course: some only focus on one subject out of physics, chemistry, or biology; some don’t have tests and only have interviews; some dedicate much time to a math interview, which is not the case in Trinity. Please check the college website and online resources out.