Test taken: Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: c.5 minutes 
Length of interviews: c.45 minutes
Online interview: Yes

The whole interview took place online and I did it at home rather than school to ensure I had a stable WiFi connection and no background noise. I also made sure I was alone in the room and had a plain background. I bought a digital stylus/board that connected to the computer so that everyone on the call could see my writing and they could also annotate/add to my work. There was no pre-reading or any pre-set questions to hand in (don't forget, they already have your scores from the NSAA so they know you can do quick one-mark problems, they want to see how you manage a longer, harder problem). They said to be comfortable so I just wore comfy jeans and a T-shirt and made sure I had a glass of water on my desk. There was one moderator on the call and also a physics professor who swapped out with the chemistry professor at about half-time (I think it ran over a little bit.)

I was expecting a few questions about my personal statement (e.g. "What did you think about the book by ....", "What did you learn through the .... online course?") but there wasn't any chat about anything I had written. Surprisingly, there wasn't even a "Why do you want to study Natural Sciences?" or "What makes you love Physics?", I was asked a pretty quick "Good morning, how's your day going?" and then they jumped straight into the academic questions. For the Physics one, I was only asked one pretty challenging question which took up the entire 45 minutes. It was quite logic/graph-heavy but didn't have a specific answer to arrive at, rather the interviewer wanted to see my working and how I approached the problem. The question started on motion/dynamics (the first topic I did in Physics A-Level) but required you to draw on some external knowledge and think beyond the specification. I had a calculator and formula booklet near my desk the whole time but never actually had to use either as it was more of a critical thinking problem and I made approximations throughout e.g. taking g=10 to keep things simple (again, they want to see logic and problem solving rather than amazing mental maths on the spot).

The professors then swapped over and I was allowed a 5-10 minute break to turn off the camera and grab a drink. The Chemistry interview was a bit different, rather than one very long question, he asked me lots of short questions from topics across the entire A-Level course. I remember questions on bonding, structures and shapes, some inorganic analysis and a redox/equation based question, a bit on rates/kinetics, and also some physical/chemical trends to explain (basically ended up covering the majority of the A-Level I think!). I was asked a few questions I couldn't answer at all (I think one was something to do with Transition Metals/catalysts which I knew we were going to learn in class in March) so I was completely honest and just said that we hadn't covered that topic yet in class (remember the interview is November/December and you don't take the A-Level till June!) and then tried to answer the question by piecing together some bits of what I did know. At any points where I got stuck, he was happy to give hints or explain the question in a different way and, if I didn't know a topic at all, he was happy to move on to a completely new question. Again, I had a calculator and periodic table on my desk the whole time but there wasn't any point where I needed to use either as all the questions focussed on the elements/molecules most students are pretty familiar with already.

I had read a few Physics books and re-read my personal statement over which wasn't the best use of my time as there were no questions about the statement or any specific physics concepts

I tried most of the NSAA past papers available online for free and also had a look at some ENGAA papers as there's a lot of crossover. I was surprised that it was non-calculator and also you weren't allowed any formula sheets (normally physics/maths A-Levels you have formula booklets) so it was important to practice without those.

When practicing, I used a timer and included time spent filling out my choices on the sheet, it takes longer than you think! I read the documents published by the uni about how many sections to complete in each paper and used that to decide my timings, also for the 2022 NSAA (check for your year) it was graded via 3 standardised scores (not an overall percentage) so I decided to spend more time on some sections and less on others. I was undecided between doing the Physics or Chemistry section so I practiced both and made a choice ahead of time so I wouldn't stress about it during the test. Also, unlike other tests, the questions don't necessarily get harder towards the end (unless they've changed it) so it might be worth skipping a few and trying others you've got a higher chance of getting right.

After doing a practice test, I made sure to mark my answers and also really try to understand the question. This was quite helpful because, after doing only a few tests, I realised that between years, quite a few questions were very similar or at least were asking about similar topics, so I needed to actually learn the content I was consistently getting wrong and I found the most effective way was to watch YouTube videos (remember different schools teach topics in different orders so there might be questions you haven't got a clue how to answer, the uni will publish a specification which outlines what they can ask each year).

I was expecting more questions about the personal statement and less specific academic questions. I would probably scan through the CGP guide before the interview just to refresh my memory of all the topics and how they link together. I wouldn't panic as much and also, I'd take a couple of seconds to think through the question before jumping straight into trying to get to the answer. One piece of advice would be to ask for a hint if you get stuck on one part of a question because it will be better to spend time on something you are able to solve rather than spend the whole interview not making any progress on something you don't understand. Also, even though it sounds strange, it's important to "think out loud"/explain your working as you write it so that the interviewer can follow your reasoning.