My interviews were in early December (I think). I had to come from quite far away (Lancashire), so I came down the day before and stayed the night. I had dinner out of college, but then two students organised a film night for all the interviewees in the JCR. The next day, we waited in the JCR to go to our interviews (with a board game to pass the time).

Each interviewer in both interviews had a separate field they were discussing - biochemistry, maths, ecology, and discussing some field and statistics work I'd done as part of the A level biology course. All the interviewers were quite friendly, and gave me time to think, or hints at the correct answer if I was stuck. It still felt pretty nerve-wracking though, and it was hard to concentrate, especially because the questions seemed designed to throw you off and the interviewers didn't give any feedback on what my answers were like, except to tell me if I was right once I'd stopped giving suggestions. For example, I was handed a plant in one interview and asked to talk about it. The questions tended to start off relatively easy (A level standard mostly) and then ramp up every time I worked out (or guessed!) the answer. The only questions about me personally related to my work experience in a lab and the field work I'd done through my school.

I read through all my A level notes a day or two before the interview, and had a mock interview organised by my school, which was very useful for general interview experience. The best thing I did was talk to my father (who did his degree at Cambridge in a similar subject), and he gave me a lot of good tips (like remembering to breathe!) and (most importantly) kept me as calm as possible so I wasn't panicking before I began.

Don't panic - the night before, just leave your work alone and try to distract yourself until the interview. Every pause seems about ten times longer than normal when you're in there, so don't worry you're taking too long if you need a second to breathe in the interviews. Talk your way through questions as much as you can, and don't worry about not knowing stuff - often the questions are designed to ask you things you'd be very unlikely to know, so instead link the question back to more familiar material and go from there. Also, some questions may simply just be A level questions.

Don't worry about it afterwards if you can, and don't overthink it. It's very hard to know how well you did, because you have no idea what anyone else's interviews were like. You might have been pushed to the point where you had to admit you don't know something, but you may have only reached that point because you did so well in previous questions. Also, in biology, sometimes there are just multiple answers to a question, and feel free to list any and all you can think of in that case.