Natural Sciences (Biological) @ Emmanuel, Cambridge in 2016

Interview format

2x interviews (25 mins)

Interview content

Biology; chemistry (graphs)

Best preparation

Mock interview, personal statement & A level revision

Final thoughts

They want to know how teachable you are not your knowledge

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

One day with two 25 minute interviews about 2 hours apart.

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

Biology and chemistry questions - the biology ones would start simple and the next question would build on your answer to the previous one, for example I was asked about blood pressure and its causes. Was also shown a graph on drug concentrations in the bloodstream over time and asked to interpret it and asked simple questions about pKa then applied to biology.

How did you prepare?

Had a mock interview organised by my school, really just looked online for past interview questions and read news articles around the subject so that, especially on topics I had mentioned in my personal statement. Also going over A Level stuff covered so far is super useful as this is mostly what the questions are based on. (Look at topics you said you’d covered in the SAQ).

Looking back, what advice would you give to your past self?

If you don’t immediately know the answer to a question don’t panic. I know that’s easy for me to say but they aren’t expecting you to get the answer right the first time - they want to see how you cope with having to think through new concepts and whether you’ll respond well when they try to help you so they can see if you’d be suited to the supervision style. So as long as you listen to what they say and come up with ideas/talk through your thought processes and what you think is relevant to the question, you’ll be showing them enough, even if you don’t get the answer to the question straight away.