I arrived in college, signed in and was taken to wait in the JCR. I had two interviews, one before lunch and one afterward. The morning interview was Biology with two fellows and lasted approximately 20 minutes. The general atmosphere was relaxed with interviewers emphasising that they wanted you to explain your thought process and offering hints when you seemed to be stuck. After lunch I had a Chemistry interview which similarly had two interviewers and lasted about 20 minutes. I did not have to sit any tests.

Interview 1: Biology; quite a diverse range of questions covering a few different areas of Biology, generally needing to apply general principles and applying basic knowledge rather than in depth details of A level content. Examples included a discussion about the difference between two animals due to their evolutionary pasts, a discussion about protein bond types and a question on organelles, allowing you to show any ‘beyond the curriculum’ knowledge you have acquired.

Interview 2: Chemistry; questions you could answer by applying principles from A level Chemistry including modelling a well-known substance and estimating the energy within it; entropy (a concept that for most people was only introduced in A2 and thus was unfamiliar at the time of interview - they stated that this was done on purpose and then gave you a basic explanation of the theorem). It appeared that this was to test your ability to quickly acquire new ideas and apply them.

Asking people who had been through interviews for advice. Going over content from AS just to make sure I was still comfortable with everything. I had a practice interview from my school but this was completely unlike my actual interview in terms of questions - despite this I think it was useful for mentally preparing for an interview situation.

Interviews aren’t that scary - in fact after it was over all I could think about was how underwhelming it was!