Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA); 3x interviews
Interview 1: personal questions; Interview 2: Maths, Chemistry-related questions; Interview 3: Biology-related questions
Past papers, science section of the BMAT
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Practice speaking about science and communicating ideas
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: Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA)
Number of interviews: 3
Skype interview: no
Time between interviews: 1 hour
Length of first interview: 20 minutes; Length of second interview: 20 minutes, Length of third interview: 20 minutes<
I was given practical, scientific questions. When I answered, the interviewers probed for more detail and had follow up questions. It wasn't the crazy impossible questions that we stressed about, they were much like exam-style questions and were straightforward. However, the interviewers expected a lot of detail.
The first interview was to
The second interview was Maths and Chemistry-focussed. It focused on mental calculations and tricky problems.
The third interview had a Biology focus. We looked at graphs and the interviewers asked me to explain the trend, and suggest why it was like that.
I felt
I used the specimen and past paper. I also looked through the specification, to revise things I hadn't studied in a while. Most important - I used the science section of the BMAT (BioMedical Admissions Test) past papers! This was very similar to the multiple-choice style of the NSAA (Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment).
My biology teacher helped a lot, I got
You need to get used to speaking about science and communicating ideas, which I was awful at when I began. You need to get used to feeling under pressure and having all the eyes in the room on you when you're speaking, and justifying your opinion.