TSA; 2x interviews
Interview 1: chemistry questions; Interview 2: maths questions
Past papers!
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Look at different textbooks
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:
Number of interviews: 2
Skype interview: no
Time between interviews: unsure
Length of first interview: 25 minutes; Length of second interview: 25 minutes
Interview 1 (chemistry based): I was given 10 minutes before the interview to look at a 3-4 page booklet that had a bunch of properties listed for a series of chemicals. Although discussing the trends shown didn’t really come up during the interview, they did sort of apologise for this at the end, so I'm not sure if that is usual. I was asked an estimation question, which led to a series of follow questions about the number calculated. The atmosphere was very supportive, I felt, with the interviewers happy to provide the small bits of information I was unsure about, once I had explained my overall approach to tackling the problem.
Interview 2 (maths based): I was asked to sketch a graph and then add detail by calculating minima, turning points etc by the first interviewer, who was helpful in nudging me in the right direction when I got slightly confused. Then I had another estimation question from the second interviewer, who was not particularly helpful in terms of letting on whether I was going at all in the right direction, but seemed content with my final answer and didn’t answer any further questions.
Practice papers found online/ via school teachers; mainly focusing on getting used to the very high time pressure of the paper
My school provided considerable help in preparation (
I also read/browsed through some textbooks to gain familiarity with a wide range of topics, which I thought was very useful, as being confronted with completely foreign material seemed like the most likely way to become flustered during the interview and come off poorly. As such the overall purpose of preparation was really to feel confident in my own knowledge for as many topics as possible.
Looking back I think that while there is some element of luck in terms of which topics come up, the biggest things the interviewers are looking are people who show enthusiasm in tackling tough problems and voice their thoughts as they do so (i.e. be teachable!)