Test taken: Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA)

Number of interviews: 2

Skype interview: no

Time between interviews: none

Length of first interview: 30 minutes; Length of second interview: 30 minutes

Both of my interviews were about chemistry, probably because this was the only thing I talked about in my personal statement. In the first interview, the academic probably saw I was very nervous and tried to reassure me by explaining that I was the first person they interviewed for the course (presumably so I understood they weren’t comparing me to anyone else?), but it did not help. We started by discussing some kinetics I'd talked about in my personal statement. By the end of this part I felt I understood the interview format and the rest of the interview was much smoother. We discussed ionic lattices and did some maths relating to them.

The second interview was about organic reactivity. It started with the interviewer saying I'd mentioned some pretty exciting organic chemistry reactions in my personal statement, and that we might have time to discuss them. I was very excited by the prospect so I think I kind of rushed the answers to every question, trying to get to the part where we'd talk about my personal statement. The questions were about general organic reactivity - not part of my A Level syllabus but things I knew from my own research. Sometimes I would say "I've seen this before but if I hadn't, this is how I would rationalize it" and others I would just explain as if I hadn't seen before. There was one reaction that I had no experience with and I stumbled on it for a bit longer. The interviewer guided me through it, though, and he seemed satisfied by the end of it. We never did get to talk about my personal statement though!

Before the admissions assessment, I did several past papers to familiarize myself with the style. In preparation for the interview, I looked at online cambridge interviews, but in retrospect that wasn't very useful. Probably the most useful thing I'd done before the interviews was read ahead. I think you should do a solid amount of further reading out of interest, anyway, but do know that it might also help during interview!

For chemistry, the most important thing is to develop chemical intuition, not memorize facts. I would also say to go into it looking to have fun. It was very fun for me and I think that helps show how passionate you are for the subject. The most useful piece of advice I was given was probably to always think outloud, this way the interviewer knows what your thought process is and can help to nudge you in the right direction.