Natural Sciences (Physical) @ Sidney Sussex, Cambridge in 2017

Interview format

2x technical interviews (25 mins each)

Interview content

First interview: questions on inorganic chemistry, chemical structures, graph sketching; Second interview: questions on classical mechanics and thermal physics

Best preparation

Do Olympiad past papers to practise problem-solving skills.

Final thoughts

Don't worry if you can't answer all the questions! They're designed to challenge you.

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

My interviews were in early December, quite late in the afternoon. I was greeted by a student at the Porters' Lodge and shown to where my interviews would be, and then taken to the waiting room. I had two technical interviews, each lasting 25 minutes with two subject specialists. These mainly involved answering questions on paper.

There was a half hour break between interviews, during which time I had some nice chats with some HSPS applicants. There were (free!) drinks, biscuits and fruit in the waiting room, and we were given a coupon for a free hot drink at the college Café too.

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

My first interview was based on chemistry. I was asked some quite simple inorganic chemistry at the start to ease me in, followed by questions that required me to deduce possible chemical structures. The remainder of the interview was dedicated to sketching the graphs of functions that were apparently common in more advanced physical chemistry.

The second interview contained a mixture of shorter and longer physics and maths questions. These included some classical mechanics and thermal physics. Note that I had mentioned that I had studied these topics in the SAQ, though I don't know if that necessarily influenced the choice of questions.

How did you prepare?

Olympiad past papers were very useful for developing problem-solving skills. You can find BPhO papers on the British Physics Olympiad website and UKChO papers on the Royal Society of Chemistry website. There's also the Cambridge Chemistry Challenge, with their lower sixth written papers available here: http://www.c3l6.org/downloads

Isaac Physics is also an invaluable resource for questions: https://isaacphysics.org/

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

Don't worry if you can't answer all the questions! I missed out quite a few questions in the Natural Sciences Admissions Asssessment (NSAA) due to time pressure and needed a lot of prompting on the last couple of questions of my physics interview and yet I was still made an offer! The interviewers are looking to see how you grasp new information and use it to solve unfamiliar problems, much like you might be doing during your supervisions!