Test taken: None
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: A day (they were at different colleges)
Length of interviews: 30 mins
Online interview: No

For both my interviews, I was given an article to read for ~40 mins before the interview. We weren’t given much instruction so I just tried to take it in as much as possible. In my first interview, I was asked questions related to the article to see what I could recall, but then the questions led more into A level knowledge and drawing conclusions from previous questions. The atmosphere was really nice and I was encouraged to think out loud and draw my process on a whiteboard. The 30 mins flew by! My second interview was similar, if not even more relaxed. In this one I was also given a really interesting article about new technology and was asked about how it might work. What threw me most was a maths question- despite having been doing Maths and Further Maths A levels, I was still useless at doing a simple dilution on the spot. It took me a ridiculous amount of time to get to the answer but they didn’t mind, and you can tell they see it a lot. The most important part was the thought process and reasoning behind the steps. I was also asked about something from my personal statement in this interview, but it was more about what I had learned from the event and if I could explain why it was interesting, rather than testing my proclaimed knowledge. Overall both experiences were really nice, and felt like they went so quickly! I enjoyed both my interviews a lot.

I made sure I knew what was in my personal statement, and re-read through some of the specific chapters of a book I’d mentioned. I wasn’t really asked about this in the end, but it’s nice to know your way around something. Some colleges ask you to read a specific article before the interview, so it’s more based around that than anything random. In general I made sure I’d brushed up on any topics in my A level subjects that I was a little confused about, in case anything within them should pop up.

Relax! And try not to cram any knowledge in before the interview. Odds are you’ll be guided into a topic and able to draw conclusions from the information they give you, not just what you might know already. If you’re given an article, try to find things you think are interesting, or that you don’t necessarily recognise if it’s something you may have briefly covered in your studies. They want to see how you think when presented with information, so show them that. Memorising a bunch of facts doesn’t show them how your thought process works and how you interact with a new topic. Taking a steady approach to the interview and asking questions when you’re unsure does.