Test taken: None
Number of interviews: 3
Time between interviews: 1 day
Length of interviews: 20 minutes
Online interview: No

I had three interviews, each 20 minutes. Everyone was really friendly, and although it felt intimidating they were super nice. For my first interview, we sat at a table in a seminar room, it was more organic chemistry/biological chemistry based. They first asked me some basic maths questions which were really a lot more simple than I would have expected from an Oxford interview! And then they showed me an image of a molecule and asked me to discuss its properties. They also asked some questions about amino acids. Basically, the questions build on each other. I didn't say what they were looking for in the first bit about the molecule properties but then they guided me to the answer by asking questions to help me. The most important thing is to THINK OUT LOUD! They can't help you if you are silent, just say what you're thinking, like oh I can see this oxygen is negative, and this nitrogen is positive, stuff like that even if it's really basic just say it out loud so if you're going down the wrong track they can ask you to think about it in a different way. The point is NOT to get the right answer the first time, in fact, you absolutely shouldn't go in expecting to get everything right because they will be asking you things you don't know and seeing how you go about solving the problem. They just want to see if they can teach you. The interview is essentially how tutorials go at Oxford. The second interview was about electrospray ionisation, and physical chemistry etc. The third interview was about genomic and palindromic sequences where restriction enzymes bind.

I made sure I was really confident on all the A-level stuff we did so far, in biology and chemistry. I read through my notes and made sure I knew the content inside out. The questions build off your A-level knowledge so if you haven't done a topic yet they'll just explain it to you. Make sure you know what the biochemistry course is, and why you want to study it (sounds simple enough but when they ask you your mind goes blank haha) Also just keep in mind 1 or 2 recent scientific developments, not more than that but make sure you have something you can talk about to show that you're interested in the subject.

They're not trying to trip you up, they're trying to help you, don't worry about getting things wrong - the whole point is to ask you things you don't know and see how you begin to go about figuring it out - they are there to help you!! If you don't understand something just say I don't understand this bit - THINK OUT LOUD, say things out loud even if they're obvious, like this oxygen is negative and has a lone pair, so they can see your thought process. They can then focus on the things that are important to solving the problem and guide you to the answer. They're just trying to see if they can teach you, they're not expecting you to get the answers right the first time, in fact, you shouldn't go in expecting this because they're going to eventually guide the interview to almost 2nd year content which you definitely won't know, but with their guidance, you will be able to understand. An interview is just like what a tutorial is like. I said the most stupid things in my interview "erm this molecule looks squished" and it was actually exactly what they were looking for.