3x 20-30 min interviews, over two days
Interview 1: warm up questions, graph; Interview 2: lungs, personal statement; Interview 3: brain scan, psychology
Past papers
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Be open and honest; talk through thought process.
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: BMAT
Number of interviews: 3
Skype interview: No
Interview spread: one on first day; two on second day, about 30 minutes apart
Length of interview: 20-30 minutes
In my first interview, they began by asking me a few warm up questions, then gave me a graph. They then probed me with a number of questions on the graph, pushing me to analyse it deeper and deeper.
My second interview was much the same but about the lungs. At the end, one of the interviewers expanded on something in my personal statement.
My third interview was similar: I was given a brain scan and asked a number of questions on it from easy to harder. This included a numerical test. I was later asked about my interest in psychology, which I didn’t really have, but that didn’t seem to affect anything.
I made sure I had done all the past paper questions available. Due to being from a school with no real help on them I found I had to push myself outside of school to complete as many as I could. I think I must’ve started practicing around September and made sure I was prepared before the exam.
It is purposefully difficult to prepare for interviews, so don’t feel like you’re underprepared when you go in. Asking a teacher to fire some questions at you and expand on ideas in a lunch time isn’t a bad idea either and doesn’t require too much hassle on the school's end.
Be open and honest. If you don’t understand something, ask, and talking through your thought process is crucial. Go in with an open mind, they’re not there to trick you.