Number of interviews: 2
Online interview: yes

There was no small talk or " Why Oxford / Why Chemistry" in either interview. We got straight into questions, but the tutors were all very friendly. I had one interview for Physical and Inorganic Chemistry, and another interview for Organic Chemistry and Maths. The tutors didn't bring up my personal statement, but the topics I talked about in it did come up in some of the problems they gave me, I'm not sure if this was intentional. The Physical questions were very unfamiliar to me, and on topics quite unrelated to those covered at A Level, but you get to have a discussion with the tutor and he responded to all my answers and helped walk me through the problem so it worked out okay. The Inorganic section was quite fun, it started off with some basic A Level content and slowly increased in difficulty. I was asked to make predictions on the structures of certain compounds and how the bonding may work and although a lot of the content was news using the A Level content and some topics I'd talked about in my personal statement the answers could be worked out. In the Organic interview, I was asked about how the reactivity of different molecules may vary and asked to explain why, I had to sketch some graphs and mechanisms and explain them. The Maths interview started off with questions linked to maths in chemistry but became more and more pure maths based as it went on. I was asked to solve a problem using a method from A Level that I hadn't been taught yet, I told the tutor this and he didn't mind and moved on to the next question. One question I knew the answer to immediately, so he changed the topic right away, they don't care if you know, or even figure out the answer, they just want to see how you think and try to solve problems. I made a lot of silly mistakes in my interviews, I did basic trigonometry wrong, I drew the wrong reaction products, and I said that 6 x 3 = 16. They're not going to reject you for things like this, they care about the big picture a lot more than little details.

I spent most of my time going over the content I talked about in my personal statement (Molecular Orbital Theory, Penicillin, Newman projections, NMR, Maths for Chem) by looking over notes I had made on the topic. Once I was happy I understood something, I would then practice explaining each topic from scratch out loud whilst drawing relevant structures, mechanisms, equations etc on paper. This helped me in my interviews as you have to explain your thinking out loud and draw diagrams or sketch curves for the tutors.

Don't worry about making silly mistakes - they won't affect your chances of getting a place. Don't worry about what you're wearing, just find something comfy. Try to explain your reasoning at every stage, don't jump to answer straight away, but if you're feeling stuck then ask them for help, or even better, explain exactly which part of the problem you're struggling with. The interview is sort of a mock tutorial, they want to see you are teachable and can articulate the things you don't understand (so they can help), not just the things you do. The best thing you can do is try to have fun, you get to speak to some very smart people who love your subject as much as you do, so make the most of it.