Chemistry @ Somerville, Oxford in 2018

Interview format

2x 30 min interviews, over 2 days

Interview content

Interview 1: inorganic chemistry; Interview 2: organic chemistry, question on pure maths

Best preparation

Practice papers

Advice in hindsight

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Final thoughts

Know your stuff inside out.

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

Test taken: TSA

Number of interviews: 2

Skype interview: No

Time between each interview: 1 day

Length of interviews: 30 minutes each

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

First interview was inorganic chemistry - we talked about polymers and type of inorganic compound and sketched some graphs.

Second interview was organic chemistry and a question on pure maths and a type of mechanism

How did you prepare?

Practice papers

What advice do you have for future applicants?

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

(1) know A level chemistry, maths and physics inside out (2) read beyond the syllabus (3) practise graph sketching and calculus (4) do past chemistry olympiad/c3l6 papers