Test taken: CAT

Number of interviews: 3

Skype interview: No

Time between each interview: 1 day

Length of interviews: 30-45 minutes each

I did in each a combination of two or three of philosophy, literature (the only one that was really based off my personal statement), history, or an analysis of a piece of ancient art and/or short text. I had 2 interviews at the college that I applied to and one at the college I'm at now.

In the first interview, I was asked about texts I had written about in my personal statement. The starting point was what I had actually written, but then the tutors steadily moved on. I got the impression that they're trying to see more how you think and work with new information than how you retain knowledge.

Similarly, when they give you a piece of art or text you don't necessarily have to be right, it's more how you work through and decipher the information.

In my Philosophy interview, I was asked a completely out of the blue philosophy question that had nothing to do with classics at all, but it was answerable and meant to provoke thought.

I did practice papers based on the previous year's papers and learnt a load of vocab from a few different lists - you can find PDFs of a few online or look them up on websites like Quizlet.

I did practice interviews at school, which were helpful, but it's really quite hard to prepare yourself exactly for the real thing because anything can come up, especially when you're with teachers you know quite well at school.

Before the interviews I read through my personal statement multiple times over and made notes on the texts. It's also key to keep up any language learning you've done.

Ultimately though I found that, as much prep as I did, what mattered more was how you were able to think in the actual thing. The best thing I did was get a good night's sleep and relax a bit before my last interview, which went by far the best out of the three.