English Literature Admissions Test, 2x interviews
Questions on personal statement, Analysis of pre-read extracts and poetry
Went over personal statement
Completed practice papers
Make sure you're applying for a subject you love!
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:
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 2 days
Length of interviews: 30 minutes
Online interview: Yes
I enjoyed my interviews. We spoke about books I had read from my personal statement which led to ideas of character vs. plot, literary criticism etc. so it was mostly just a flowing conversation about things that interested me and my opinions on topics related to them.
The extracts/poems I was given were also very interesting - during prereading, I would fill about an a4 page full of notes and scribbles per text, then simply discuss my ideas about the themes and techniques, occasionally prompted with further questions by the interviewers.
Made sure my personal statement was fresh in my mind in case of specific questions, watched a video of a typical English interview to feel reassured, and made sure I had read various interesting texts in the year preceding it in order to have things to speak passionately about - this was one of the most important things for me, I think.
Practice papers + tutor
My expectations were of an interesting yet somewhat nervous conversation, and my experience was far more of the former than the latter once we really got into it.
I cannot say I know exactly what the interviewers saw in me except that I was passionate and I had a lot of ideas and opinions about my subject, so my advice is to make sure you're applying for a subject you love, and then to make sure you show that passion in whatever way is most fitting to you!