GAT; 2x interviews.
Interview 1: pre-reading, personal statement exploration, data and graph interpretation; Interview 2: pre-reading and questions on the article, personal statement and data interpretation.
Re-read personal statement and ensured that they could justify it; made 'cheat sheet' with key information from their personal statement, books/literature they had read, current affairs and A-level content they found interesting.
Think out loud and show the interviewers your 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: Geography Admissions Test (GAT)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: One day
Length of interviews: Twenty- Thirty minutes
Online interview: No
The first interview was the one without a pre reading. It began with some questions on my personal statement and challenging me on certain geographical statement I made. It then moved onto addressing geography more widely, with several figures including graphs, maps and graphics which I was asked to explain and answer questions on. I was also asked several personal questions, such as if I had to design a research question what would I do it on. The second interview involved twenty minutes of pre-reading, which in my case was a new article. The first half of these interview involved questions on the article, whilst the second half largely followed the same format as the first interview, involving questions on graphs, my personal statement and more general questions about geography as a whole.
Firstly I went over my personal statement as precisely as possible in order to make sure I knew each statement/fact I had made, they made sure I knew what I meant by it and ensured I would have something to talk about with it (this is something that nearly tripped me up in interviews as they picked up on an offhand comment that I wasn't aware I made). For general preparation, my geography teacher gave me a couple books written generally about geography to give me a wider range of ideas and literature which I could talk about. For me, this was 'Adventures in the Anthropocene' by Gaia Vince and 'Divided' by Tim Marshall. I created a cheat sheet I could keep referring to up until the interview itself, containing: ideas what I had written about in my personal statement, ideas around books/literature on geography I had read, some current geographical issues in the news I could talk about and then some particular aspects of my A-Level course I found particularly interesting in case this was asked.
The university provided two practice papers online as well s two example papers. I completed the practice papers after having a look at the examples, then my I asked several of my teachers to see whether I was making a good or coherent argument. I also found it useful to read either some academic articles or student essays to get an idea of what sort of structure of argument they were looking for.
My advice would be to always voice what you're thinking. The aim of the interview is to show them your thought processes and the way you work through issues. Don't strive to only say things which you know are correct, but rather show them how you work through a question in your mind. I would also say be as aware as possible of everything said in your personal statement because chances are they will quiz you on what you mean by it.