2x 25 min interviews, over 2 days
Both interviews: reading given beforehand
Acknowledge that the interview will probably be a high-pressure situation, and try to be ready for it
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Try to get a good night's sleep and stay calm.
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: LNAT
Number of interviews: 2
Skype interview: No
Interviews spread over 2 days
Length of interviews: 25 minutes each
Both my interviews were based entirely on the 30 minutes of pre-reading I had to do before each interview. The reading is Law based but you absolutely do not need to have any legal knowledge to understand the texts - I certainly didn’t.
Take all the practice papers on the website and
The most helpful thing I did that prepared me for the interviews was a
Don’t bother with any interview training sessions or books because anything you might have learnt from them will just pop out of your head in the actual interviews. The best thing you can do to prepare is to acknowledge that you are going to be pushed and tested - just be ready for the pressure.
Spend the reading time just thinking about the general idea and make sure you can summarise what you’ve just read, because they will ask you! In my experience, your first interview will be a lot more stressful than your second one - mostly because of the nerves of not knowing what to expect. Just make sure to TAKE YOUR TIME thinking of your responses to the interviewer’s questions. It is so much better to have 30 seconds of silence thinking about what you want to say rather than rambling about anything that comes to mind. Also try not to get distracted: in my first interview one of my interviewers stared out the window for near enough the whole interview and you just have to stay calm and try not to stress. Breathe, stay calm and trust that what you're saying is intelligent, even if you feel it is anything but.
Please don’t bother getting up at 5 AM on the morning of your interviews like I did because those extra hours of re-reading my personal statement and all the books I mentioned were of no help. Get a good night's sleep, watch Netflix and keep calm because, frankly, you are never going to be fully prepared for a Law interview and you don’t need to be; expect anything and everything.