5 x 30 min interviews
Each interview was focussed around either a score, a text or a musical listening extract and questions were asked about it.
Practise reading unfamiliar short texts and then analysing them/talking about them to someone else, or listening to short musical extracts or analysing scores and doing the same.
Try to relax and enjoy the opportunity to speak to a leading expert in your subject
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: None
Number of interviews: 5
Time between interviews: There were a few hours between some and a day or two between others.
Length of interviews: About 30 minutes
Online interview: No
My personal statement didn't come up at all. Each interview was focussed around either a score, a text or a musical listening extract and questions were asked about it. Sometimes this led to wider, more general questions about an underlying musical issue. I was nervous at first and tired by the end of the process (I had 5 interviews) but each interviewer tried to make each as stress-free as possible. There are many myths about scary professors trying to catch you out, but in my experience, all of the questions were built up to and if you are not sure it is fine to say so - just try to articulate your thought process and then the interviewers will try to give you hints.
I read through recent school work and re-read all of the books I mentioned on my personal statement. However, because the interview questions did not cover anything we had done in school my preparation was not very helpful. The school provided a practice interview but the interviewer had no knowledge of music so it again wasn't directly relevant, though it did help me to practice talking to people I hadn't met before in a formal situation. A better way to prepare would have been practising reading unfamiliar short texts and then analysing them/talking about them to someone else, or listening to short musical extracts or analysing scores and doing the same.
It is easy to say in retrospect, but try to relax and enjoy the opportunity to speak to a leading expert in your subject. What the interviewers are really looking for is genuine passion