2x 20-25 min interviews, 1 day apart
Interview 1: reading about experiments given beforehand; Interview 2: motivations, reading, statistics problems, journal article given beforehand
Build up 'super-curricular activities' - i.e. do stuff related to your subject
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Show your working' by thinking aloud.
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
Skype interview: No
Time between each interview: 1 day
Length of interviews: 20-25 minutes each
In my first interview, I had some pre-reading about a couple of experiments, and the sheet included some questions to think about. During the interview, I was asked about those questions, as well as some follow-up questions springboarding from this. If I was struggling, the interviewer gave me some hints. There was one interviewer and another person writing notes. I was nervous but they made an effort to make me as comfortable as possible.
In my second interview, they gave me a journal article to read just before. During the interview, they asked me about why I was interested in my subject and what sorts of things I had been reading about my subject recently that I found interesting, and gave me some simple statistics problems to work through (with hints if I needed them). They also asked follow-up questions relating to what we had spoken about. For the last 5-or-so minutes they asked me to interpret the journal article. I found this interview more relaxing, and enjoyed the opportunity to speak about my interests. There were two interviewers who both asked questions, and they were very friendly and welcoming.
I used the practice papers and free resources from the 'Oxbridge Applications' website, like the book 'So you want to go to Oxbridge? Tell me about a banana'.
It's a good idea to work on building up 'supercurricular' activities, e.g. reading books/articles, listening to podcasts, doing FutureLearn courses etc. as this will (hopefully!) be interesting to you and give you more insight into your subject, and it will give you something to talk about in your personal statement and interviews. There's no need to learn it all off by heart though- I tried to 'revise' for my interviews and it wasn't that helpful.
It's nice to make the most of the social activities at the interviews and talk to the student helpers, as it can give you insight into what uni life is like and whether you see it as a good fit for you.
A final top tip is to think out loud in the interviews- go though your thought process as you approach their questions. It's like showing your working- if you just give the wrong answer you get no marks, but if you show that you had a sensible thought process behind it and that you have the ability to reason logically then you can still get credit!