Chemical Engineering @ Pembroke, Cambridge in 2018

Interview format

Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA); 3x interviews.

Interview content

Interview 1: math, physics and chemistry questions; Interview 2: math, physics, graphing questions; Interview 3: long chemistry question.

Best preparation

Isaac Physics questions and past papers (https://isaacphysics.org/).

Final thoughts

Practise graph-drawing and longer problem-solving questions; know your personal statement well.

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.

Interview Format

Test taken: Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA)
Number of interviews: 3
Time between interviews: 1-2 hours
Length of interviews: 45 minutes
Online interview: No

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

Generally all the interviews asked me questions relating to my subjects.

In the first interview, I was asked a maths, physics and then chemistry question, similar to problems found in the A-level syllabus.

In the next interview I was asked maths and physics questions, involving drawing a graph. They then started asking me about circular motion and the motion of planets, with questions building up from the previous ones.

The final interview was all about chemistry, with the interviewer asking me an initial organic chemistry question and then developing from each of the answers I gave.

The later two interviewers were both very nice, making the interviews quite relaxed, however the first one was a bit colder and it was more stressful. All the interviews also had a person sitting at the back and observing/making notes.

How did you prepare?

I completed Isaac Physics questions and the past papers found online at https://isaacphysics.org/.

Looking back, what advice would you give to your past self?

For science/maths-based subjects, actively practise your graph drawing skills because those kinds of questions are very common.

There were very few questions relating to me or my personal statement, but in one of the interviews they drew upon knowledge I said I had from my personal statement, so it's a good idea to revise any concepts they may think you should know from that.

A big thing you'll obviously hear a lot is to work out loud, even if you're wrong its a good idea to show the interviewer how you think. The best preparation I would say is to do longer problem solving questions which test your ability to think.