Geography @ Emmanuel, Cambridge in 2018

Interview format

Geography Admissions Assessment (GAA); 2x interviews

Interview content

Interview 1: personal statement, analysing an article; Interview 2: interpreting graphs

Best preparation

Read a lot of current affairs

Test preparation

Practice papers

Final thoughts

Don't be afraid to ask for help if you don't know something

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: Geography Admissions Assessment (GAA)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 30 minutes
Length of interviews: 30 minutes
Online interview: No

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

Discussed some aspects of personal statement and then real-life application of topics mentioned. Looked at an article and analysed it. Given graphs and had to come to a conclusion about the contents and what this graph would indicate. Very much a discussion vibe. The atmosphere in the first was chilled and friendly whereas the second was more intense.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

I had one practice interview at a nearby school to get the feeling of not knowing the person doing the interview. I re-read books I mentioned in personal statement. I also read a lot of current affairs / revised a lot of the content that I had already learnt in my A Level.

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

All the practice papers on the website and read current affairs in the news / The Economist as much as possible.

What advice would you give to future applicants?

If you don’t know something, don’t pretend you do. Ask for help - they would prefer to give you a push in the right direction and see you figure it out rather than you seeming arrogant / less intelligent for not properly knowing it.