I interviewed in early December, and had three interviews spread about an hour apart, each with one interviewer in their office. Each interviewer started off by asking some questions about my historical interests, and progressed into more theoretical questions about historical study. They also all gave me a different type of source material to discuss, and we had conversations about this. I didn’t have any tests or written tasks, only discussions with my interviewers.

Each of my three interviews began with a discussion about topics I have studied or expressed an interest in, but this was only for the first few minutes. One of my interviewers asked me more general questions about history and approaching different periods, but allowed me a lot of room to alter these to my own areas of interest. All three of my interviewers gave me a source material and asked me to discuss my impressions of this and then asked follow-up questions. This part was quite challenging because they weren’t related to anything I had studied before, but the interviewers helped give context and were very supportive. I didn’t feel that I did very well on this aspect, but in the end my interviewers said this was mostly to see my thought process rather than the ultimate conclusion.

Practice interviews run by the local Cambridge & Oxford alumni group in my city were extremely helpful, and it was also good to practice with my history teacher and even family friends. Just getting comfortable expressing my thoughts was the most important part. Also, my main advice would be to think about what kinds of sources are used, and to bring this up when answering questions in interview. The pre-interview resources available on the Cambridge website were also helpful, like the video of a mock interview.

The interviews were a really good indication of what supervisions might be like, and it helped me to understand what the style of teaching would be. Being comfortable having a discussion and expressing yourself with professors is hard, but the interview is a good challenge! I thought I did horribly in my last interview because I made so many mistakes, and I left feeling like crying. But don’t overthink it, and just be confident that you did your best.