2x interviews (30mins)
1st interview: personal statement, pre submitted essays; 2nd interview: historical source
Mock interviews & knowing A-level well
Don't overanalyse after
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.
Took place in December; I was directed from the
2 x Subject Specific Interviews, 30 mins long. I had 2 interviewers in each, all History college fellows. 1 interview was structured around a source I had looked at briefly before, the other just generally subject specific.
Interview 1 - we discussed aspects of my personal statement, and I was asked questions based upon my personal statement (quite general - regarding a History competition I'd entered, for example). I was then asked to discuss the overarching argument behind the essays I'd submitted as examples of my work, and to relate to some of my other areas of historical study. I was asked to analyse a historical source that was put in front of me.
Interview 2 - I was asked several questions about a historical source that I'd been given. I was then asked questions that started from my personal statement, and linked to wider areas of history - often those which my interviewers had a specific interest in.
Revising the course content from my A-Levels. I could therefore give more specific answers to some questions.
It’s impossible to tell how an interview actually went - I came out of mine having no clue whether it had gone well or not - so don't fixate on one question which you think went slightly awry. They don't necessarily expect you to know all the answers (they genuinely didn't care that I knew the specific date of a treaty mentioned in my source question), they want to see how you've come to your answer and thought it through.