Human, Social And Political Science @ St Catharine's, Cambridge in 2019

Interview format

Arts-Humanities Admissions Assessment (AHAA); 2x interviews

Interview content

Interview 1: personal statement, discussion of class and gender; Interview 2: discussion of topical event

Best preparation

Read The Guardian Long Reads

Test preparation

Past papers

Final thoughts

Don't worry if something goes wrong, just keep going!

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: Arts-Humanities Admissions Assessment (AHAA)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 5/10 mins
Length of interviews: 20 mins
Online interview: No

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

Both very similar, very personal statement based. The first one was a variety of questions on topics like class and gender, I was asked to discuss some of my personal statement ideas more.

The second one they asked me about a topical event and we discussed the theories surround it. The interview rooms were very relaxed, lots of armchairs etc. The interviewers asked really picky questions but wasn't to be rude or insinuate anything, just looking at your thought process.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

I spent lots of them reading/listening to Guardian Long Reads which are freely available online!! And also lots of the BBC podcasts like Arts and Ideas/In Our Time etc. I made sure to read over my personal statement and found it helpful to annotate with facts/ideas about things I had mentioned, and questions I thought might come up.

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

Past papers on website, podcast listening and some Guardian long reads articles!

What advice would you give to future applicants?

The interviewers are there to help you!! Ask questions, discuss ideas. The thing I found most useful was talking them through my thought process as I came to an answer. Don't worry about seeming silly either! I literally picked a bit of nail off which started bleeding and meant I missed a question. I said 'oh sorry, I was bleeding, could I have some tissue', wrapped it up and answered the question. It seemed so embarrassing but I got in!