Modern And Medieval Languages @ Pembroke, Cambridge in 2019

Interview format

MML at-interview assessment, 2x interviews

Interview content

Interview 1 (ab initio Spanish): discussion of EPQ and personal statement Interview 2 (French): discussion of French literature extract

Best preparation

Strengthening strongest areas

Test preparation

Practice papers!

Final thoughts

Aim to demonstrate your best qualities and the breadth and depth of your knowledge

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: MML at-interview assessment
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 4-5 hours
Length of interviews: less than 45 mins
Online interview: No

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

Since I applied for ab initio (from scratch) Spanish, my Spanish interview was mostly centred around my EPQ/what I wrote in my personal statement. For me, this was actually nothing to do with the first-year course content which was mostly literature-based — I had actually written about linguistics in my statement/EPQ! The interviewers were happy to talk about this, though, and didn't push me to discuss literature etc. It was really chill and nice, and I got to talk about things that interest me and that I'm best at.

However, at my French interview, I was given an extract from some old French literature, which might as well have been hieroglyphics (I hated, and still hate, studying literature). When I went into the interview, I was asked to give observations on the text... despite the interviewer's efforts to get me to talk about, like, "themes" or whatever, I could only make linguistics-based points. When I eventually gave in and said something more literature-y, she basically told me I was wrong. It made me feel really stupid, to be honest, and I had a huge cry afterwards, and was SO sure I was going to get rejected, but I still got in! If I could have re-taken the interview, I'd probably push harder to talk about my own areas of interest, rather than the interviewer's!

How did you prepare for your interviews?

The best thing to do is strengthen your strongest areas, rather than looking into complex/high-level things you've never heard of or studied. I did better talking about my own areas of expertise than I did trying to sound smart about topics I don't understand.

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

Practice papers!

What advice would you give to future applicants?

Answer the interviewers' questions, but try not to back yourself into a corner! Your role is to demonstrate your best qualities and the breadth and depth of your knowledge, not to bend to their will and talk about subjects you know nothing about! No matter what the topic, if you can shift your answers towards your own areas of expertise while keeping them relevant, you'll come across a lot better than if you just gave a direct but weak answer to the question.