Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA); 2x interviews
Interview 1: chemistry and biology; Interview 2: personal statement, biology and maths
Recap subject content and personal statement
Try not to stress over the interview after it's over.
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.
Test taken: Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: approximately 4 hours
Length of interviews: 30 minutes
Online interview: No
Both of my interviews were split into two sections: the first interview was half chemistry, half biology and the second interview was half biology, half maths. My personal statement was used as an icebreaker in the second one, but it was only mentioned for around 5 minutes of it.
The rest of the questions in both related to either a sheet with a diagram on it, or a scenario. My interviewers were all really nice and welcoming, and it was quite relaxed - more like a conversation than an job interview. They start off with quite simple questions, and I couldn't answer some of the questions but they give you some hints to help you along. An important point: the interviewers know what they're talking about inside and out, so if you dont know what something means (including the question), just ask or tell them what you think it means. That is so much better than struggling and pretending you do know.
I don't know about others but I was never asked any questions like the weird/incredibly abstract ones you see in articles. I was under the impression beforehand that the interviews were going to be extremely difficult and if they weren't, I wasn't going to be given a place because I wasn't challenged enough, but actually I ended up enjoying both of my interviews and the answers they wanted required more logic than anything else.
I was given 1
I went over everything else I had mentioned in my personal statement, and just recapped some topics I had been doing in biology and chemistry. This did help for the chemistry bit of the interview but not so much biology. If I had to give one main piece of advice it would be to not put too much pressure on yourself about it.
I printed out the specification from the uni website (Google the assessment name and year and it should come up). I went through this and tried to learn anything I didn't know/hadn't learnt yet . Then at the back there was sample questions. Try to do them timed as in the assessment it is so timed pressured. My advice would be once you have tried each section in part 1 whichever you are the fastest/ know the most on do that first and leave the most difficult/time consuming (for me the maths section) till last because you probably won't have time to have a go at them all so you want to do as many as possible. Saying that though, don't leave any gaps on section 1 just guess (or quickly make an educated guess). Overall don't worry too much about it, I thought it went terribly and didn't answer half of the section 2 questions yet still got a place.
The interview was nothing like I was expecting, or was led to believe it would be like. It was quite calm and honestly don't worry yourself too much about it. As long as you go over your personal statement and have some background knowledge, don't try and learn everything. Yeah 13 is a stressful time anyway and you have a lot of things going on besides uni applications to worry about.
If you can I would say try and not think about your interviews too much after they have happened. You have done everything you can and the more you think about, the worse it seems to have gone.
I don't know if this will help anyone but when I first told my chemistry supply teacher I was going to apply, he gave me some advice which really helped to change my perspective on applying. He said, "Apply and I hope you get it, but make sure you have another option which you would also like to go to. Find things about another uni which you love, or the course, or the area it's in so if you don't get in it doesn't crush you." I know it's much harder in reality to deal with rejection, but if you have somewhere you would like to go, it does soften the blow a little.