Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA); 2x interviews
Interview 1: chemistry and physiology questions; Interview 2: maths and biochemistry questions.
Revise syllabus content with flash cards, summarise further reading
Revise syllabus content, don't panic in interview.
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:
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 3 hours
Length of interviews: 30 minutes
Online interview: No
In my first interview I had chemistry and physiology type questions: the chemistry questions were on reaction mechanisms and suggesting the structures of potential products. The physiology ones were on the structure of a bone, I had never studied bones before so that was a tougher question, I got it completely wrong but that didn’t seem to matter too much.
My second interview was based around maths, mainly on exponentials to do with tree growth, the typical transformations of graphs questions. I also had questions on biochemistry in this interview, mostly on the structure of a bacterial cell.
I revised everything from my A Levels that I had studied so far, I used flash cards for this because I found that was the quickest method to cover all the content. I read over my personal statement and recapped summaries of any books I had read/essays I had written. I also had a
I used practice papers from the cam website and also reviewed any GCSE content and A Level content that I wasn’t familiar with
My advice would be to revise your A level content and know it well, if anything this gives you the confidence you need in the interview. Also don’t panic if you get a question wrong - I went off on completely the wrong lines on one of my questions and it didn’t really matter, it just led the conversation in a different direction.