Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment; 2x Interviews.
Interview 1: biology-based interview; Interview 2: chemistry-based interview.
Prepare answers to some interview questions and practice articulating your thoughts out loud when answering questions.
Answer past paper questions and read the test specifications carefully.
Be friendly and don't worry if you don't know the answer to certain questions, as long as you give your best guess!
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: 1.5 hours
Length of interviews: 25 minutes
Online interview: No
My first interview was a biology interview, where I was asked to comment on some animal diagrams completely unrelated to the area of biology I’m interested in and had to explain my thinking to reach a conclusion. Even though I came to the wrong conclusion during the interview, the interviewers helped me to reach the right interpretation in the end. I was then given a complex diagram and a quote to evaluate. There’s really nothing I could do to prepare for the interview, the interviewers pick topics you almost definitely won’t know and will explain relevant information if necessary. I was asked some questions related to one of the interviewer's specialist area, and then commented on my personal statement and asked a question about designing an experiment based on something I mentioned very briefly.
My second interview was a chemistry interview, and I spent most of the interview working through a question that required basic maths and simple chemistry equations to solve. In the second half of the interview I was taught about a new concept that was relevant to my personal statement but was beyond A-level knowledge. I was asked a couple of questions on this topic and then had to draw a graph based on the information I was given.
I prepared answers for any interview questions I could think of which related to my personal statement and current scientific research. I also practiced answering random A-level questions out loud to get used to articulating my thought process.
I went over some past papers and also answered
Practice answering questions out loud, even if it’s just to yourself. If you get stuck on an answer during the interview, say something like "I’m not sure, but based on what you said before it could be ..." . It might be bad advice, but I’d recommend to be friendly because it will help you seem more teachable and engaged! You’re not expected to know the answer to everything you're asked, and just be reassured that they really do consider all aspects of your application, like teacher references etc., when making a decision about your offer.