Psychological And Behavioural Sciences @ Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 2019

Interview format

Psychological and Behavioural Sciences Admissions Assessment (PBSAA); 2x interviews

Interview content

Interview 1: biology questions; Interview 2: experimental methods, discussion of a source

Best preparation

Reread books mentioned on personal statement

Test preparation

Used Critical Thinking GCSE papers

Final thoughts

Show the interviewers that you're teachable and eager to learn

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: Psychological and Behavioural Sciences Admissions Assessment (PBSAA)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 2 hours
Length of interviews: 20-30 mins
Online interview: No

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

In the first interview, I got asked a lot of biology questions. I hadn't taken Alevel biology or revised any GCSE bio content before the interview (you probably should!) so I was a bit stuck. Thankfully, the interviewer gave me hints and helped me through it. What they want to see is that you have good problem solving skills, not necessarily that you know the answer.

The second interview was in a really cozy room. They gave me a hypothesis and asked me how I would conduct an experiment to test it, so brush up on your experimental methods. I was given a source too before the interview and I highlighted it and annotated the sides with stuff I thought I could say. Then they asked me questions on it in the interview.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

I asked one of my teachers to do a mock interview with me. It wasn't very similar to the real thing but it got me used to being interviewed so I was less nervous on the day. I went over my personal statement a lot, reread the books I mentioned and tried to come up with questions I thought they might ask me. This had no impact on the interview as they asked me nothing from my personal statement.

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

Loads of past papers. The first part is similar to the old Critical Thinking GCSE too, so I learned some content from that.

What advice would you give to future applicants?

My advice would be to pretend that you're in a supervision. What they're really interviewing you for is "Would I be willing to teach this person? Are they eager to learn?" Speak your lines of thought out loud because what they're interested in is your thought process. Take critical comments - if they give you one then don't argue against it, amend it into your answer.