I arrived the night before as I had travelled from Scotland. Robinson allowed me to stay over night in the college so that I could be properly rested. In the morning I had breakfast in the college and got ready for the interviews. I had a subject specific interview first (I read a passage for 15minutes first) and then a break and then a general interview. For both interviews a current student took me to the rooms they were in.

Subject Interview with 2 Director of Studies (30 mins). I read a passage for 15 minutes before the interview. I'm not really sure how to describe what it was about but it was to do with the way factors might affect a task. The passage gave you the Abstract, Method and Results. There were no instructions about what to do with the article but there was paper and a pen to make notes so I just tried to make sense of the article to find out what it was about and then criticise it/find potential flaws (as this is similar to what we had done at school). The first few questions in the interview were about the passage. The first one just asked generally about what I thought the experiment was trying to find out. They then asked my what some of the words in the passage meant. There were two graphs illustrating the results and so they asked me what they showed and then why the results might show this. They then asked me to criticise the study so I talked about the sample, how they could have measured certain aspects, effect of other factors etc.

The Director of Studies aksed me about my specific interest areas and then asked me to interpret some more graphs. I had to describe the trend in the graph and then link it to why I though that might be the case. I think the next question was on intelligence, and we spoke about testing methods.

The other DoS from another college then asked me some questions. The first one she asked me was an ethical one, followed by a logical one. Because we had extra time, I was then asked about another graph, and I had to describe what it was telling me.

General Interview with a Maths DoS (15 minutes). This interview mostly just went through my personal statement, linking my interests to psychology. We spoke a bit about my Scottish Bacc. project [Editor's Note: An independent study some final year students in Scotland undertake. A bit like the EPQ.]

Just read a few books from the reading list that was published online. I also did an online course in psychology as I had never studied it before so that was useful to show that I knew what I was actually applying for. Not many people have done psychology before doing PBS so I think it's okay not to know too much. Try and do a few mock interviews with different people as everyone has a different style so it's good to experiences as many as possible.

Most of the other people that I met on the day were really stressed but I wasn't as I didn't put too much pressure on myself. I think it's better once you realise that it's not the be-all and end-all, there are plenty of other great unis and Cambridge is just a bonus.