Chemistry UCAS Interview Questions?

This year i had 5 interviews, so one each for each uni i applied for.

My biggest piece of advice is do a quick bit of revision about everything youve studied at a-level in your course; this applies for every interview.

Most interviews are an informal chat, they ask you a few things about yourself, so make sure you re-read your personal statement

A big thing i will also say is make sure you have a response to: Why are you doing this course? What SPECIFIC parts of chemistry are you interested in, and tell me about some?

Make sure you can speak about the areas you are interested in, you may not have considered it, and its even harder, but make sure youve thought about a answer.

When it comes down to the chemistry questions, i personally found them fairly simple, so just do maybe an hours revision

Make sure you come across confident.

I also had an interview at oxford, but thats a whole new ball game which you should ask about, but i didnt get in anyway :P

Will be studying chemistry with molecular physics next year at nottingham, hope to see you there

Can you give me examples of what they asked you? Like a small list?

At the other places I applied to eg Bristol and Sheffield where it supposed to be more of an informal chat than an interview, it was actually very similar! Bristol asked me to describe how an NMR machine works (loved the question cuz I'm also into my physics) and got me to draw a few basic structures. Sheffield did much the same, think I had to do a reaction mechanism.

Consider the following reaction:
CO + NO2 → CO2 + NO

In this case, it has been experimentally determined that this reaction takes place according to the rate law R = k[NO2]2. Therefore, a possible mechanism by which this reaction takes place is:

2 NO2 → NO3 + NO (slow)

NO3 + CO → NO2 + CO2 (fast)

Thanks you've helped me a lot but one final question, the reaction mechanisms are they basic like these?;

Sorry I didn't reply for so long, hope you still see this, but the mechs they asked me to draw were normally organic like SN1 SN2, though I suppose yes that is also the kind -of question that may come up, seems about the right level of difficulty. If you struggle at all they also prompt you which is good.

The organic ones were like: 'using curly arrows show how HCN/KCN reacts with aldehydes.'

Which books do you read, your school books? I haven't run into aldehydes yet, can you list all your chem books?

I only had school books, dont worry they'll only ask you about stuff you've covered in school

The most serious interview I had was at Imperial, where they asked me what kind of things I'd been doing in school, I mentioned testing for aldehydes and ketones, and then they got me to draw out the structure of 2,4-dnph and also draw the mechanism of some sort of reaction of ethanal, and that was pretty much it the hardest it got.

I had heard before my interview, that they asked you for a topic to ask questions on... so I revised the hell out of acids and bases, but silly me, I didn't realise that that was what they were doing when they asked me what experiments I had done recently in school, stupidly I mentioned testing for aldehydes and ketones, even though I hardly knew that! I ended up nailing the questions anyway so whatever lol

At the other places I applied to eg Bristol and Sheffield where it supposed to be more of an informal chat than an interview, it was actually very similar! Bristol asked me to describe how an NMR machine works (loved the question cuz I'm also into my physics) and got me to draw a few basic structures. Sheffield did much the same, think I had to do a reaction mechanism.

Its more just "why are you interested in chemistry?" that takes up the main chunk of interviews, don't bother rehearsing for that or whatever, it should be pretty instinctive if you have actually decided on chemistry for some reason.

^^ It decreases :P