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Competition - post a photo you've taken of nature >>
Competition - post a photo you've taken of nature >>
Competition - post a photo you've taken of nature >>

Preparing for Cambridge interview

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(edited 2 years ago)
Reply 1
Avatar for Scotney
Scotney
20
@threeportdrift can you help out here? and also@Peterhouse Admissions if you are around.
Reply 2
Avatar for AksSin
AksSin
7
Didn't you state the topics you had learnt in school in the SAQ? The intention of that section was to let them know what you had covered so that they would only ask you interview questions on those bits I believe.
Original post by macrophage
Have been told by my school to start preparation for interviews in December. I’m applying for biological natural sciences. My problem is that I’m a Scottish applicant who has done a different exams system which I’ve noticed is quite different to the A level one - I’m missing a lot of knowledge from there, for example I haven’t done organic chemistry in about 2 years

Should I try and teach myself A level content or just turn up to the interview and hope the interviewers understand the situation? Just worried I might not understand their prompting, if you know what I mean lol


The Cambridge admissions staff will be pretty familiar with the Scottish system - you aren't exactly the first Scottish student they will have interviewed. They interview students from a wide range of academic backgrounds and seem to be able to adjust.

I thought there was a form somewhere in the process where you told them the main points of the syllabus you'd done so far. But if that's changed now, I'm sure they still have a way of managing - not least you can tell them in the interview 'Oh I haven't studied this yet' and they will adapt.
Reply 4
Avatar for Heidi_E
Heidi_E
13
In your SAQ, you would put what topics you've studied and they ask that in the interview!!
Reply 5
Avatar for Scotney
Scotney
20
Hopefully the above users will answer the question but just generally I would advise watching Cambridge example interviews online and also practice thinking out loud.Get your parents or friends to ask you to talk about a vegetable or plant and ask you questions about it. Might help if they watched interview questions with you. The main thing is to keep talking. So tell me 10things you can deduce fron looking at this house plant for instance. Get them to interrupt and ask why you have given an answer. The point is tutors are not mind readers so show your thought process even if you are wrong in the conclusion.
Hi there, thanks for the tag!

Your interviewers will be aware of what you've covered from what you put on the SAQ. They might, however, still bring up something you're unfamiliar with. What might be useful is refreshing your memory of terms you haven't heard in a while, rather than trying to teach yourself something completely new at this stage. Our interviewers interview students from a huge range of education systems, so they will adapt!

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