To those already at Cambridge University - did you make any mistakes at interview?

I thought mine went as well as it possibly could have if I'm being honest, and I felt very good about it afterwards despite it being extremely tough.

what questions were u asked?

Is it encumbent upon the tutors to change for you, the potential applicant, or do you think it might be more appropriate that you play their game by their rules, given that they are the referees as well as full-time players?

I was just curious.
I applied to Oxford last year and got interviewed for PPE. the level of questioning was quite insane. Just wanted to see how deep the questions asked at cambridge were.

obviously, PPS and PPE cant be really compared. but never mind

Any tips for the SPS interview? I've applied to Jesus College, and have my interview on the 8th December.
Any advice would be really useful, thanks

I was just curious.
I applied to Oxford last year and got interviewed for PPE. the level of questioning was quite insane. Just wanted to see how deep the questions asked at cambridge were.

Personally, watching the mock interviews (from Emmanuel, but available at cam.ac.uk as well) was quite reassuring - to those who have not already done that (not a lot I expect), I found them at:
http://www.emma.cam.ac.uk/admissions/videos/interviews/

You should note that the University's film guide Interviews in Action is not an accurate guide to what goes on in Trinity interviews, which are of a more technical nature than the fictional ones presented in the film.

Not sure how representative the Emmanuel mock interviews are for all colleges - e.g. Trinity College say on their website:


though I believe this is refering to some other 'mock' interview movies, not necessarily the Emmanuel ones? Anyway, I just thought I'd sow some panic. Good luck everyone.

Yeah I did, I suggested that there are proteins that don't have a primary structure kept together by peptide bonds!! The interviewer said to me 'tell me what is riduclous about what you just said'. I was well scared!

The Emmanuel ab initio MML interview in the video is very similar to the one I had, despite the fact that mine was for Russian and the one in the video was Greek or something. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that I was interviewed at Emma for an MML ab initio The format was quite representative anyway.

I made serious mistakes at interview, but no-one seemed to mind. I make even worse ones in my supervisions now. In fact, my Spanish supervisions feel a lot like my interview did, except more focused on one topic and slightly more relaxed.