I recently…

About a month ago at the time of writing this

…had a set of online Cambridge interviews, and I think by now there’s been enough time that I’m not gonna be biased by the adrenaline but also before the decisions come through so I can’t be biased by that either, and I felt like writing about my experience.

At least, I’ll write as much as I can about it. I’m not allowed to share specifics of what happened, but I can at least give a general view of what it was like.

And you’ll only get insta-rejected if you’re wrong. How bad can it be? :D

my set of interviews were both entirely based around problems I was given, as well as a pre-reading task. Neither of my interviewers asked a single thing about me or my personal statement - the closest any of them got to caring about me as a person was asking how I was doing & wishing me good luck.

Neither happened in the second interview, but I digress.

The problems I got were all very programming focussed. I was prepared for more mathematical problems to come up, but the most maths I had to use was some arithmetic for the first problem (and pre-reading). Even then, 90% of the problem was based around how well I could implement the solution rather than how well I knew the maths behind it. The pre-reading was also basically the same problem as what I was given in the first interview - so in my mind they’re counted as one. The second interview’s problem didn’t even really have the mathematical foundation of the first one - it was purely an issue of implementing the solution.

I was also just told the wrong thing in my second interview which did not help when trying to solve it. Near the beginning I asked a clarifying question in hopes that I’d been given the easier of the 2 options, and I got that, but then later on while operating on that knowledge I ran into a wall which was only solved when I realised I had the wrong information. I didn’t bring it up at the time because there really wasn’t any point, but I’ll be pretty pissed off if that ends up holding me back from an offer.

In both interviews, I ended up going pretty significantly overtime - 10 mins in the first and 5 mins in the second - which I hear is a pretty good sign. They clearly didn’t want to make me shut up either, so I’m inclined to agree with that. I did find the solution to the first problem, only going overtime to implement it reasonably well, but the second one did stump me at the last hurdle.

Of course, I figured out the solution exactly 5 seconds after the interview ended.

The last thing I want to mention here is the overall atmosphere of the 2 interviews, because they were actually noticeably different, probably down to the interviewers themselves.

The first one was very casual and felt very much like a regular conversation that just happened to be happening over video call rather than a proper interview, and my interviewers were consistently smiling when I glanced at their cameras while explaining or typing something up. I really liked that first pair. The second one was much more like what I was expecting of an important interview like this. Pretty much no-nonsense the whole way through, with the interviewers not giving away any clues as to whether or not they liked me. At the end of the first interview I was even able to have a short conversation with them at the very end despite already having gone overtime but had no such luck with the second, just to show the difference between them.

Overall, I’d honestly say I enjoyed the experience quite a bit. Sure, it was very important that I performed well & I was absolutely locked in beyond my wildest dreams, but they really are just looking for people who can be taught well by a tutorial system. The problems especially were actually quite fun to work through with the interviewers able to give hints, and I would’ve taken a second round of interviews in stride if I had been given one. But it was just the one round, so fingers crossed for now.