Cambridge Interview Format by College, 2027 Entry

Cambridge interviews for 2027 entry run from 7 to 18 December 2026, and the format depends on which College is assessing you. Fourteen of the 29 colleges interview everyone online; four interview everyone in person; the rest split by where the applicant is based, and three make exceptions for particular courses. Cambridge publishes this as a long unsorted list. The whole table is below.

Which Cambridge Colleges Interview Online for 2027 Entry?

Cambridge’s own statement is that interviews “may be online or in person, depending on which College is assessing your application and the course you have applied for”. Both halves of that matter, and the second half catches people out.

Grouped, the 29 colleges fall into four patterns:

All online (14): Christ’s, Downing, Fitzwilliam, Girton, Hughes Hall, Lucy Cavendish, Magdalene, Murray Edwards, Newnham, Queens’, St Catharine’s, St Edmund’s, St John’s, Wolfson.
All in person (4): Churchill, Emmanuel, King’s, Selwyn.
Split by where you live (8): Corpus Christi, Gonville & Caius, Pembroke, Peterhouse, Robinson, Sidney Sussex, Trinity, Trinity Hall.
Split by your course (3): Clare, Homerton, Jesus.

The single most useful thing in that grouping is the size of the first bucket. Just under half of Cambridge’s colleges interview every applicant online, so for a large share of candidates the question of travel does not arise at all.

The Full Table, All 29 Colleges

Two patterns are worth noticing. The colleges that interview in person are not the ones a candidate would guess from reputation — Churchill, Emmanuel, King’s and Selwyn sit alongside one another here for no reason a candidate can act on. And every college that distinguishes by geography places overseas applicants online, either as the rule or as one of two options, so an international candidate is never required to travel.

Three Colleges Where It Depends on Your Course

These are the exceptions most likely to be missed, because they are written as prose inside a table cell rather than as their own row.

Jesus is the striking one: eight named courses, most of them the ones where a candidate is likely to be handed something to work on. If you have applied to Jesus for Mathematics, Medicine, Modern and Medieval Languages, Music, Philosophy, Veterinary Medicine, Natural Sciences (Physical), or Environment, Law and Economics, and you are UK-based, you are travelling to Cambridge. If you have applied to Jesus for anything else, you are not.

Music appears in all three exception lists. That is not a coincidence a candidate needs to interpret, but it is a reliable prompt: if you are applying for Music, check your college’s arrangements first rather than last.

Can You Ask for a Different Format?

The honest answer is usually no. Cambridge: “You will not usually be able to request a particular format. However, in exceptional circumstances (for example if you have a disability or your visa application is declined), you may be offered an alternative format. This will be at the discretion of the College assessing your application.”

Two things follow. The request goes to the College assessing your application, which may not be the one you named if you have been reallocated. And the grounds are specific: a disability, a declined visa, or something comparable. A preference for one format over the other is not one of them.

Where Cambridge is more generous than most candidates expect is cost. “For in-person interviews, travel support is available for UK students eligible for Free School Meals. Accommodation and meals may also be provided — contact your College for details. Some Colleges may offer support to other students with financial need.” Disability adjustments run through an Adjustment at Interview form that the interviewing College supplies.

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What the Invitation Tells You, and When

The invitation is the document that settles everything, and Cambridge says what it contains: “when and where your interview is, what you’ll need on the day, whether you’ll be given any pre-interview reading or tasks to work through, and how to attend.”

Most go out in November, some in early December. Cambridge adds a line worth reading twice if yours arrives late: “The timing of your interview does not reflect your perceived strength as a candidate.” Colleges are scheduling around subject panels and rooms, not ranking applicants by date.

The pre-interview reading clause is the one that changes your December. If a College sends a passage in advance, that arrives with the invitation rather than on the day, and it becomes the thing the conversation is built on. It is also the clause that makes checking your junk folder a genuine task rather than fussiness.

One more sentence from Cambridge is worth carrying into the room: “We invite many applicants to interview. Not everyone interviewed will be offered a place, but everyone who is made an offer will have been interviewed.” The interview is not a formality layered on top of a decision already taken on paper. It is the stage at which the decision is made, which is the argument for treating the format as logistics and the conversation as the work.

How Many Interviews, and How Long?

Cambridge publishes both, and also publishes the reassurance most candidates want with them: “The number of interviews you have does not relate to how strong your application is. Most applicants will have 1 or 2 interviews lasting a total of 35 minutes to an hour. Some may have 3 or 4 interviews, depending on subject and College.”

So the realistic expectation is one or two conversations totalling well under an hour. If you are placed in the winter pool you may be interviewed again at a different College in January, which is a second chance rather than a repeat.

Oxford arranges the same thing differently and it is worth knowing the contrast if you have applied to both. Oxford interviews online across the board, and decides the technology centrally by course rather than by college — three tiers, from video-only up to a shared Miro whiteboard with a stylus. Its FAQ adds that “normally you will be interviewed by two tutors, occasionally more”. Our guide to Oxford’s three interview technology tiers lists which courses sit in each.

What the Format Changes About Preparing

Less than candidates fear, and not nothing.

If you are online, Cambridge’s preparation checklist is short and specific: a quiet space, a device with a full battery, tested webcam, microphone and internet, and “a pen and paper in case you need to make notes or show how you’ve worked out a problem”. Science and maths candidates should “practise using a stylus and tablet to annotate a shared document or whiteboard” if told one is needed — and there is a detail worth knowing: “Your College may also run a ‘tech check’ session to help with this.”

If you are travelling, the list is even shorter: check the location on a map, plan the journey, arrive on time. The harder part is that an in-person day usually contains waiting, and waiting with other candidates is where confidence is most easily lost.

What does not change is the conversation. Cambridge says its interviewers “are interested in how you work out your answers and how you think”, and that is true in a room and on a screen. For what that means in practice, see how to think out loud in an Oxbridge interview and what Oxbridge interviewers actually mark; to rehearse it, how to run a mock interview at home.

Frequently Asked Questions