Themes that recur
Four accounts now — one new B-grade YouTube transcript (Laura Turner, fifth year at Liverpool). Laura's account is the first time we have a real first-person description of Liverpool's interview from someone who sat it and enrolled. What she describes is important: the interview had eight to ten stations — "a bit like speed dating, a set interviewer at each station." She names specific types: a veterinary ethics station, a drug calculation station, and — the one that stood out — a station about hobbies and what you do outside of vet. "I think it was focusing on how you sort of take time away from work and de-stress," she says.
"That's an important skill." One thing that's absolutely concrete from Laura: Liverpool does not read your personal statement. "The unique thing about Liverpool is that they don't take it into account — there's a separate work experience form, and they go mainly off interview." That changes your prep significantly. You cannot lean on your PS narrative in the room.
What surprised applicants
Three things from Laura I hadn't seen in the other accounts. First, the hobby station — "which is quite important, that's a nice one." Most applicants prepare intensively for ethics and drug calcs and forget that Nottingham and Liverpool both seem interested in who you are beyond the vet application. Second, Laura's overall verdict: she had interviewed at Glasgow, Cambridge, Surrey and Liverpool, and Liverpool was "my favourite interview, the nicest, most chilled out." Each station feeling like a fresh start after a weak one contributed to that.
Third — and this is significant — the current Liverpool format is pre-recorded asynchronous (six questions, four minutes each, seven-day window), which is structurally completely different from the live MMI Laura describes. Verify which format is running in your cycle before you prepare.
Where the accounts diverge
The format gap is stark. Laura's experience (2021): live in-person MMI, eight to ten stations, interviewers present at each one. The current confirmed format (2024–2025): pre-recorded online, six questions, four minutes each, no live interviewer, asynchronous. These are fundamentally different.
The lived experience Laura shares — reading the room, recovering from a weak station by starting fresh with a new person — is unavailable in the current format. Her advice to "think out loud" translates: that still matters for pre-recorded answers. But you cannot pivot mid-sentence based on the interviewer's reaction because there is no interviewer there.
What doesn't change: the underlying things being assessed (reasoning, communication, who you are outside vet). What changes completely: how you prepare.
What I'd tell my past self before this interview
The most actionable thing from Laura: don't prepare a PS pitch for Liverpool. They don't read it. Build your verbal communication of experiences and reasoning from scratch — don't assume anything from your personal statement will be picked up and fed back to you. For the pre-recorded format specifically, Laura's "think out loud" advice matters even more when there's no interviewer to read: the only evidence of your reasoning process is what you say. Practice recording yourself answering open questions, then watch it back.
The hobby station Laura describes should make you pause: have you actually thought about how you decompress? Because if your answer is "I don't really have hobbies, it's all vet," that's probably not what they want to hear — they want to know you can sustain a demanding career without burning out.