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My name's Alexander Morrison, I'm a Fellow and Tutor in History at New College, here in Oxford, and I'm also currently the Undergraduate Admissions Coordinator for History. In the past the test has been on paper, rather like public exams, now it's going to be on a screen instead. 
The text will be presented on one side of that screen, and the text box in which you'll write your answer will be on the other side of the screen. There will be facilities in this new interface for note taking, there will be means for enlarging the text, for scrolling, but all of these changes really are just about how the test is presented. In terms of its content, it will remain exactly the same as in past years. So you'll be given a single historical text, which you're being asked to read and then to comment on. You'll be given an hour in which to do this. You'll be given a little bit of contextual information and a set of instructions about it and you'll be given a question, which you're trying to answer. So, past papers for the HAT will remain a good guide on how you should approach the test in its new format. We do urge you to look at the format online. You can practice it in advance, you can familiarise yourself with how it looks, with how it functions. I appreciate this will be important for many of you, if you've not taken a digital test before, and we're doing everything we can to provide the facilities for that. We can assure you that, in its essentials, the test will remain the same as in previous years.

So, my main piece of advice regarding the HAT is that it isn't really possible to, sort of, revise or prepare for it in any meaningful way through trying to acquire more knowledge about history. The test is not designed to test your prior knowledge, it's designed to see how you react to something new and completely unfamiliar in a short space of time. We always choose a text which is not on any school curricula or syllabi, which is in an area of history that's not really taught in schools 
because we want to level the playing field between candidates from widely different backgrounds, so it

won't be something that you've done before, and that's a good thing, not something that you should worry about. If you want to get a sense of the kinds of text that we've set, the kinds of topics that we ask you to write about, then you can look at the past papers. These are still relevant because the format of the test overall hasn't changed, it's simply the means of delivery which is now going to be digital. That's probably the most effective form of preparation that you can engage in. When it comes to the test itself, my main piece of advice is take time to read the text. The HAT is as much an exercise in close reading as it is in writing. And if you haven't read the text attentively, you won't be able to perform to the best of your ability when writing. You've only got an hour to write, it's true, but an hour is ample time to say something interesting and intelligent about the text that you've been given. It won't be hugely long. You would want to take at least 10 minutes of that hour to actually read it carefully and perhaps to take some notes, which you can do either in digital format or on scrap paper, as you prefer. So those are really my main pieces of advice when it comes to preparing for the test and taking it. One more thing that you should consider is, if you have any special allowances for accessibility, extra time, things of that kind, do check with your test centre in advance that these have been put in place for you. You don't want to turn up and find at the last minute but they're not there. 
But otherwise, the main thing I would say is try to relax, difficult as that may be, and good luck.