Applying to Oxford and Cambridge - or any university for that matter - has become increasingly difficult. Just in the period between 2011 and 2021 the number of undergrad applicants to Oxbridge increased from 33,000 to 48,000 (according to UniAdmissisons). Yet, places have not kept up with demand and it seems likely that, for most courses, undergraduate admission at Oxbridge will only become harder and harder. In fact, I read in a broadsheet article recently that an Oxbridge offer is approximately four times more difficult to receive now than a generation ago.
That being said, as someone who’s (hopefully) soon graduating with a Cambridge degree I wanted to briefly go over some points below surrounding the Oxbridge application process. I would be writing this for my younger brother anyway, so I thought this may be useful to the various people who have asked for my advice on applications and maybe a few more that stumble across this piece. I may also write separate short pieces on each of the different aspects I talk about below but that is a project for future me.
Disclaimer: I applied for and am studying HSPS at Cambridge. Application processes can vary drastically, even between subjects in similar fields. I will try to be as general as possible but invariably may miss out on specific niches of each subject. Do your own research too!
PART 1: Academics
No surprises here but it is important that your grades are high, or at least high-ish. I did the British system of GCSEs + A-Levels and Oxbridge expect most competitive applicants to have 7s, 8s and 9s (old As and A*s) in their GCSEs and predicted A-Level grades of at least A*,A,A (for Cambridge) although the higher the better. As I will mention below, what is equally as important as your grades are your grades relative to your school’s history of grades. For example, you will be assessed differently whether your school at 16 mostly had straight 8/9 grade candidates in GCSEs versus one that barely passed its pupils.
Nevertheless, the overall picture is quite straightforward. Your grades won't be the determining factor in your acceptance but they will definitely be necessary. So the simple and boring advice is make sure your marks are as high as possible to increase your chances of consideration.
Re: Other secondary schooling systems like the IB, I don't have direct experience myself but I would imagine my advice (especially concerning contextual factors surrounding schooling remains). What is also worth noting is that Oxbridge are now very used to international applications that don’t use the GCSE + A-Level formula so do not be dismayed if you haven't done these exams.
PART 2: Your background - what matters and what doesn't
Both universities make clear they are focused on ‘academic potential’ and they use various factors to assess an applicant based on their specific circumstances. There’s not much an applicant can change here for their benefit but it is useful to know regardless.
Contextual Data
As I briefly mentioned above, Oxbridge admissions use contextual data to admit applicants. Let me be clear, this does not mean they are admitting drastically worse students to fill certain quotas over much more qualified applicants. I am not saying that formal or informal quotas don't exist but Oxbridge admissions are very different compared to the US approach.
You can see how the universities use contextual data in these links (Cambridge - https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/apply/after/contextual-data ; Oxford - https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/applying-to-oxford/decisions/contextual-data ) but to briefly highlight the different contextual factors :
Information on your school - including typical GCSE/A-Level marks, number of regular successful Oxbridge applicants
Information on where you live - I believe the universities are very careful using neighbourhood data as not all areas are uniformly advantaged/disadvantaged but the important metrics to look out for are POLAR4 - “a measure showing the number of students participating in higher education in a particular area” for both universities, Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) & Output Area Classification (OAC2011) for Cambridge and ACORN for Oxford. See relevant links to find out more about these metrics but they are essentially measures of economic disadvantage and deprivation.
Other Individual circumstances - including eligibility for Free School Meals, experience in the care system and others (again see links above for more detail)
As I say, it is important to note that contextual data won’t make or break Oxbridge applications. I am not an admissions officer but what I believe tends to happen is that an applicant’s profile that fits certain contextual criteria are flagged. I would wager that, hypothetically, an applicant living in an economically disadvantaged area attending one of the worst school in the country has a higher chance of acceptance if they have the same academic profile and similar strengths in their overall application compared to a student that attended a high-achieving private school. But again - this does not give that individual a significant advantage if they don’t also have the clear academic ability and potential of a successful applicant.
I’d say that for most applicants this section is not entirely relevant apart from the fact that they should try to maximise their academic marks relative to their schooling peers - which an applicant should really be doing anyway.
2. What type of school? Comprehensive v Grammar v Independent v International
The graphs above from the Financial Times show a trend that has been picked up by a few broadsheet papers - Oxbridge is becoming less private school heavy. There are a number of reasons for this including access/outreach programmes run by the universities and colleges, yet my theory is that state schools, especially a certain handful of ultra-academic state schools in London, are becoming much better (both academically and at getting their students through the application process). Applicants from private schools aren’t necessarily getting worse or being discriminated against, yet they are definitely facing much tougher competition from a litany of new highly-focused state-sector schools (see Brampton Manor, Queen Eliabeth’s Barnet and the London Academy of Excellence among many others).
So what are the takeaways for prospective applicants? Well if you’re close to application season there’s not much to say, it’s just interesting data. On the other hand, if you’re an ambitious parent of pre-teens/younger debating whether to send your children to private school, and all the fees that come along with it, it might be worth noting that attending an elite private school is by no means a guarantee of an elite university place and that many state-sector schools (although with a heavy bias towards the South and London) are beating the elite private schools at their own game.
Furthermore, as I’ll mention in the colleges section, there are internal pushes to make the universities more representative of wider society. For example, Mansfield College, Oxford is about 95% state-sector on a given admissions year as a result of a deliberate internal push towards contextual applications. There was also a story that Cambridge was pushing the Classics department to admit a more balanced private-state school split in their 3-year Classics course or it would face abolition.
While there are no official or explicit quotas (at least not that I know of), the trends above are clear. 93% of British students attend state-sector schools so it’s probably unsurprising that, as Oxbridge focuses on all sorts of mechanisms to widen access, private schools are losing their historical grip on admissions, especially with the emergence of many newly high-flying state schools.
One thing I will say is that, using public information on both universities’ websites (or other websites like Unifrog), applicants can see that certain colleges have different acceptance rates depending on your type of school. As I will mention below in the section below, the margins can often be well… marginal and unimportant but keep them in the back of your mind.
International places are also increasing as universities are increasingly reliant on the higher fees they charge to this cohort. I won’t focus on the huge topic of international applications to Oxbridge now (and may write another short blog on it soon) but what I will say to potential international applicants is that you need to do even more research than the average applicant. Some colleges have historically taken more international students and some courses like Medicine have a limit on the number of international students they can take. Moreover, international students, whatever school they attended, are lumped into a separate category in applications and statistics as per the graphs above. In fact, on top of being compared contextually to your school, I understand that international students are compared contextually to their entire country’s historical applicant pool.
In summary, don’t be misled by statistics but don’t ignore them either! (Advice very much applicable to the section on colleges below)
PART 3: Applying to the right college
Lots of people from the universities themselves to your teachers might tell you that it doesn't really matter which college you apply to. This is, in my biassed opinion, completely wrong. Yes, you can have a wonderful experience at any college but doing thorough research re: college choice is so important. I know a lot more about Cambridge than Oxford but I’d like to think that both collegiate systems are similar enough that my general advice is applicable to both.
The stats (Check the admission stats for different colleges)
One thing that the universities and colleges will tell you is that you have an equal chance of admission whichever college you choose. I believe that this is not entirely correct. There isn't a way to ‘game’ the college system per se but I really do think there are applications that are more likely to succeed based on where they apply. I am definitely going to write a more thorough piece on this specific aspect of the process but my general thoughts are:
Using the link above it is clear to see that some colleges have higher acceptance rates for the same course than other colleges.
This can be for all sorts of reasons but there do exist historical divergences. However, this can also be a trap. I remember not considering a college as they had one of the highest acceptance rates for the last few years and I thought that would actually end up attracting more applicants in my year. This turned out to be correct and the college had a disproportionate amount of applicants and quickly became one of the statistically hardest colleges in my year for my course. I’ll never know whether my reasoning was correct but I would advise to not be lulled into a false sense of security if you find a course + college combination with a supposedly much higher acceptance rate.
Similarly, Robinson College, Cambridge has statistically had one of the highest numbers of private school students relative to other colleges. Yet I would caution hypothetical private school applicants from applying to such a college purely based on stats as 1. They may have an increasing number of private school applicants due to the historical perception and trend - thus making it more competitive 2. There may be an internal/external push to lower the proportion . The same applies for state-sector applicants and Mansfield College, Oxford, although more from the aspect that a college known to be very friendly to a particular group might actually be more difficult if they receive disproportionately more applications.
A brief anecdotal point on stats is that my college had a larger number of students studying my course than other colleges of similar sizes. So, while their acceptance rates may have been the same I was more confident in being the best 8 of 60 applicants rather than the best 4 of 30. I would especially offer this advice for smaller courses where there are only a few students per college.
Overall, re: acceptance rates for colleges, courses and type of school, I would certainly pay attention to the numbers but would not obsess over them. Again, you can’t game your way in but you can certainly use numbers to your marginal advantage. I would suggest picking a so-called goldilocks long list of colleges, excluding the ones that have outlier stats that don’t suit you, e.g. an extremely disproportionately low acceptance rate etc. .
2. Know the college niches
Churchill College has a quota for STEM students. Murray Edwards and Newnham are both women-only. Trinity College, Cambridge is about 60% men, in part due to the high proportion of Maths students they admit per year. As I said above, certain colleges have disproportionately higher or lower numbers of students for certain courses, whether that is deliberate or not - so that is all very useful information to know. It’s also worth mentioning that some colleges don’t even do some of the nicher undergraduate courses, while some may offer the subject but your Director of Studies will be from a completely separate area. For example, I know colleges where the politics students’ DOS can be a sociologist/anthropologist or an Arabic student’s DOS can be a Japanese professor.
Scour the internet, forums and anything you can find your hands on to learn about the niches of different colleges and how they fit with your application and what you want from college life.
3. Not all colleges are made the same
I haven’t really focused on the obvious point about colleges which is that not all colleges are made the same. Everyone will have their opinions on which colleges look nicer. Some colleges provide guaranteed central site accommodation all three years, some only for certain years. Some provide free laundry and Emmanuel College, Cambridge even does your laundry for you! Downing College, Cambridge has en-suites in first year while in certain Corpus Christi, Cambridge rooms you don’t even have a loo in your very old staircase so you have to walk across a quad everyday to take a shower. Some are a lot wealthier than others and sometimes that is reflected in room rent but often it is completely random.
Something I myself couldn’t do due to Covid is to actually go visit colleges. If you find the supposedly perfect college on-paper but you don’t like the look or feel of it once you’re there - simply don’t apply! There are more than enough colleges at either Oxford or Cambridge to apply from, the difficult bit is narrowing it down to one.
PART 4: Personal Statement
The personal statement is probably the most important part of the application bar the interview. Unfortunately, there are very few tips that are universally applicable for each course. A personal statement for History will unsurprisingly vary widely in its content and techniques than one for Maths or Veterinary Medicine.
Once again, I am probably planning to write an entire separate piece on just the Personal statement itself.
Nevertheless, my brief advice is -
Do not include extracurricular activities that are not relevant to your degree. A grade 8 in Piano, no matter how much skill, effort and dedication it took, has no place to be in an application for Economics. However, the activity is related to your subject then that is a great way to show a real (out-of-school) interest in the course. Anecdotally, I believe that medicine/stem applicants are advantaged by including relevant work experience.
This seems obvious but make it about yourself. This will again vary by degree but I wrote an entire short paragraph on immigration and multiculturalism in my HSPS application as those applied to my own family background - bonus points if you’re able to embed this with related texts and academic concepts. Once again, the disclaimer here is that I imagine this would depend on the specific degree.
Less is more - be clear, be concise and don't ramble on for too long. You only have 4,000 characters (which is much shorter than you think), so make sure to include all the bits you want using clear and concise language. This is also a useful skill for your undergraduate degree and one I am very much still working on.
Additional segments - written work, tests, Supplementary Answer Questions etc
Once again, each course has a different set of additional requirements. For HSPS at Cambridge I had to submit a Supplementary Answer Questions form which was basically a shorter version of the Personal Statement. Cambridge (and I) strongly encourage you to answer this as you can focus on the specific course itself rather than the 5 or so courses you’ll be applying to using your UCAS Personal Statement. E.g. I know students who applied to Land Economy at Cambridge but Economics for their other choices so the SAQ was a great chance to show their enthusiasm for the specific Cambridge course they were applying to.
I also had to submit two marked pieces of written work. This won’t be the case for every course, especially for the non-essay based ones but I submitted two essays that I had done in sixth-form. I believe that one of these had to be in a related subject and both had to be a humanities subject essay. Obviously, my advice here is to find the two best pieces of work you have completed for school and if you don’t have two pieces of outstanding written work, make sure you do so by application time!
I did not have an entry test but I know that many courses require various different exams as part of your application. Tests like the HAT, TSA are done before your interview while sometimes candidates will have to sit a subject-specific test at the interview. Another reason why college choices are important is that some colleges may have different requirements for the same course. My course HSPS abolished its university-wide course-specific test but a handful of colleges still make applicants sit a test directly before/after their interview. All this college and course specific information will be online - so, once again, do your research!
Conclusion
Hopefully some of what I’ve written above is useful information. As the oldest of a fair few siblings and cousins the number of myths and outright bad advice and/or information surrounding the admissions process is absurd. If I have the time to write more, balancing finals and other commitments, I’ll spend a lot more time focusing on each section of the application and maybe more course-specific information and advice. You might have noticed I haven't even included anything about the interview process which is a completely separate beast itself. Regardless, if you're a soon-to-be applicant or have aspiring family and friends, then the very best of luck to you. The transition from school to university, especially all the hoops you have to jump through applying to Oxbridge, isn’t exactly easy yet it doesn’t have to be needlessly stressful. If an applicant is bright and ambitious then putting in the proper time and effort into the mundane preparation won't be a waste at all.
Comments