Maths at Oxford or Cambridge

[AChickenCalledKorma]

DD1 is in year 12 and planning to apply to Oxford or Cambridge to study Maths in 2020. She is a highly gifted mathematician and this is a realistic proposition for her.

Obviously she can only apply to one of them. I wondered if there is anyone on here who can comment on differences between the Oxford and Cambridge Maths courses and what they are looking for? She's doing her own research, including Maths-specific open days. But if there are people on here who are familiar with the courses, it would be great to hear any insights.

(And yes, we all know that she may not get in, and it's not the be-all and end-all, so I'm not inviting for a debate about any of that!)

Yes, the percentage of girls doing maths at Cambridge is low. At other universities in the UK the gender ratio for maths students isn't quite so skewed.

(Graph taken from the document linked to in my previous post.)

Here is a newer version
www.equality.admin.cam.ac.uk/files/university_of_cambridge_faculty_mathematics_silver_submission_april_2017.pdf

At other universities in the UK the gender ratio for maths students isn't quite so skewed.

It's not 20% averaged over the other highest tariff courses for Maths (Oxford, Warwick, Imperial, UCL,..) but nearer 30%. However the highest tariff maths courses don't go above 30% because the percentage of women doing further maths is only 30%. Slightly lower tariff courses that don't have as large a fraction of students coming in with further maths get up to 35-40% women. A higher fraction of international students also tends to push the gender ratios up - I think this helps places like LSE.

By the time one gets to the fourth year in Cambridge maths, the % women is even lower, particularly in pure maths and mathematical physics. 10-15% is the norm in such areas, often dropping down further when one looks at the PhD students/academics.

Well said Jen :)

Jen you speak a lot of sense. And I love your ten point list which I'm definitely going to show her as an antidote to all the official information she's been ploughing through!

At the moment she's the only girl in her A level physics class and it doesn't appear to bother her in the slightest. Her physics teacher has told her (possibly unwisely) that she's way out in front of the boys. So I don't think the gender split will worry her.

Thanks for all the stats. DD was puzzled how it goes from 50% of girls being top at maths at secondary to such a low percentage on the maths course at Cambridge and she didn't think 81.5% of the country's top mathematicians would be male and asked me to explain it and I was stumped too. But if 30% of people taking further maths are girls that would limit it to 30%. The rest does seem to be either girls not applying or getting lower results at STEP and the results breakdown at Cambridge is interesting too. Sorry for derailing the thread with stats!

When I last looked at the stats, the chance of a female applicant getting a place was the same at both Cambridge and Oxford, the difference being that there are far fewer female applicants to Cambridge. For both universities the chance of a male applicant getting a place is higher than for a female candidate (and IIRC a male applicant for Oxford had a higher chance than a male applicant to Cambridge).

There are two things that need to be done - encourage more girls to apply to Cambridge and convert more female applications into offers.

On a different note - if anyone was at the Cambridge maths open day yesterday, there were two people on the path handing out fliers for a STEP course. This has nothing to do with Cambridge (who have a - completely free - step course at maths.org/step).

The people handing out the fliers were clutching maths prospectuses and even some of our currently students thought they were legit! These people also offer MAT/PAT courses so they may try the same thing at Oxford open days.

(Nothing illegal about it, and if people want to pay for these courses that's fine, but I thought it was a bit underhand - especially when we offer a completely free course!)

That's really cheeky!!

Strike out failure - was writing in latex when three dashes gives a long dash. Just to confirm, the STEP support course is COMPLETELY FREE (both in terms of cost and access - no account required).

can tell you are a mathematician!

Exactly, Kitten - half the people on this thread, thinking "definitely an academic mathematician used to writing in LaTex", the other half thinking "hey? latex, rubber... wear whatever you like when posting, but why you are telling the rest of us?"

It hadn't even occurred to me that some might be wondering about Pallando's dress sense.

I can confirm that I am neither an academic mathematician (ex teacher, now resource writer), nor a latex wearer!

I love the wealth of knowledge and support for maths degrees here.

Pallando!

Sorry for bringing the tone down

I wonder how many of the strong girl mathematicians opt for medicine or vet science. Certainly true of somecwe know.

Hi
My son is hoping that he gets an interview for Cambridge Maths.
I would appreciate it very much if you could to send me some mock interview questions.
Many thanks
SD

I don't have the actual mock questions. But I was told that some questions are similar to the math Olympiad and STEP 1.

You can search it on line, there are some post that previous students talking about interview question.

The best prep is to get him to sit down with someone and attempt some thing like a STEP 1 question but out loud, explaining what he is doing as he works through it. Being able to verbalise his thoughts and approaches, especially when stuck is really helpful.