Continuation of Oxbridge 2025

[BananasAllofIt]

I for one still have a kid waiting to hear about interviews. Thought I'd carry it over...

@Hecho my friend is a tutor at Catz and gave us a tour this year (not languages). Seemed a lovely college. It's not old and has a few temporary buildings due to Raac issues but seemed unstuffy. Also think it's a larger college so easy to find a tribe.
Also out of the way so less tourists. But a schelp to languages so maybe get a bike.
Ps Brasenose was a great first choice so obvs have good taste!

Not far off though, just not right in the centre. But not at all far to the RadCam etc. Ten minutes walk max through Jowett Walk And right next door to the English, Law and Social Science libraries.

New(ish) good apart from the RAAC! But that's being sorted very efficiently at the moment.

My DC has just graduated from Brasenose but she also agrees that Catz is a very good college to be at.

@nearden also MFL for my dc - their interview rate for MFL is pretty high so fingers crossed but it's a long wait...

It’s interesting to find out the interview/offer rates for the different subjects. Talking to DD and there is a big range.
At Oxford some subjects interview nearly every applicant (eg Classics interview 95% of applicants, Earth Sciences 90% of all applicants) and others have a really low interview rate (eg Maths interview 30%, Computer Science interview 17%).
Acceptance rates at Oxford vary greatly too eg Classics 40% of applicants are successful and Computer Science 5% are successful.
I guess it’s similar at Cambridge with interviews and success rates.
Is there a hierarchy of degrees at Oxbridge with sciences being more competitive and highly regarded?

@FloralGums I think there's a hierarchy everywhere with regards subjects. I know people whose kids have applied to Oxbridge, choosing the least popular course that is tangentially related to the course they are applying for everywhere else, in order I suppose, to game the system or more politely put, to hope to take advantage of the higher admit rates for some less popular subjects.

@FloralGums the issue is simply one of available places versus applicants. This link: https://www.ox.ac.uk/about/facts-and-figures/admissions-statistics/undergraduate-students has the annual admissions report which shows clearly number of applicants to places for all the most common courses.

There are some courses where demand is just much lower when compared with the number of places available - like classics and MFL. My understanding is that for most courses Oxford aim to interview 2.5 to 3 students per place, so by interview stage the odds of getting in are similar.

FloralGums once at the interview stage every interviewee at Oxford has almost exactly the same statistical chance of success: one in three or four. The reasons why some subjects attract more applicants overall is varied and not linked to the 'difficulty' of the subject. I don't think there is any genuine pecking order. Plenty of students reading E&M would freeze if shown a Classics finals question for example even though E&M attracts far more applicants. The way the courses are taught or examined can make some students say (lightly) that others have an easy ride but again, that isn't to do with content (the two subjects I'm thinking of which have that reputation are English and E&M - both very heavily applied to subjects). I'm sure lots of individuals think others are much cleverer because they're doing a subject which the individual in question believes they themselves could never tackle. I'm in awe of Physics and Philosophy students for example - purely personal. I've just always assumed that all those students have brains the size of a planet.

Crossed with InvestedButNotOverinvested.

Yes the difference between offer rates is staggering. For example Oxford accept around 150 students onto their Modern Languages and their Medicine courses. Languages has a touch over 300 applicants. Medicine has 1,700. I will leave the question of whether that is an optimal outcome to smarter people than me.

Thank you. Good luck to your DD. My DC said 4 of them heard about Oxford Maths today and 2 haven’t heard yet.

Still waiting for maths here too. Congratulations to your DS’s @Gina555 & @PalmedOlive

hopefully not much longer @MathsUni

Can I join in? None of mine have applied for Oxford until my youngest this year. TBH I had switched off a bit as he insisted for applying for Computer Science despite not doing further maths and then missed the MAT because my father’s funeral was the same day. He’s now been invited to interview and I haven’t a clue where to start.

Any advice as to what I might do to help him prepare for this? Will there be maths problems he has to do in the interview? I am not sure whether to just leave it to him and school to work on - he seems to have written a really good personal statement and have a good reference from school. He refused to do FM as he wanted to do German and Film as well as Maths and Computer Science. He must be a long shot as they say in their course info that 95% of offers are to people who do FM. None of his family have been to Oxford and he went to the open day with his grandma. He is on the autistic spectrum so a low key approach is probably best anyway - any mumsnetters wisdom would be lost appreciated x

@ipredictariot5 That is fabulous he's got an interview. And what an interesting selection of A levels. It shows he's not one to follow the crowd and that must have been noticed.

Have you seen the YouTube videos produced by Oxford for each subject? They are helpful. Tutors talk about the dept and then they have an interview with an actual student. Here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbZhg1_xWyWSAtCPmxP9_tcINywtbAl8i

Hello, sorry for you loss.
I know nothing about CS or Maths. My DS said there is lots of info on the Oxford website about what to expect and Oxford videos on YouTube showing mock interviews with students-what to expect and how to prepare.

@ipredictariot5 the classic maths interview basically goes ‘Hi! Let’s do some maths’ and then off they go. It might be useful for your son to understand that they’re aiming to arrive at the point where the interviewee doesn’t know what to do next. At that point they want to hear you talk it through - they want to hear how you think. ‘I thought maybe [this technique] would work, but I can’t see how to apply it because [reason]. So maybe [alternative technique] would work better, let’s see what happens if I try that….’ That’s the kind of thing they want to hear. If you get stuck they will offer a clue, or teach you some new maths and see how quickly you can learn it and apply it. They’ll be very used to students (and staff) who have autism, don’t worry about that. Good luck to your boy!

Thank you very much for that intel @Gina555 - useful.

And yes, @pistachioicecream , it can't be long now, probably just some Oxford colleges being a bit slower than others. And good luck to you!

My son's still waiting to hear about physics. His preparation for the PAT wasn't as focused as I'd have hoped so we're keeping it low-key.

In some ways I think his first choice is Durham (we went there and his brother is there) but they're so slow.

Just worth clarifying for future applicants, English really isn’t very heavily applied for these days and success rate is more like 25% - lower than classics and MFL, but 3 or 4 times more likely to be accepted for English than popular STEM subjects.
Back in the day, it was the most popular and hardest to get into. It’s also very much a “girls” subject. There was an article in Telegraph yesterday about decline in English and a student at Cambridge said all 12 in her college English lit cohort were girls.
STEM subjects attract global competition in a way that English and some other subjects don’t.
Also STEM is the exclusive focus of some 6th forms now which makes those subjects even more intensively competitive.

At interview stage its down to 1 in 3 at Oxford but for less competitive subjects pretty much all applicants get interviewed so you are up against all those who applied for that subject - whereas for those subjects where they only interview 15% of those who applied you are already up against the 'strongest' ones (from the UK and beyond as @north51 says). So getting to interview is a really impressive feat in itself for certain subjects.

The tough thing at Oxford is that many who didn't get a chance to prove themselves at interview would have been fabulous and they definitely miss some real talent in the process. At least with Cambridge they give the majority of students a chance to interview (but the timing of STEP for maths just feels mean!). Applying with grades in hand would help somewhat - so many seem to have three or four A stars predicted...not that many actually achieve those grades.

Wishing you all well, it can be a pretty gruelling process to get in (and hard work if/when there whatever subject you are doing!).

@AsTearsGoBy I studied Phys/Phil... no regrets, but it was pretty mind-blowing at times! I genuinely still have occasional nightmares about the special "philosophy of physics" paper (at the time, the only place you could study that at undergrad level in the UK).

Are you sure? Has anyone contacted her to consult her? I don't think Oxford would just change her application to a different course without warning before interview (after interview, with discussion, maybe yes, if History tutors very keen and Politics less so, or just very oversubscribed). Maybe she's just not been informed of the Politics part of the interview yet.

The College change is different and completely standard and as someone else said just an evening up of candidates versus places.

(Oxford tutor very much involved in admissions for 20+ years)

Thank you v much for the advice - from what we have found out so far it’s just turn up and do maths !

We're Cambridge rather than Oxford, but maths interviews are pretty similar for both! We have just finished a run of 4 interview preparation webinars (where we discuss some problem solving techniques and demonstrate some mock interviews). The recordings are here: https://maths.org/step/ps-maths-interviews-2024

You might also like to checkout the MAT livestream - they ran an interview special last week: https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/study-here/undergraduate-study/maths-admissions-test/mat-livestream

DD has heard she has an interview. Hope you've heard now too @MathsUni .

Thank you to everyone sharing the resources for maths interview prep. They look really useful.