Oxbridge applicants 2026??

[Justlurkingmostly]

Is there a thread for this year’s applicants - I can’t seem to find with a search. Thanks for signposting 🙏

Yes, it's a Humanities subject. Thank you for the information!

I'm very new to all of this; I have a primary teaching degree from Edge Hill. So figuring out Oxbridge feels like a whole other world!

No second interview for DS who has applied for history at Oxford. He enjoyed his first interview but no idea how he has done. Good luck to everyone for interviews done, to come and the wait for decisions.

@temperedolive I 'll DM you

Well thank eff that's all over. DD2 had a good first online interview and a second that was so bad that she won't talk of it. Now getting excited for Durham which made her a timely offer last week.

DD1 (applying with achieved grades) had interviews in person. First was 'fine'. Second was a disaster, apparently, she was called an idiot for 20 minutes. Very old school (literally, the interviewer was pushing 80), told her essay was crap and she'd been badly taught. She was relieved it was over but then got really sad and sobbing about having worked hard and the 'dream' being over. Unlike her sister, she's not able to big up the alternatives. This is a shame, I think, not to have the pragmatism to do this.

I'm sorry both of your DDs had negative experiences in their second interviews. I think it reflects badly on Oxbridge that not all colleges have managed to remove interviewers like your DD1's from the system. A friend's son had a similar experience for engineering a few years ago and was also shaken up by it, even though he's usually an extremely confident young man.
Some colleges seem to have done a good job with best practice training and frameworks for their interviewing staff and some don't seem to have bothered at all.

DC1 had their interviews for Psychological and Behavioural Sciences yesterday. They were fairly happy with how it went. Only a little irritated about a couple of silly forgetful moments in the first interview (they forgot to talk about memory in a question about cognitive functions, I think). The second interview was better and they got to talk about neuroimaging and ethics, which are two of their interests.

They enjoyed meeting other candidates in the waiting rooms and over lunch, even swapping Snapchat details with one person who they got on well with.

Fingers crossed for good news for everyone's children in January. Cambridge do their Pool interview notifications in mid Jan and offers at the end of the month.

That's terrible for your DD @ClaireBlunderwood, to call a candidate an idiot during an interview at all, let alone repeatedly, reflects terribly on that college. What the heck are they thinking keeping dinosaurs like that on to destroy the confidence of young people judged strong enough to be interviewed?? You must be steaming. I hope she bounces back and both DDs are able to enjoy putting the negatives behind them and enjoying a break from all the pressure over Xmas.

I agree with others have said about your DDs interviews. She probably gave a better account of herself that she realises but that doesn't mean it was the right approach for the interviewers to take.

Our applicant had two interviews back to back online - one had two “nice” interviewers who gave little nudges and general encouragement. The other interview had one nice enough person, and one who would let him speak on for a while into silence and expressionless faces, and at the end say “that’s wrong”. Or something equally discouraging. Made for a rather mixed experience! But I know he’ll be likely to come across lecturers like that if he’s there, at least occasionally. It’s fine for it to be hard, but some are clearly better at interacting with applicants. At least it was only one out of 4 interviewers!

Good to have it done, anyway. I mostly just hope that it was a useful enough interview for them to judge if he’d get on well there or not!

Wow, I think its a shocking attitude and language even in our culture(which teachers can be direct and strict). Hopefully these are rare and post results there should be feedback forms to reflect these samples.

To be fair, they didn't explicitly call her an idiot, that's what she took from it - he did definitely tell her that she had defined something wrongly in an essay and when she said that's what she'd been taught was told she'd been taught badly. But who knows, maybe that'll work in her favour given that even with her actually pretty good allegedly crappy comprehensive education she got perfect A level results.

To rub salt in the wound at the end, he said something along the lines of 'well wasn't that fun' while she was thinking that is was as fun as burning orphanage.

I think she just feels frustrated that she worked really really hard for her A levels, overcoming various health and emotional obstacles to get these stellar results, only to feel that all that work is nullified by a 20 minute interview. She's adamant that her achieved grades count for nothing, that all candidates are treated the same once they get to the interview at C. I don't know, I can't help feeling that having achieved all those A stars (in humanities, which is relatively uncommon), she might get pooled or something.

DS interviews were terrible and he was left feeling so patronised.

Am so disappointed that our DCs who work so so hard for excellence, cannot be left with dignity after a difficult process. Can you imagine a boss telling you your submission was, 'crap,' or that you didn't have specific skills because you were, 'badly taught?' Is that the point of applying to Oxbridge - that you want to develop your skills and are eager to learn?

There will be somewhere for DD1.

I don't think it matters that she got something wrong. What will matter is how she responded to it and whether they felt that she took on the new information and was able to use it to make better points. They don't mind if she's been taught badly - they want to see if she will respond to good teaching.

Yes indeed. She asked him how he would define it but I don't know what she did from then. She wisely doesn't want to a do a full postmortem. At least her hopes are pretty low, which might make any definitive bad news more palatable.

I honestly don't know that it's the right place for her anyway. I think it suits more robust types.

It's very hard for them. DD is anxious about it all the time. I hope your DD cheers up a bit and manages not to dwell on anything she thought went badly. It really is impossible to know whether any of them are good or bad interviews.

A session that leaves a clearly clever student feeling miserable and stupid is not ‘good teaching’, though. (Bit over-sensitive on this point, because my unsuccessful Oxford interview decades ago was exactly like that, and honestly I think tutors who behave like this should be kept away from applicants and, indeed, undergrads. Challenge/distance is fine; demoralising negging is not.)

I do agree that demoralising people is awful and should not happen. I think it happens less now. But I guess some tutorials can be pretty robust, I know some of mine were. That's not to say it's OK. I feel very sorry for anyone who had an awful interview and hope that things were not as bad as they feared.

Ah okay if he didn't say it and it's how she felt, it doesn't diminish her feelings, but may yet mean that it wasn't as bad as she feels and might turn out okay. Clearly if she's got top grades after being badly taught then she's done even better than those who've been well taught and as you say, has stellar grades in hand. No way of predicting, but fingers crossed her biggest problem will be that if she does get an offer, deciding if she still wants to go there. You may well be right about the pooling too. It's sounding a bit more positive anyway.

Oh my goodness. Just read your post. Calling your DC an idiot is shocking. I am so sorry to read this. I hope they are ok.

Have to stress that they didn't actually call her an idiot, literally, just made her feel like an idiot! Just in case any future applicants are reading and filled with terror. And she's pretty fragile generally so it might be open to intepretation. Definitely pointed out mistakes in her written work and said she'd been mistaught.

The academic is the same vintage as those that taught me in 90s Cambridge and it did feel very reminiscent of my experience and that of many of my friends. It felt like didn't have the right sort of intelligence - we were uncertain and didn't have that bluster (the sort of Boris J swagger) that seemed at the time to be the most recognised form of prowess.

Sorry to hear @ClaireBlunderwood but maybe news will be confounding next month. Stranger things have happened.

I have mixed feeling about this whole process since my older DS (with a similar educational profile to my younger DS) had a basically miserable time at Cambridge (partly due to Covid and partly due to other factors which I won’t derail the thread with). He came across several lecturers who had precisely this sort of bullying/belittling attitude. It really makes me sick.

What a rollercoaster ride this is - thinking of the young people on it.
My DD wishes to do a joint degree at Oxford and had 2 interviews, for her chosen college, this week. The interviews were in each of her 2 subjects. She has been invited for an interview next week, at a different college, in the same 2 subjects. Can anyone explain what this might mean? We are finding the whole process very confusing!

Either they are using your DD for moderation or another college is interested in her @Flowersandthorns. I would tend to look at it as the more the merrier for interviews. Hope it goes well.

Many thanks for your reply @HewasH2O Could it mean that the first college has rejected her so she has become of interest to another college? Or is there a general sharing of everyone's details? Very confusing!

Not at all. They have to moderate interviews to check for consistency across the board or it might be that someone else has asked for a look. It's certainly not a bad thing.