OXBRIDGE ENTRANCE RULES FOR MATHS

A Daily Telegraph report of 24th October revealed that while university applications for 2012 are down by 9 per cent, Oxford and Cambridge have seen the number of applicants drop by a mere 0.8 per cent. Competition will therefore remain fierce, especially for one of the most popular Oxbridge courses, Mathematics. This attracts maths lovers from all over the world, so even an outstanding maths student cannot be sure of a place.

Not all groups of UK students do equally well. Admissions figures for 2010 (the latest available) show that the success rate of Oxford maths applicants from state schools was 16 per cent, but 24.7 per cent for those from private schools. At Cambridge, it was the 17.5 per cent for state school applicants, but 27.7 per cent for those from private schools: a huge gap, even by Oxbridge standards. Students from comprehensives do least well, often because were only able to take AS Further Maths. This is formally acceptable, but makes it harder to display their abilities.

So, how might you get in? The obvious answer is by knowing more maths. A very useful maths site is http://www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/individual-competitions/senior-challenge/. Another one, http://bit.ly/qzRdca , goes to the papers themselves, with solutions.