OXBRIDGE ENTRANCE VIA TESTS

UCAS form sent?  Great, but will you get an interview? There is certainly a fair chance of it: Cambridge still interviews over 80 per cent of applicants overall, Oxford somewhat below 60 per cent.  If you’re hoping to be amongst them, you might like to know how interviewees are picked.

High GCSE and AS grades are just the starting point. A good teacher’s reference helps, as does a strong UCAS statement and, in some subjects, a crisp, smart school essay. Oxbridge pre-interview tests, which are listed in full at http://tinyurl.com/9yr6lyk and at http://tinyurl.com/8fqwc8g, further whittle down the numbers.

Used widely by Oxford, these tests matter most if a student is applying for one of the university’s most over-subscribed courses: Medicine, Economics+Management, Law and PPE applicants will only be seen if their test scores are high. A mere quarter of Oxford’s Economics+Management candidates get as far as the interview.

Cambridge uses just one pre-interview test, the BMAT, so as to weed out the very weakest Medicine applicants ; the rest are interviewed. Its applicants for Law and for six other courses also sit written aptitude tests, but do so at the interview. The university’s Maths applicants sit its STEP test even later, after A-levels.

Oxford applicants coming from poor neighbourhoods or applying from state schools which have not sent student there before might be interviewed even if they didn’t do brilliantly, but the tests are a chance to impress. This is also true for disadvantaged students applying to Cambridge who have filled in its Extenuating Circumstances Form.  

What all this means is that there could be more work ahead. First check out the structure of any test you may have to take. Now read carefully through past papers or sample questions. To do well, you must quickly grasp the essence of a statement or a question. You may also need to express and substantiate a personal view,  or think in logical and/or ethical terms.  These  skills can still be learnt, but require practice. For detailed advice on how to handle the various Oxbridge tests, read chapters 10, 15 and 17 of  OXBRIDGE ENTRANCE: THE REAL RULES.