Question for Oxbridge/knowledgeable university students.

They do ask for AS scores, I would know.

Admissions decisions are made by professionals with many more years experience than you, do not act as judge, jury, and executioner when you do not know the ins and outs of all students' applications.

Oh yeah I'm not using excuses, I'll still get high UMS mate (well we'll see in a few weeks lol I'll be sure to tell you xD) but I know I didn't take it as seriously as I needed to until last month of so, which increased stress etc due to not really listening in lessons and getting A's, but low A's. Just would've preferred to be pushed really hard, which I school cannot do :P

I'd rather someone lied and told me a higher UMS than necessary rather than what happened where I was told a lower UMS than necessary. I will get the 90 UMS, it's just whether or not the 95 UMS occurs, are quite frankly I'll be upset if it doesn't and I'll know the reason why

You think you know exactly how it works. A lot of things you say and have asked in Cambridge forum say you don't. You're misinterpreting a lot of things people have said to OP and their intention. Nobody is suggesting OP doesn't need work too hard because he/she can get in with lower grades. People are just pointing out it's not impossible to get into Cambridge even if your UMS is less than 95% or you only got less than a certain number of A* in GCSE. And I'm sure OP is intelligent enough to understand these points. It's just you misinterpreting those replies and the posters' intention. Nobody is trying to give him/her a false hope (unlike your teachers, if that's what they're really saying), and you're not in the position of deciding what is a good advice and what is not, because you yourself also have just started the journey of trying to find out how Cambridge admission process works, though you may be thinking you've already mastered it.
Sorry the teachers of your school are giving wrong advices and false hope to the students. I realize there're many schools and teachers like that innsome schools., but it doesn't mean people here are all like your teachers. More than likely there're more posters who have much better knowledge on Oxbridge admission than your school. As jneill said, you're not really helping OP or anyone else who's lurking in the forum to find out the real info about Oxbridge admission. Posts like yours are the exactly the reason there're so many myths and misconceptions are going around everywhere, forever.

Okay I never said I mastered it. Nobody has. It's more about the type of thinker you are more than anything, and you can't exactly master that. I understand what they're looking for, but I'm a little more realistic towards the general UMS requirements.

Excuse me for telling everyone to try harder.

I think you're misunderstanding me. Every question I ever ask on them forums is to try and squeeze the truth out, instead of the hope-filled sentences they reply with (I prefer honesty always, even if it's brutal) and I appreciate that some people may not want honesty, nor am I saying they completely lie. They don't lie, they just word things to make reality seem less scary, which for some is useful, but for some it's detrimental. My mum is for some reason certain that they do this to see who will do the best regardless, so it's all one big test. I have no idea whether that's true, but we cannot say they enforce the idea of the median UMS score of offer holders for the subject I'm applying to is ~95 UMS, and if they do they always add something like "but we gave out 20 offers to people with <90 UMS" where instead they could say "and we gave out 10 offers to people with >97 UMS". One gives out hope, the other pushes people to want to achieve more. That's all I'm saying okay, no need to try and sneakily insult me.

I am definitely in the position to suggest what advice would've helped me and some others because I'm actually here experiencing it. I have friends that will scrape 90 UMS, friends I used to think were smarter than me, but because their reasonings have been "Cambridge say you only need 90 UMS, and all other Uni's don't care so there's no point going higher and trying harder" and I'm like why on earth would you think that but they trust what the internet says about it over me because I'm just one person. Some people need to be told actual statistics, statistics I've had to do loads of research to find myself and find the truth, because I'll tell you now they massively shocked me, I thought general scores were much lower than that (and I wonder why that is) so I was all confident up until that point. Destroys confidence too.

Thanks everyone for sharing your knowledge on the matter, and it's great to read all the differing opinions and experiences. I think what is both exciting but incredibly disheartening is the extreme aspect of luck that seems to be present in the application process. For example, they put a lot of importance on the interview but, for me at least, I honestly feel the quality of my interview would depend on who I'm talking to and the questions asked. On one day, I may be asked a question I can pour my heart and knowledge into, on another day a question could utterly stump me. Years of work dependent upon a 20 minute interview

Yeah, this is what really confuses me about Oxbridge admissions. They seem to place so much weighting on the interview, and yet it's such a short period of time with relatively few questions. (And I do love quoting the study Cambridge did that showed a negligible negative correlation between male applicants' interview scores, and their subsequent performance in the Cambridge Medicine degree. )

At least with Cambridge, it does seem that high UMS help a lot. Oxford seems more mysterious and luck-based to me. I'm aware that's probably not the case, but that's the impression I get looking in from the outside.

Thanks everyone for sharing your knowledge on the matter, and it's great to read all the differing opinions and experiences. I think what is both exciting but incredibly disheartening is the extreme aspect of luck that seems to be present in the application process. For example, they put a lot of importance on the interview but, for me at least, I honestly feel the quality of my interview would depend on who I'm talking to and the questions asked. On one day, I may be asked a question I can pour my heart and knowledge into, on another day a question could utterly stump me. Years of work dependent upon a 20 minute interview. I do hope at least, that they appreciate passion for a subject, and enthusiasm. I imagine they get many candidates who, whilst extremely bright with fantastic grades, are a bore to talk with and lack any emotion towards the course and university. I hope that I can display such overwhelming enthusiasm that it sways them... I don't know, maybe I'm getting completely the wrong idea. They must be looking for interesting people that stand out. I hope that I can gamble, successfully, and communicate my ambition and desire to study there.
I think I'm just going to have to come to terms with the fact that I'm already in an extremely privileged position - I have the opportunity to apply to one of the best universities in the world. I have been given a fantastic education, that is not available everywhere, that has granted me such an opportunity. I think I'm being blinded by the prestige of Oxbridge and it's stopping me from seeing the full picture. A degree is a degree, but it's what you do with it that matters. If I failed to get in, and I bitch and moan about it for month, that is to my detriment. Having a strong, positive attitude is more important than any Oxbridge place, for me at least.

This (in bold) is the important bit

Yes there is some luck involved - but they ARE experienced at finding the right candidates. They do make some mistakes but on the whole they get it right.

It's just one slot on your UCAS and definately do not place all your hopes on gaining a Oxbridge place but (as I said earlier) you won't get in if you don't apply.

Which degree are you thinking off (apologies if you've already told us this).

Well, that's some good news then I've always thought about law, my parents also suggested that It'd suit me. However, after some reading, history seems very appealing. Firstly, I could always do a law conversion after graduating and a course in history is so much more appealing to me. I have always really enjoyed history, and I'd say I'm fairly good at it. I just need to brush up on my essay writing skills, as at my school I've never really been taught about it. I really feel that I could act more enthused about history then I could about law - I struggle to see how you could get excited about law. Also, I believe law is very competitive. I do worry though that my AS levels might not be acceptable - History, Geography, Chemistry, Biology. They might prefer people to have an English A level?

........ I think what is both exciting but incredibly disheartening is the extreme aspect of luck that seems to be present in the application process. For example, they put a lot of importance on the interview but, for me at least, I honestly feel the quality of my interview would depend on who I'm talking to and the questions asked. On one day, I may be asked a question I can pour my heart and knowledge into, on another day a question could utterly stump me. Years of work dependent upon a 20 minute interview. I do hope at least, that they appreciate passion for a subject, and enthusiasm. I imagine they get many candidates who, whilst extremely bright with fantastic grades, are a bore to talk with and lack any emotion towards the course and university. I hope that I can display such overwhelming enthusiasm that it sways them... I don't know, maybe I'm getting completely the wrong idea. They must be looking for interesting people that stand out. I hope that I can gamble, successfully, and communicate my ambition and desire to study there..

Yes there is some luck involved - but they ARE experienced at finding the right candidates. They do make some mistakes but on the whole they get it right.

No, interview is no more (or less) important than any other aspects of applications. Years of work does not depend on a 20 min interviews. They look at your whole application and consider every aspect of it in balance, not with any pre-determined weighting. To some people good performance in interview may be more crucial than others if other aspects of application are not as strong. To others it may be completely opposite. We just don't know, because there's no fixed formula they're working on. They look at every application individually.

So on this I do (slightly) disagree. I have seen various bits of FOI data that indicate a "good" interview (a score of 7 or better) trumps anything. And a poor interview will drag down an otherwise good candidate.

However it is very likely the candidate is often a poor judge of how well the interviews actually went.

It would be interesting to know the score for your daughter's "poor" interview. Perhaps she got a 6 in the first, and an 8 in the 2nd, or perhaps, the first interview was also good as all she needed was a very small prompt.

Either way, the system worked and a good candidate won her place

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No, interview is no more (or less) important than any other aspects of applications. Years of work does not depend on a 20 min interviews. They look at your whole application and consider every aspect of it in balance, not with any pre-determined weighting. To some people good performance in interview may be more crucial than others if other aspects of application are not as strong. To others it may be completely opposite. We just don't know, because there's no fixed formula they're working on. They look at every application individually.

I tell you my daughter's case. She had a very strong application on the paper, with straight A*s with very high UMS. But her interview was a disaster. For her course, the candidates were given a piece of essay to read a few days (?) before their interview and were allowed to bring in the essay to the interview with their memos scribbled on the paper if they want. The first interview was conducted around this essay, with the paper in my daughter's hand. The interviewer asked the question on a subject in the essay on which she'd written her own note on its side. Everything went blank and she couldn't even read her own handwriting or find where it was. The interviewer noticed it and gently pointed out 'It's there. Right there. Look. ' She managed to read it and conjure up an answer, but the whole subject on the essay was on a particular field of the subject her school did not cover at all (it's not that interviewers deliberately chose the unusual subject because it wasn't. It's just that her school didn't.), so it was out of her depth throughout. She told me later that at one stage she felt as if her soul left her body and floated up to the ceiling, her soul looking down on herself with interviewers from the ceiling, just like some kind of weird episode of person who came back from death. It was as bad as that. The two interviewers were very gentle and helpful throughout the interview. The second interview was better than first, went without any drama. But we don't know whether it was good enough or just ok.
When she told me about these, we were more than 100% sure she won't get an offer. She was within the automatic pooling criteria, but the interview was sooooo bad. so....
But she did. Without pool. When we were invited to the Offer Holder's visit day, I actually asked DoS (who interviewed) if he was really sure he wasn't mistaken her for somebody else. (just by pure coincidence, a daughter of my friend's friend applied to the same college for the same course, and both girls shared a very similar and unique background, so I thought maybe he got mixed them up). He smiled and said, he was very sure, and actually he gave an offer to the other girl as well.

Another example: My daughter's friend from the same school applied to another college for an arts course. She's a very quiet person, never known to be very confident or eloquent. I've met her several times. Very nice girl but never easy to gauge what she was thinking or how she's feeling because she never showed it. She got the offer.

One more example: Another girl in my daughter's college on the same course. Very, very, very shy girl. Painfully shy. Even after several months this girl could hardly speak to her friends or ask something unless she was spoken to or asked by someone first. She could never initiate a conversation from her side, and that lasted until the last day at Cambridge. Even when someone ask her question or speak to her, her reply was very short in a very small voice. I can't imagine she showed her knowledge and passion in the subject confidently with eloquence at the interviews. She got the offer, of course, and she graduated with double firsts. So obviously the interviewers could see her talent through her extreme shyness.

so, you definitely do not need to be a good speaker or to be able to show your passion or whatever confidently. Because.......


^ This. (in bold)

Yes, I agree, without a solid proof of how each interviewed was actually scored by the interviewers, we really don't know how it went. I really don't think her first interview got any decent score as it was on physical geography which she didn't do AT ALL on A-level. She only concentrated on human geography as that's the only thing she wanted to do at university
Maybe her second interview was better than she thought as it was on human geography. She tends to be the most strict critic of herself, sometimes.
I also would be very interested to know how the shy girl survived the interviews.

Do you have any separate data for interview scores vs acceptance for science course (= with test & interview) and for humanities (= two interviews)? Or those interview scores purely for the interviews, not taking an account of test results?

Also, is there any data we can see a correlation of high-scorers at interviews and their exam grades at all?

Here's the chart - data for 1 college, 2 interviews no tests.

Red lines are overall Interview scores (with green dots highlighting offers).
Blue bars are SUMS average.

I find it peculiar and extremely unfair that they pick subjects which you may not have studied, assuming also that they ask extremely difficult questions on the matter to rigorously test you. I can only imagine how your daughter felt!