Official Oxford 2023 Postgraduate Applicants Thread

I planned to apply for OMMS, however, I read on the website that the student‘s socio-economic background plays a big role when shortlisting candidates. It‘s a kind of pilot approach. Does anyone know what that exactly mean ?
Does it make sense at all to apply if you cannot tick a box on the socio-economic questionnaire?
Does Oxford reserve a certain number of places for such students? Do other students need higher grades?

I was an unsuccessful applicant last year so hope I have really improved and will try again!

Is there any advantage for going for the November deadline at all?

Welcome to everyone, and best of luck with your applications!

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Disclaimer: Please note, unless stated otherwise, posters on this thread do not work for the Oxford's admissions department, therefore do not take our opinion as being 100% accurate. If you need certainty, contact Oxford directly.

Last year's thread: https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7053424

Does Oxford not like students from Nottingham? A friend my average 90% in her undergrad maths course, did a summer research project, mentored 1st and 2nd years whilst in her third year but she got rejected when applying for a OMMS. I can only think that Oxford don't value the course at Nottingham. She's at warwick now doing a masters there.

Honestly, I get the impression that for OMMS and Part III (but also for a lot of Oxbridge postgraduate courses) they are mainly interested in internal Oxbridge applicants or internationals. To apply from Notts I think you’d need 90% on the MMath to even have a chance. The Bsc would not be considered adequate preparation.

Internationals aside, if you don’t get in at 18 it’s hard to get in postgrad I feel. Especially in maths.

You could be right there. But looking at the Part III website, Cam say that out of 250 or so candidates each year only 90 are internal Cam students. Majority are outside applicants. Because they don't give reasons why they reject applicants it's hard to say what they are exactly looking for

Fair point. But of course external candidates could mean Oxbridge or internatinal. Happily FOI requests have been made so that we have admissions data on both Part III and OMMS. Since this is the Oxford thread lets look at how non-Oxbridge UK (NOU) university students fared in OMMS applications in 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21.

Source: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/application_stats_for_msc_in_mat_2?unfold=1

Unhappily the data seems a bit suspect since if you actually sum the columns it doesn't add up to the totals they say it does. I guess Oxford is smart but not that smart.

If we take their word for it however... Apparently there were 493 applications from NOU students in this period of which 23 were accepted, giving an acceptance rate of 4.4%. compared to (Internationals + Oxbridge's) acceptance rate of 12.4%, suggesting that NOU students were nearly 3x less likely to get in than their international counterparts.

The 23 lucky winners break down as follows:
Imperial - 8/79 applicants
Bath - 3/18 applicants
Warwick - 4/42 applicants
UCL - 5/75 applicants
Durham - 3/72 applicants.

Everyone else was 0%. If you're curious, Nottingham was 0/8 applicants and none of those 8 got an offer.

Don't mean to discourage anyone from applying though!

If you want to look at Cambridge Part III data its here (for all Part III not just maths):

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/en/request/application_stats_for_part_iii_o_2?unfold=1

good analysis @quentino

sort of not surprised they dish out a fair number of places to intl students as they want to rake in those fees....

it's kinda depressing in a way - once you get past the Cam, Ox, Warwick, ICL group, the depth and coverage of maths courses drops off a cliff so much so that those courses (as you mentioned earlier) do not prepare a person for a course like Part III or maybe even OMMS and so we see the distribution of places in the FOI data.