Is my chance for a PhD at Cambridge or Oxford low or good?

Hi, I actually plan to do a PhD in Oxford or Cambridge. I did my undergraduate at ETH in Switzerland in Architecture. Later I decided to change to Tourism Geography at University of Groningen in the Netherlands. I got a very good degree at University of Groningen. After that I decided to do a second Master at LSE in Data Science, but I only got a high passed. My experience at LSE was generally terrible, because I had a very undiverse cohort and was the only person with another nationality and there were not a single british student in my cohort but instead of that 75% were Chinese and then 4 people from the USA and 2 people from Japan and 2 from South Korea. Also I had troubles with course selection. I will definitely say this had an influence on my performance, but after graduating from LSE, I moved to Australia and worked for 18 month in a company as a Data Analyst. I was the best worker there and as a thank my chef gave me a trip to French Polynesia. Besides that I speak several languages (German, French, Greek, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese). I want to ask if my chances are low because I have only a high passed at my second degree or is the master degree in Groningen enough. I am a little bit afraid to apply (because of the only high passed at LSE) but I like the research areas of this two universities in Geography.

Poor, in as much as you lead with a long story about academics and excuses. A strong PhD candidate will be worrying about their research proposal and where the best Supervisor and department for that research is located.

Maybe you have a strong research proposal, but that needs to be your lead story. No-one cares about your cohort at LSE (and a bit of research would have prepared you for exactly that demographic at LSE in most courses!).

If your research proposal leverages ETH and Groningen and just uses data science as a methodology, you might well get an offer. Funding is a different matter, you need to apply for anything and everything you can find.

Thank you for your honest and detailed answer. FYI, I wasn't looking for excuses, but I found my time at LSE really terrible. I already have a research project and with one of the supervisors I talked about it and he thought that my idea has potential and has a good contribution to society. But the only problem is, I didn't mention to the supervisor that I have a bad report card from LSE. I only mentioned the good points that I know many languages and have many international experiences. I know that no one is interested in my cohort at LSE and everyone I told this to did not find it normal, since Data Science is something that is learned in all countries of the world. And this LSE brags about diversity all the time and I didn't see anything about diversity. Because normally you think, like in the Netherlands and Switzerland, that the majority are the local students and then about a quarter to 40% are international students. So something like what happened to me at LSE is really a screw up, but everyone has a right to education clearly, but if you are then disadvantaged (was disadvantaged in course selection and in group work it was very troublesome) then it is not funny. I had to listen all the time from the arrogant fellow students that Asians are good at quantitative subjects and I am an idiot. and in the group work I saw that they really couldn't do anything and was surprised that they got better grades. I also found the way of teaching quite bad. there were very few courses compared to switzerland and the netherlands and especially the grading of one course also annoyed me. the only exciting course there was development studies. The problem is that I also had Data Science both in Groningen and ETH with good grades. But at LSE I had only low grades and I didn't know why. Because I also learned quite a lot. And because I worked for a very long time, I have enough money to finance all this. But you said, it is more poor than high?

I mean you are kind of proving the above persons' point, writing another paragraph on why LSE sucks and you hate everyone who was on your course with you (even going so far as to basically say you are smarter than all of them and they shouldn't have got high grades and you shouldn't have got low grades). Have you ever actually taken some time to reflect on your own failings at Imperial? It can't all be everyone else's fault, as you seem to think. Imperial is one of the top unis for data science in the world, so maybe you just couldn't rise up to the challenge of a more rigorous course. That doesn't bode well for a PhD at Oxford or Cambridge

I think you need to let go of your LSE experience.
You have finished the course, and it is now in the past.

When you apply for the PhD at Oxford, Cambridge (or anywhere else) the past experience you had at LSE with fellow students is irrelevant.

Don't dwell on the negative, focus on (any) positives of studying at LSE.

thank you very much. well said and you are absolutely right.