Oxford 2011 Freshers Chat Thread

I am a international applicant applying G100 mathematics and I ve receiced a conditonal offer (open offer) from st hugh's .In the condition ,there is not a requirement for IELTS, do I have to take IELTS and get 7?Or the tutors thought my English is Ok in the interview so they did not give me such a condition?

How are we supposed to know? Ask the collge you have an offer from.

How are we supposed to know? Ask the collge you have an offer from.

Difficult to give examples without upsetting some offer holder or other. I mean that if the concept of 'better' colleges were valid, and if pooling were therefore a process by which the 'best' candidates were retained by these 'better' colleges, then why does pooling often proceed in what may be considered by the same flawed logic the 'opposite' direction? It's meant to be a rhetorical question: I'm not agreeing with the proposition.

Oh go on then: an example, at the risk of being negged to damnation. My college was Mansfield, but the noticeboard during interview showed students being pooled from there to Christ Church. A second example: a friend of mine chose Pembroke, which at the time (a few years back: lemme 'lone Pembroke offer holders, it may have all changed since) didn't have two ha'pennies to rub together, and was pooled from there to New, which gave him an offer. So he thought that he had 'traded up', like a free cabin upgrade on a flight.

I'm worried that I sound as if I'm defending these concepts, of 'better' colleges and top-to-bottom pooling. I'm trying to argue the opposite.

hello

wadham english....

please don't hate me but: Can someone sort out the APOSTROPHE in this thread's title?

There are clearly more than one of us!

It could be the OP's chat thread and we're just contributing to it.

I suppose that the person who posted was just asking what we think, looking for some sort of friendly support or advice; an international applicant, so maybe confused and looking for some peer reassurance? I would have presumed from your reply that you are obviously somebody who has never needed to use TSR in this way, if I hadn't just skimmed through your other posts.

Christ, don't ask any questions...

I'm still waiting for mine to come through on track... I think New College said it would come some time in February??!!

hello

wadham english....

please don't hate me but: Can someone sort out the APOSTROPHE in this thread's title?

There are clearly more than one of us!

I'm still waiting for mine to come through on track... I think New College said it would come some time in February??!!

I was fortunate enough to get an offer, and had resolved to try again next year if I were not successful. With apologies for being the (lone?) dissenting voice, I would not have made an open application. While it is true that this means the candidate is allocated to an under-subscribed college for the subject, it does not follow that this increases the chances of a place, because you will be thrown up against excellent candidates who have been pooled pre- or post-interview to the same college. The overall quality of interviewees is such that the possibility of them being slightly weaker because their college of choice allowed them to be pooled (and there are many reasons for a pooling decision) is hardly worth weighing in the balance. In fact, it is quite common to see successful pooled candidates inadvertently 'trade up' in terms of perceived college prestige.

College choice is one of the few areas where you have some degree of control over the interview process. You can research culture and ethos; for example, I applied to one that had a long history and proven record of accepting a high proportion of state school students. This is particularly important if you have an unusual qualification or educational path; has the college accepted people like you, or people that you may know? There are ways to find this out - TSR for instance!

You can also choose a college such that you will be fairly sure of who your interviewers will be (in at least one of your interviews). They can then be Googled to death to wring out as much useful information as possible about their academic interests and opinions, which can prove useful (if carried out subtly and sparingly) at interview.

Finally, you can make sure that you choose a college in which you know that you will feel comfortable; as a prospective candidate, you have wide access to visit, attend open days, and perhaps even stay overnight (some of the colleges do b&b, out of term) before making your preferred college decison. This may make you more relaxed at interview, and your genuine enthusiasm for the college may shine through, whereas if a college is allocated to you through an open app, it may be one that does not quite suit your personality: too big, too small, too new, too old, too quiet, too scary etc. However slight, this sense of unease may show through at interview.

These are tiny factors I know, but I worked on the basis that most of us will either get into Oxford, or be rejected, by a hair's breadth; relatively few would dazzle at interview (certainly not myself!) and relatively few would be judged academically below par. Of course, all this planning could still result in being reallocated pre-interview! But you are at least maximising your limited opportunities to control your fate.

Sorry to throw the cat amongst the pigeons at this late stage! Very best of luck anyway

Hello.
Basically, do not go for the same college again. Most colleges explicitly advise this. It would be fairly pointless as the tutors will believe they have already judged your essential academic ability. I know one guy who ignored all the advice of his teachers and reapplied to the same college; he simply got rejected again.

Also, you need a new dream. Reapplying to the same college would probably encourage obsession. I fell in love with Jesus college Cambridge last year; I still think it's fantastic, but I forced myself to move on and have an open mind about other places (although reapplying to Oxbridge is admittedly a little obsessive)

The best example (which avoids offending anybody, if that's your concern!) is that people are pooled both ways between the same colleges. That is, one person might be pooled from college X to college Y, and another from college Y to college X. If we assume the suggestion that some colleges are 'better' than others, one of the people must have "traded up".

But I've always thought that at such a high and fairly consistent standard, the biggest factor differentiating between colleges and how well you do at them or how much you enjoy them is how well you get on with particular tutors. So at "superior" college X, if you don't get on with the tutor, you would have been better off at slightly "inferior" college Y, where you would have liked the tutor more.

The title is technically correct, because it could be referring to a generic offer holder (another example: "This is a man's game")

I applied to Hertford because it had a bridge.