Oxford Applicants 2016 Entry & Interview chat

Hi,

How many students have foundation and how many don't who were admitted to the Ruskin school this year. Do you have that statistic or even the data just for Brasenose?

Thanks!

Please check out the Fine Art at the Ruskin School thread on TSR - we have posted a response to this and other queries there.

I see, thank you very much for that. You see on the statistics page where you can select to filter by school type. For the Fine Art section is a foundation labelled underneath "Other" or is there some other way that schools are sectioned into State, Independent and Other?

I believe that there are different (priced?) packages of information on applicants that universities can get from UCAS. Oxford takes the basic package because it does interviews. Cost vs benefit.

This basic package gives only the AS grades. This information is further weakened by the fact that if schools do not "cash in" the module grades early there will be no AS grades for their students until the end of A2 i.e. after the decision. So in many cases there is nothing to compare with.

So Oxford wont even see AS module results but it might help for other universities? Obviously, superb results in your chosen field could be in your school reference if you drop the appropriate hints. They will see that.

This is my understanding based on TSR so it could be completely wrong. Brasenose Admissions would know.

anyone have any resources for the physics aptitude test (PAT)?
Lessons, questions, whatever would be helpful!

Have you done all the past papers already?

no, not yet!

Im mostly looking for lessons on stuff that isn't covered by last year's AS syllabus, so topics such as 'Elementary treatment of circular orbits under gravity including orbital speed, radius, period, centripetal acceleration, and gravitational centripetal force. Satellites; geostationary and polar orbits'

I know that once I do all the PAT past papers the physics olympiad past papers are useful too, but I'm afraid I'm nowhere near finishing those yet..

That should be on your A2 syllabus, so things like your revision guide and teachers are perhaps your best bet (although I'm sure there are videos or something online somewhere as well).

Yeah I would focus on doing all the PAT papers first and don't worry about the rest unless you run out of things to do

alright, thank you.

Are you in your first year at Oxford? How did you prepare for the PAT?? Also how were your interviews if you don't mind me asking?

alright, thank you.

Are you in your first year at Oxford? How did you prepare for the PAT?? Also how were your interviews if you don't mind me asking?

If I got 2 As and 2 Bs at AS but am predicted 3A*s at A2 does it matter? Will AS hinder my chances?

Just apply if you want to.

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Can Brasenose admissions verify this please?
Just to check my understanding: If I put my module grades down on UCAS, Oxford won't be able to see it, as they only have the "basic" package?

Ah that is interesting. I am not entirely sure either, I am just going by what my school told me to do when I was applying (they said to write them in if they were high). Apologies if I am wrong!

The only way ums scores can appear in a UCAS application is in either the personal statement or the school reference. It is better for the school to include these details since otherwise space in the PS is sacrificed. As has already been stated, however, on this forum, ums scores are not included in Oxford's selection criteria.

I'm about to be! Don't leave for another week and a half though. Not well to be honest, I accidentally left starting past papers a bit too late and was nowhere near ready for it (I requested my score back and I was only one mark over the interview threshold!). So my advice (mostly based on things I didn't do) would be learn the content you don't know, do as many practice papers as possible, and when it feels horrible and like you'll never do any good because you're used to getting high marks all the time and now you're not just keep going. Take a few breaths or a five minute break but don't give up.

Don't really know how much detail you want, but for physics everyone has two interviews at their college (the one where they either applied to or were reallocated to) and one at a second college. They're all about 30 minutes long I think. My first two were very strongly maths based and had lots of questions (probably close to an even split between pure maths and physics). My third one was more like a long multiple part question on one topic (electric fields) that started fairly simple and got continually more complicated. Overall a lot of graph drawing was involved (also a useful skill for the PAT).
I was pretty relaxed through all of mine because I'd decided about a week before getting invited to interview that in the unlikely event I got an offer I'd turn it down (yeah, look how that worked out...) which probably helped me an awful lot. I'd say if you get an interview, do your best to be relaxed and focus on talking them through what you're thinking/doing - and take advantage of three days in Oxford! Talk to students/other applicants, go explore a bit or something.

That's great! congrats

And yeah I feel like I have started way too late.. But I might as well try, not applying could be something I would come to regret deeply in the future.
Thanks again for your advice and the clarification of the interview process! I can see how being relaxed would help out a lot, even just thinking about an interview makes me nervous