Oxford MAT 2013/2014

Oxford Computer Science Dept

Original post by hilbert_spaces

I think it depends on your college and your own situation.

I know last year someone applied to Merton and got 100 on the MAT(well at least he claimed he got 100). So the tutor gave him extremely hard questions and it turned out that he didn't manage to solve those problems and was rejected by Merton.

That's utter rubbish. Firstly, your MAT will not reflect what questions you get in the interview, how you perform with the 'basic' questions determines the rest of the interview. This is so that when they look at your MAT score and your interview score (out of 9) they're completely independent of one another. Secondly, Oxford hasn't rejected anyone with a 90+ score in the last ~5 years, apparently :lol:

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Original post by hilbert_spaces

I think it depends on your college and your own situation.

I know last year someone applied to Merton and got 100 on the MAT(well at least he claimed he got 100). So the tutor gave him extremely hard questions and it turned out that he didn't manage to solve those problems and was rejected by Merton.

*Raises eyebrows very skeptically*

As a general point it's worth remembering you don't have to actually solve the problems you're given in the interview to get a place. It's much more about seeing how students react to new ideas. Or using ideas learnt at A Level (etc) in a new way. If a student gets an answer right straight away they tend to be given a different question. The interviews are about us finding out how people think.... not perfect answers.

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Original post by Oxford Computer Science Dept

45 was about the average for people who applied to Oxford. This includes people who applied to Oxford and Imperial. We aren't allowed to know where else a student applied to, so we couldn't remove them from the figures even if we wanted to. (Which we don't.) We don't see the papers for students applying to Imperial not Oxford, so they aren't in the figures.

Yes, I understand. I wasn't suggesting that the average is 45 for those who applied to Oxford but not Imperial- calculating something like that wouldn't make sense even if it had been possible. What I was trying to say in that post is that 45 is the average of Oxford applicants, and therefore it's not affected by the performance of those who applied to Imperial but not Oxford, and therefore the low average cannot be attributed to Imperial's usage of MAT scores. I'm not exactly articulate. :redface:

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Original post by Noble.

That's utter rubbish. Firstly, your MAT will not reflect what questions you get in the interview, how you perform with the 'basic' questions determines the rest of the interview. This is so that when they look at your MAT score and your interview score (out of 9) they're completely independent of one another. Secondly, Oxford hasn't rejected anyone with a 90+ score in the last ~5 years, apparently :lol:

When were you told that you got the highest MAT score in your year? Did you ask? :lol:

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Original post by souktik

When were you told that you got the highest MAT score in your year? Did you ask? :lol:

Pretty much, after a comment by the tutor at my second college interview. I don't actually know, for sure, it was the highest mark, unless someone got 97+ on the 2010 MAT. I mostly made that comment on the applicants' thread in response to what that ZafarS guy said, so don't hold me to it. :tongue:

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Original post by Noble.

Pretty much, after a comment by the tutor at my second college interview. I don't actually know, for sure, it was the highest mark, unless someone got 97+ on the 2010 MAT. I mostly made that comment on the applicants' thread in response to what that ZafarS guy said, so don't hold me to it. :tongue:

It was understandable, lol. And that was one weird conversation. :tongue:

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Original post by souktik

It was understandable, lol. And that was one weird conversation. :tongue:

I know. He spent the better half of the evening taking the piss out of other people, yet wasn't too fond of it when I did it back to him. I also found it funny that he got 2 warning points for saying what he did to me (which was, categorically, out of order) and I got the same punishment (2 points) for calling him a turdburger... :lol:

Got to love whatever mod thought they deserved equal punishment.

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Original post by Noble.

I know. He spent the better half of the evening taking the piss out of other people, yet wasn't too fond of it when I did it back to him. I also found it funny that he got 2 warning points for saying what he did to me (which was, categorically, out of order) and I got the same punishment (2 points) for calling him a turdburger... :lol:

Got to love whatever mod thought they deserved equal punishment.

How do mods even keep up with threads that grow as fast as the applicants one? Or do they only look at reported content?

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 1738

Original post by souktik

How do mods even keep up with threads like that grow as fast as the applicants one? Or do they only look at reported content?

I would imagine plenty of people reported his post, then the mod looked through the conversation. However, up until his last post everything was pretty much being said in a joking fashion, it clearly was annoying Zafar quite considerably though :lol:

Not the brightest bulb in the pack to go around dishing out insults if he can't take them back without having a mental breakdown.

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