Yes, the opportunity to work with world class scientists during intercalation is definitely a fantastic opportunity for students at that stage. I'm sure she would - Oxford generally seems to be keen to encourage students to do other things than study!
I live in Finland and I'm reapplying to Oxford. I was rejected post-interview last year, but wasn't really surprised about that, since I decided to apply in the last minute and didn't have any work experience at all etc. I'm doing our national qualifications, and our equivalent to A levels are the only official qualifications we take. I've achieved 7,7,7,7,7,6 while Oxford asks for 7,7,6,6. I did my UKCAT yesterday, actually, and got 753. We aren't allowed to do any shadowing here so on the work experience side my application is pretty weak - I've volunteered in a care home since February and in a hospital since May. I think I'm also going to apply to Aberdeen, Dundee and Durham.
I'm not completely sure about which college I'm going to apply to yet, but I'm thinking of Brasenose
or maybe Worcester. Magdalen and Merton seem like fantastic choices too, they're both among the most beautiful places I've ever seen
By the way, I did the BMAT last year and got 8.3, 5.9 and 3.5A. I found that some of the most useful things for me were to learn fluency in mental maths, to learn how to identify the conclusion statement in the reading comprehension sections of S1 and go from there, and to use the options given (sometimes they are so far apart that you can calculate through really rough estimations etc).