Article: Oxbridge applications: 5 tips for boosting your chances

Tips 1-5: Be smart

How many of those "100000s helped" got into Oxbridge or even actually applied?

He means the number of people that watched his advice on YouTube, so I think that's fair

That's a bit of a dodgy claim don't you think? One person could've viewed it multiple times, one person could've viewed all his videos, his videos could've popped up as a suggestion and closed soon after, and there's no way of telling if the viewers were university applicants, let alone being helped by him to apply to a top university.

No I don't think that's dodgy. He has around a million views on his content, so saying 100,000s is likely to be a conservative number if anything.

If you held most companies to that standard they wouldn't be able to write much at all about who they've helped

That's a bit of a dodgy claim don't you think? One person could've viewed it multiple times, one person could've viewed all his videos, his videos could've popped up as a suggestion and closed soon after, and there's no way of telling if the viewers were university applicants, let alone being helped by him to apply to a top university.

I think you're just being pedantic and trying to be difficult, it's clear where that figure has come from and his videos genuinely are pretty good.

And among those videos, only 3 have more than 100k views. Let's just assume people didn't view them more than once and that most people were actually applicants to top universities (instead of say, clicking into it only to see what it's about as a fellow Oxonian), you can still assume the same person would've viewed those videos and so unless you're arguing 1 person viewing 3 videos makes that 1 person 3, it's still clearly not 100000s people helped, especially when one of them was on the GCSEs, and thus can safely assume to not be viewed by applicants to top universities.

By your logic, he has just helped me applied to a top university even though I'm not applying to anywhere at all.

Can you give me an example where a company would use something as doggy as this? The last time I checked, Taylor Swift didn't claim to have sold 1 billion copies of "Blank Space" simply because the video has more than a billion views.

I think you're just being pedantic and trying to be difficult, it's clear where that figure has come from and his videos genuinely are pretty good.

Right Babe? ( Rich Piana)

Big Rich Piana fan. Very sad about his break up.

Just going off website analytics, 2/3rds of user sessions tend to be unique in any month. I.e, 100 visits to our site tend to be generated by 70 users.

So if you have several hundred thousand views and claim 100,000s of students helped - that sounds pretty reasonable to me. You can't tell with YouTube analytics how many individuals have viewed, but that shouldn't stop you from being able to make a reasonable estimation based on your views.

Reasonableness is the key thing to think about here-there isn't any exact data.

I think you're just being pedantic and trying to be difficult, it's clear where that figure has come from and his videos genuinely are pretty good.

Successful Cambridge applicant here - I thought the tips were decent (except the interview one didn't include maths/arts) but stretched out for far too long and the music was annoying ^.^

Guy from the video here – I was torn on the music actually. Normally I don't include it but I thought I would be adventurous. Seems to have torn people.

Completely agree on the lack of science tips. Fortunately that is covered in the pack, but for anyone reading this comment and looking for some advice, the maths challenge puzzles are a great way to hone the skills they'll be pushing you for at interview.

Do you have any specific tips for how you prepare for your Cambridge interview?