Chemistry at oxford

Hello,
I am a student finishing my IB and I am thinking of applying to Oxford for Chemistry. If you know any of the answers to some of my questions I would be really grateful if you would answer them.
How did you come about writing your personal statement? Did you do any extra-curricular activities related to Chemistry specifically?
I don't take HL Maths but I do take Chemistry HL and Physics HL. Will this be a huge disadvantage?
How does the workload relate to IB at university?
Thanks a lot for your time!

There is a lot of guidance available for writing the personal statement. This video is always my go-to for advice, but you can also find Oxford's page on the matter here. You should definitely discuss your extracurricular engagement in your subject (e.g. reading, lectures, and so on) but unrelated extracurriculars are not of great relevance so should either be excluded or only mentioned briefly.

I don't know to what extent not having HL Maths will be a disadvantage but bear in mind that SL Maths is a minimum requirement (and if you only have SL Maths, you need a 7 in it, see here).

The workload will without a doubt be significantly more than your current workload. I don't study Chemistry and didn't do IB but as a kind of rough estimate, I'd say my workload at university is about double that of doing 4 A Levels.

Hello,
I am a student finishing my IB and I am thinking of applying to Oxford for Chemistry. If you know any of the answers to some of my questions I would be really grateful if you would answer them.
How did you come about writing your personal statement? Did you do any extra-curricular activities related to Chemistry specifically?
I don't take HL Maths but I do take Chemistry HL and Physics HL. Will this be a huge disadvantage?
How does the workload relate to IB at university?
Thanks a lot for your time!

Hi, third year oxford chemist here,

Just to add to whats already been said, personal statements are not very important for oxford chemistry applications (although that's not a reason to have a bad one). In terms of reading around the subject, 'why chemical reactions happen' is read by pretty much everyone so it's a bit cliche, but it is a good book.

As long as you meet the maths requirement for the course then not having HL maths shouldn't be an issue, might just mean a bit of extra work in the first year when you do most of the maths for the course.

Workload here is certainly greater than at IB or A level, generally I have 2 lectures a day, 9-11am. Then 2 days a week I have labs 11am-5pm.
Then a couple of problem sheets per week on top of that (a problem sheet takes anywhere from 4 to 10 hours to complete)

Hope that's helpful

Thanks a lot for all the helpful tips! Are there any other books which aren't as cliché that you would reccommend reading? I'd really like to start but don't know what to choose.

Honestly I think if you were to read and understand everything in 'why chemical reactions happen' it would put you in good shape for the interviews, other things you might read are generally "popular science" (cant think of any specific titles right now, because i didn't read anything else before i applied!)

I subscribed to the royal society of chemistry's 'chemistry world' as well, so I could read a few articles every week about something that'd been going on recently in the world of chemistry. So if you could get your hands on anything like that, it might be useful!

Ok, I'll do that! One last thing: how did you come about choosing the college you wanted to apply to? I have looked through some of the college websites and I even visited a few when I went to Oxford last year but I'm not sure I get the full picture of what each college is actually like in terms of the people. Any tips would be really appreciated. Thanks again for all your help.