Components Of A Great Cambridge Application?

If applying to Oxbridge, your personal statement will look different to other candidates' personal statements. Oxbridge don't care (at all) about extra-curricular activities like sports, chess club, or DofE - so whereas most people applying to most unis would mention this stuff in their statement, you shouldn't.

Instead, your Oxbridge statement should mention super-curricular activities you do and how these have broadened your academic horizons; for example, if you're applying for CompSci and you founded Computing Society at your school and have led workshops on machine learning, that would be relevant. Or if you're applying for History and you mention that you've attended academic lectures on aspects of history that you're interested in, that counts too.

Your personal statement should also bring to the fore your breadth and depth of knowledge. The golden rule is demonstrating that you have been working at a much higher level than A-Level: everything in your personal statement should be geared towards proving this. I applied for English, and my statement was just a procession of various degree-level texts that I'd read in my own time and a few thoughts/ideas I'd had about them which indicated I was clearly operating above the A-Level curriculum. If you're applying for a STEM degree, for example, discussing interest areas you've got which are at degree-level rather than A-Level is the way to go. You've not got room for in-depth discussion of these in your personal statement, so it serves more as a 'here's a quick taster of my academic background, if you want to learn more then invite me to interview'.

Thanks this was really useful, can you think im anything i can do whilst in quarantine? perhaps reading relevant books or online lectures?

I don't know much about Law so take this with a pinch of salt and (if you can) find a current Oxbridge law student to talk to. You can find some reading here: https://www.ba.law.cam.ac.uk/finding-out-more/learn-more-about-law along with some other ideas for useful prep.

I'd also read through the pages here https://www.law.cam.ac.uk/coursescurrent-studentsba-tripos/choice-subjects and start identifying areas, in conjunction with your own reading, that you find interesting and want to research more in your own time. These become your 'depth areas' to talk about in your personal statement and at interview. You should also base your reading around the Part I course; as well as depth, you need to demonstrate breadth of preparatory reading/self-study across these papers.

Do you have any advice for History and Politics? I am struggling with the personal statement atm