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Biochemistry at Oxford, GCSE and AS grades

I’m a year 12 who’s thinking of applying for Biochemistry at Oxford next year as I want to work in research and development, however, I’m worried that my GCSE grades won’t be that competitive (whilst I am happy with them). I got 8A*s 4As and a B, however 3/4 of my As were in Physics, Computer Science and Numeracy. Will this matter? I got A*s in Biology, Chemistry and Maths but I’m just worried that they’d want A*s in all STEM subjects.
Also, I’m a student in Wales - here, we do AS level exams at the end of year 12 and get our AS grades then. I saw on Oxford’s admissions shortlisting page that they will take into consideration “any AS grades/marks available”. Would me working hard towards achieving strong AS marks overshadow my GCSEs? What kind of AS marks should I be aiming for?

(edited 6 months ago)

Reply 1

CAG575

Original post by validationho3

You don’t need to overshadow those GCSE results. Those are excellent grades and you got A*s in Marhs, Bilogy and Chemistry so all good. If you are at a state school in Wales then you should be part of the Seren programme. If not, ask your school to sign you up. This is a very supportive program. Oxford generally doesn’t take account of AS levels when shortlisting for interview. The simple reason for this is that English students don’t get AS grades so they can’t compare students equally. You should be working towards As in your AS results ( there are no A*s at AS) though to make sure that you are on target for the predicted grades that you would need for your Oxford application. You need really to be predicted a minimum of A*AA in your A levels as this is their standard offer. There is no admissions test for biochemistry and they only interview less that half of all applicants, so the better your predicted grades the better for you. In order to strengthen your application try and do as much beyond the syllabus as you can, podcasts, books, articles etc They are looking for you to demonstrate that you are passionate about biochemistry and also that you are academically robust enough to cope with the course.