Oxford Admission Feedback

Hi! I just got rejected from Oxford after my interviews, which was quite surprising to me since many academics have told me that my application was very strong and competitive ( I currently hold offers from KCL, St Andrew’s and UCL, waiting for the decision from LSE ). The email was basically: competition for places is very high, we know you must be sad you didn’t get in. No feedback whatsoever on why I got rejected. Shouldn’t I get at least some guidance on where I didn’t perform as expected, or as well as I should have?
Thanks!

Reply 1

A h

8

Original post by Anonymous #1

Hi! I just got rejected from Oxford after my interviews, which was quite surprising to me since many academics have told me that my application was very strong and competitive ( I currently hold offers from KCL, St Andrew’s and UCL, waiting for the decision from LSE ). The email was basically: competition for places is very high, we know you must be sad you didn’t get in. No feedback whatsoever on why I got rejected. Shouldn’t I get at least some guidance on where I didn’t perform as expected, or as well as I should have?
Thanks!

I also got rejected and pretty much received the same email back. Honestly, I’m trying to forget about it because maybe Oxford wasn’t the right place for me - despite my sadly huge array of super curriculars and interview prep.
Your offers are amazing - I’m still waiting to hear back from LSE as well

Reply 2

RichE

15

Original post by Anonymous #1

Hi! I just got rejected from Oxford after my interviews, which was quite surprising to me since many academics have told me that my application was very strong and competitive ( I currently hold offers from KCL, St Andrew’s and UCL, waiting for the decision from LSE ). The email was basically: competition for places is very high, we know you must be sad you didn’t get in. No feedback whatsoever on why I got rejected. Shouldn’t I get at least some guidance on where I didn’t perform as expected, or as well as I should have?
Thanks!

You can ask for feedback from the college, which is a separate process. Rejection/offer letters don't normally include feedback, just the decision.

Reply 3

Anonymous #1

OP

Hi everyone! I just received my feedback from Oxford, and it’s quite perplexing to me how the admission decisions were made.
I’ve applied for Philosophy and Theology, for which I needed to sit a Philosophy test: I got 75, 8 points above the average of applicants who actually got offers.
I’ve submitted my written work, for which I’ve got 70, 0.2 above the average of shortlisted candidates and just 0.7 below the average of those who got offers.
Regarding the interviews, my grades were 65 and 66, which on their spectrum means competent to very impressive.
In the end, I would have expected a mean average of all three and some statistics regarding how many points I should have gotten to actually receive an offer. Do you guys think I ought to make an appeal?
Cheers!

Reply 4

Anonymous #2

It’s only worth appealing if you can say there was a serious procedural error in how your application was handled. They make that clear on the uni website. Eg if it turned out that your written work was not marked, your interviewer was 20 minutes late so you only had a 5 minute interview, that sort of thing. The uni website explicitly says you can’t appeal against academic judgement (ie that in the judgement of the admitting tutors, other candidates were overall ranked higher).

Unfortunately there are just a lot more good candidates than there are places available. You did well in the test and that was important to getting shortlisted. But then it sounds like your written work was good but just below the average of candidates who got offers, and the interviews were ranked as “good” rather than “fantastic”. So that suggests they thought your application was good but that ultimately some other people did better. That is probably true of a huge proportion of people who didn’t get an offer. It doesn’t sound like there were any procedural errors you could point to.

I’m sorry you didn’t get an offer - it’s really disappointing and I get that it sucks. But I reckon you’d be better off moving on, because an appeal won’t change anything and it will just drag it out for you. Oxford isn’t the be all and end all - there are tons of other amazing unis out there and you will do brilliantly at one of them.

Reply 5

Scotney

20

Original post by Anonymous #1

Hi everyone! I just received my feedback from Oxford, and it’s quite perplexing to me how the admission decisions were made.
I’ve applied for Philosophy and Theology, for which I needed to sit a Philosophy test: I got 75, 8 points above the average of applicants who actually got offers.
I’ve submitted my written work, for which I’ve got 70, 0.2 above the average of shortlisted candidates and just 0.7 below the average of those who got offers.
Regarding the interviews, my grades were 65 and 66, which on their spectrum means competent to very impressive.
In the end, I would have expected a mean average of all three and some statistics regarding how many points I should have gotten to actually receive an offer. Do you guys think I ought to make an appeal?
Cheers!

What college was this?Seems like you got an astounding amount of detail compared to most.

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