Oxford - Law Admissions Report 2024-5

Would you like me to explain what "average" means?

I know right, 31 was almost the average score?! Which is quite high.

@Stiffy Byng are you surprised a LNAT score of 30 was required for an offer?!

Read with interest as a parent of a candidate who did not get an offer. One interview had one question on her PS regarding how she had learned of the Ed Sheeran copyright case (which she had referenced) Very aggressive tone. Her response was that it had been referenced in an essay prompt (Northeastern Univ essays) did not seem to be satisfactory to the interviewer both in his facial expression and (as she reported - a “huff and a snort”. She came out feeling he clearly did not believe her answer and that he assumed a tutor/teacher had fed her this info. Which despite her being at an indep school was not true - she found the competition online, entered and was a finalist. School frankly was worthless in helping with supracurriculars. Husband (oxford law) felt the lack of any personal motivation questions ie why law was completely contradictory to his interview experience nor that of our other daughter in her interviews at Cambridge for languages (offer received). She has moved on now and will succeed elsewhere on a course with more flexibility but the admission interviewers attitude confirmed to her she would not have been happy in a place where tutors were not willing to believe student responses.

Reading your post with interest Anon,
My daughter also applied for law and had an in-person interview with two professors. She is also at an independent school who were also useless re helping or suggesting supracurriculars. She came out of her interview feeling the interviewer was aggressive with questions re her LNAT essay - "surely you acknowledge X" and "you must see Y is ridiculous" sort of statements that weren't really questions but more statements of indignation. She felt they took an instant dislike to her. DOS spent half the interview looking preoccupied with something unrelated he was reading while the second interviewer was questioning her about her PS - these were shallow and general questions which she felt didn't give her much scope to expand on any of the points she had raised. She was given some legislation to read before the interview, which she felt she had digested well and was armed ready to answer some tricky questions on, but they never came - instead they had her rephrase some particular sentence what seemed like 7 or 8 times and they were unsatisfied with each answer given, eventually giving up and telling her the answer they were hoping for. They never asked her anything about why she wanted to study law or her career aspirations, areas of interest, anything like that at all. She felt they really didn't give her a chance to impress or even to answer anything especially relevant and were abrupt and dismissive, unlike reports from others at different colleges who said their interviewers did their best to put them at ease, expained they weren't there to catch them out, etc. She came out almost in tears - and she got an offer inJan without even being sent to the pool. So, I'm not sure your husband is right about personal motivation questions being asked routinely - we have heard the opposite, although teachers when doing mock interviews seem to spend a lot of time focusing on these sort of qs, and the minutiae of the PS, which aren't usually examined in much depth if any. My daughter also has almost nothing in the way of supra- or extracurriculars on her PS- just something about attending politics society at school. I don't think they care about these things at Oxbridge. My other daughter is at Cambridge reading English and she had literally zero mention of anything other than books she had read on her PS. I really doubt others who got accepted were given an easier time of it than your daughter was. Probably more to do with LNAT score / others just having demonstrated something or other that impressed them.

Read with interest as a parent of a candidate who did not get an offer. One interview had one question on her PS regarding how she had learned of the Ed Sheeran copyright case (which she had referenced) Very aggressive tone. Her response was that it had been referenced in an essay prompt (Northeastern Univ essays) did not seem to be satisfactory to the interviewer both in his facial expression and (as she reported - a “huff and a snort”. She came out feeling he clearly did not believe her answer and that he assumed a tutor/teacher had fed her this info. Which despite her being at an indep school was not true - she found the competition online, entered and was a finalist. School frankly was worthless in helping with supracurriculars. Husband (oxford law) felt the lack of any personal motivation questions ie why law was completely contradictory to his interview experience nor that of our other daughter in her interviews at Cambridge for languages (offer received). She has moved on now and will succeed elsewhere on a course with more flexibility but the admission interviewers attitude confirmed to her she would not have been happy in a place where tutors were not willing to believe student responses.

I don't know about the other colleges, but when I interviewed at Brasenose for Law many years ago, I did not get a single personal motivation question. I had three interviews (flubbed my second so was summoned back for a third) and all of them were focused solely on analysing the case law I had been given pre-interview.
This approach does make sense to me though because I don't think one's motivation for studying Law really speaks to their aptitude for it per se (which is what the interview process is intended to test). I know people who didn't care much for their subject and still graduated with a first.

I know right, 31 was almost the average score?! Which is quite high.

You asserted incorrectly that a score of 30 was required for an offer. This suggests that you do not know what the word average means.

I would have been interested to know the median and mode aswell instead of just the mean, as i suspect that there would've been many people with significantly less than that score that got offers, and it was skewed by some very high scores in the 30s

Some more numbers here -
https://www.mansfield.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Law-Admissions-Feedback-2024-25.pdf
One applicant scored below 10 in the LNAT and was interviewed. The lowest LNAT score of an offer holder was 16. One applicant scored 35 but was not interviewed.
41.3% of candidates received offers from a college to which the candidate had not applied.

Some more numbers here -
https://www.mansfield.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Law-Admissions-Feedback-2024-25.pdf
One applicant scored below 10 in the LNAT and was interviewed. The lowest LNAT score of an offer holder was 16. One applicant scored 35 but was not interviewed.
41.3% of candidates received offers from a college to which the candidate had not applied.