Applying for Oxford chemistry

Besides Oxford where else did you apply for chemistry because i was thinking about applying to Imperial, Bristol, York/Durham but i don’t know what to put as my safety university.
I am currently going to draw up a plan on topics i want to research this summer so that it’s more focused and not just a list as you said.
After going to the open day, I have short listed it to St Johns, Keble and Magdalen. I really enjoy sports and going on walks, which is why i ended up choosing these colleges.

I applied to Imperial (which by the way was the only university other than Oxford that bothered to interview me), Durham, UCL and St Andrew’s. I’d say your best way to decide which should be your safety/insurance choice would be to go on open days and get an idea of which option you like most aside from Oxford, but failing that, you probably should make whichever makes you the highest offer after Oxford your insurance.
I’m actually an incoming third year at St John’s College, in case you were interested in asking about the college itself, the tutors etc. Magdalen was the college I initially applied to, though despite being interviewed by them and Somerville, I was made an open offer that saw me land a place at St John’s.

I was originally going to apply to Cambridge for medicine but thought really hard and decided that my passion is more towards chemistry. I was wondering if Oxford had a winter pooling system similar to that.
Besides talking to other people about chemistry how else would you recommend preparing for interviews and would you be able to help or does that go against some sort of agreement.
I was reading St John’s accommodation and I am under the impression that all first year undergraduates share a bathroom is that true and if so how many people share one?
Thank you

The Oxford and Cambridge pooling systems are fundamentally different.
At Oxford, you are pooled if the colleges you were interviewed at cannot make you a place - other colleges get to decide whether to take you and either they do and make you an offer on the decisions day in January, or they don’t and you receive a rejection. This decision is final and there is no reconsideration mechanism, unlike at Cambridge.
For interview prep, aside from having discussions about chemistry and mock interviews, RSC Chemistry Olympiad papers are probably your best bet. To a degree, I may be able to offer you some assistance (e.g via DM’s or in this thread, I could give you an interview-style question and give you my thoughts on how you handle it), but I can’t tell you exactly what I was asked in my interviews and TSR rules mean I can’t give you any off-site contact details, so I can’t give you a proper mock interview.
It’s partially true. If you don’t get put into the Kendrew quadrangle (which is virtually only the case if you are under 18 when you start the degree or require an ensuite due to health reasons), then you will be put into one of the staircases in the Thomas White quadrangle. You have 2 shared toilets (plus 2 shared showers and 2 shared sinks, each in separate rooms) per floor on each staircase and per floor, you can typically expect 8 people (yourself included) to reside. That is to say you have 4 people per shared toilet. I would also note that there are other toilets dotted around that aren’t within the staircases you can use if push comes to shove.

If you can find a cheap copy of it, Sykes’ Guidebook to mechanism in Organic Chemistry is well worth a read. You might want to consider some of the Oxford chemistry primers as well.
You only need one or two books to refer to in your PS - it’s not an exercise in listing things you’ve done.

Has anyone got any suggestions on how I can use the Olympiad papers to improve for interviews because I do not know how I could get better at the Olympiad papers.

I was wondering if anyone had some advice for applying to Oxford for chemistry in terms of writing my personal statement and things I could look into for my supracurricular exploration

Has anyone got any suggestions on how I can use the Olympiad papers to improve for interviews because I do not know how I could get better at the Olympiad papers.

I’m starting at Oxford in oct to read chem and for interviews I would say don’t forget to focus on applications of maths to the chemistry you study at A level. A level chem doesn’t really intersect with A level maths skills, so I’d explore how you can apply what you’re learning in A level maths to chem, like you would at uni. I had four interviews and every single one was maths heavy- and in my first interview, the specific topic I researched about the application of the calculus I’d been doing in maths to chemistry was the focus of it!

The Oxford and Cambridge pooling systems are fundamentally different.
At Oxford, you are pooled if the colleges you were interviewed at cannot make you a place - other colleges get to decide whether to take you and either they do and make you an offer on the decisions day in January, or they don’t and you receive a rejection. This decision is final and there is no reconsideration mechanism, unlike at Cambridge.
For interview prep, aside from having discussions about chemistry and mock interviews, RSC Chemistry Olympiad papers are probably your best bet. To a degree, I may be able to offer you some assistance (e.g via DM’s or in this thread, I could give you an interview-style question and give you my thoughts on how you handle it), but I can’t tell you exactly what I was asked in my interviews and TSR rules mean I can’t give you any off-site contact details, so I can’t give you a proper mock interview.
It’s partially true. If you don’t get put into the Kendrew quadrangle (which is virtually only the case if you are under 18 when you start the degree or require an ensuite due to health reasons), then you will be put into one of the staircases in the Thomas White quadrangle. You have 2 shared toilets (plus 2 shared showers and 2 shared sinks, each in separate rooms) per floor on each staircase and per floor, you can typically expect 8 people (yourself included) to reside. That is to say you have 4 people per shared toilet. I would also note that there are other toilets dotted around that aren’t within the staircases you can use if push comes to shove.

May I ask if it was an old or new college? 😧