Oxford Chemistry Students and Applicants

I did one in Oxford and one elsewhere. Message me any time; I'm full of advice that not everyone will tell you.......

I can vouch for this^

LOL :P

I just think undergrad is a tough time and yes, working things out for yourself is important, but it's probably more useful to be able to concentrate on the chemistry rather than the bull****.

Hey there, hopefully I'll be starting my first year at Oxford this coming October and I'm looking at getting a new laptop for university. So I was just wondering if there's any chemistry applications that would require a more powerful than average laptop for the chemistry course and in general what features I should really be looking out for? Thanks!

Hey there, hopefully I'll be starting my first year at Oxford this coming October and I'm looking at getting a new laptop for university. So I was just wondering if there's any chemistry applications that would require a more powerful than average laptop for the chemistry course and in general what features I should really be looking out for? Thanks!

Hey there, hopefully I'll be starting my first year at Oxford this coming October and I'm looking at getting a new laptop for university. So I was just wondering if there's any chemistry applications that would require a more powerful than average laptop for the chemistry course and in general what features I should really be looking out for? Thanks!

A normal laptop will do. My clapped-out old thing I got for free from my current institution ran Chemdraw and even Chem3D and Avogadro just fine. It had some trouble with really big, multi-page Chemdraw files, but that's because it was seriously s**t. It had a hard drive of 80 GB... rest of the specs similarly embarrassing.

Hey all, I was wondering about 1st year drop out rates - 5%, which seems quite high... can anyone offer an explanation for this? Are there elements of the course that are really difficult to grasp conceptually for someone who isn't a genius (especially given the pace of the course, is this a problem for some?)? and are the exams very problem based and in that respect completely incomparable to a-levels?
Greatly appreciate any replies

How did u under achieve in GCSE? Ur grades are good enough for Oxbridge


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Everyone i talk to seems to have like 7-12 A*And i don't have any A*s in science which i think might mess it up...

Maths A*
French A*
Chemistry A
Physics A
Spanish A
English Lang A
Art A
Drama A
Biology B
English Lit B

None of my options (art, spanish, french and drama) are academic as well...!! :s

Does anyone know how seriously GCSE grades are taken? I underperformed pretty heavily at GCSE, achieving only 2A*s 7As and 2Bs... I also have a FSMQ grade A (which was max for the one i was doing).

However having realised i actually need to work to get into a decent university, i achieved 3 A's in my AS-levels, with 296/300 in my maths paper!

I know that Oxford don't ask for UMS but i was hoping to pop it into my personal statement in the hope that it might really show how much i underperformed at GCSE, but if they don't read ps then I've got the same problem all over again!

Any advice?

Hey all, I was wondering about 1st year drop out rates - 5%, which seems quite high... can anyone offer an explanation for this? Are there elements of the course that are really difficult to grasp conceptually for someone who isn't a genius (especially given the pace of the course, is this a problem for some?)? and are the exams very problem based and in that respect completely incomparable to a-levels?
Greatly appreciate any replies

I just finished my first year and thought it was brilliant. I too had a bit of a worry during the whole of first term about the "intensity" myth and the highest drop out rate across subjects. I know and heard about a few people who dropped out and the most common underlying issue was organisation/time-management. As long as you stay on top of your work, especially in first term, then you should be fine

In my year we lost 20 people between matriculation and the start of second year. Only 6 of those were people who failed resits and there were 40 people (including myself) who had to resit one or more Prelims papers. The other 14 left of their own accord for various reasons. I only know of 2 of them and in both cases it was because they realised they wanted to do a different degree, not necessarily because they couldn't stand the thought of continuing with Chemistry. They both ended up in scholar's gowns so it wasn't that they were struggling with the work too much. On the other hand, I'm not sure how common it is amongst Oxford Science degrees for the tutorials to bear no relation to when the corresponding lectures are, but that definitely affects how the pace of the course feels. Also bear in mind that that includes people who may have had to take a year out from their degree for personal reasons, so they would not have dropped out of their degree entirely, but would no longer have counted as part of the same cohort.

Hello everyone!

I'm starting at St John's this October and was wondering which Maths textbook to get.

The reading list on the department website suggests that I should buy "Mathematical Methods for Science Students" by G. Stephenson, whereas in the course handbook from last year it suggests "Foundation Mathematics for the Physical Sciences". Another one I've seen is "The Chemistry Maths Book" by Steiner.

Does anyone have any wisdom on which is the best book to buy?