Dress-Code at Oxbridge and other british unis open house?

they want to see your brain, not your fashion sense.

So book that trepanning appointment now.

One should always go to interviews with an open mind....

I love how often this topic comes up. It's as if no one can actually quite believe that we don't care. Which we don't (for more detail, see all my previous posts on this pernicious nonsense...)

If you are really obsessed with looking "right", then smart casual is the way to go. You won't stick out, you won't feel under-dressed. Though you might make me feel under-dressed.

Perhaps I'll make a special effort for open days this year - I'll wear my least ragged jeans, and I'll try to find a jumper without too many holes and to clean some of the mud off my trainers.

Fun fact: 14 got interviews for law at my college in my year, 8 wore suits. 7 places, all went to those wearing suits. Similar stories for top subjects like PPE and History.

So what happened to suit-wearer #8, then? Was his suit the wrong colour?

As for the open day I wore a vote Kermit T-shirt and jenes and obviously it didn't have any effect on me getting an offer.

"We" don't care?

Open days obviously don't matter but interviews definitely do.

Fun fact: 14 got interviews for law at my college in my year, 8 wore suits. 7 places, all went to those wearing suits. Similar stories for top subjects like PPE and History.

Perhaps if you're applying for something liberal like English or a language you can get away without.

My advice would be to find who is interviewing you and how old they are/what their background is. A tutor in his mid-50s with experience working in the city will expect you to turn up smarter than others might.

How do you know it didn't?

However many of us have stipulated in our above advice that law always seems to be an exception to the rule...

I can see how it is perceived that way. But talking to a cross-section of law tutors from various colleges over the last few days (prompted by previous posts here - I didn't mention that to my colleagues...) they all said more or less the same thing: applicants think they have to wear a suit because it's law. So future applicants see and hear that people wear suits for law, and assume that they are supposed to.

So the issue perpetuates itself. But none of the law tutors I asked thought that they had ever taken into account whether an applicant was smartly dressed. They're just not that shallow.

Admitting a marginally less able candidate in a suit, however smart, is not a good move when you have to teach them for three years. If only out of self-interest, they will go for academic merit every time.

so you can wear jeans to an oxbridge open day??