Rowena

A-levels: Chemistry, English Language, English Literature, General Studies, Latin AS, Maths and Further Maths, Physics

Admissions tests? None!

So, why on EARTH did I apply to Oxford and how the HELL did I get in?

Firstly, I chose to apply to Oxford because it was an attractive English city, with a nice chemistry department, friendly staff and highly-thought-of degrees. However, overwhelmingly, I wanted to learn somewhere I would be challenged and where I would be encouraged to push myself to my limits, in a highly-charged atmosphere alongside other students who wanted to learn and were passionate about their subject... and that is what I found here. Besides which, it didn't feel worth my while to apply to a university  which would give me an offer of A-level grades I could easily make and do so without even speaking to me beforehand!

If you want advice for getting into Oxford, I would tell you to want to get in. You're can't fool anybody, so just act your own version of normal and the tutors will know if you have what they are looking for. This is, in any case, exactly what I did.

In my interviews, they mostly asked me questions from the A-level syllabus (although something I had only learnt the lesson before!), but they tested my memory of equations and numbers, my spatial awareness and interpretation, how quickly I picked up on new material and mental maths, of course.  I was only interviewed at Somerville, although they often allot interviews in different colleges. I had two interviews here, but they didn't once ask me about a banana (a pity, as I happen to know rather a lot about bananas, but there is only a limited amount of time for tutors to assess candidates and they have a lot to find out) and tended towards avoiding general chat questions (such as "Why Somerville?": "Because you can walk on the grass!!!"). Sometimes I hurried my responses, which made me nervous I was going to make a mistake, but I had to come out with things quickly to prevent them from prompting me. Apart from the hurrying, I wasn't nervous at all - the interviewers were so nice: absolutely no one tried to eat me alive! Some people have said they expect you to use a white board in interviews: I was given a pen and paper. They asked me to draw things, mark things on their drawings, and do calculations - all in my head and on the page, even though there was a calculator there, on the table! I had an inorganic interview with the organic tutors and an organic one with  inorganic.

I come from a state city comprehensive and this year they were excited to get six out of twelve applicants into Oxbridge. Everyone offered a place made the grades and I think our head of sixth form must have done some serious partying before she retired. Our school itself didn't automatically offer constructive support for Oxbridge applicants, besides a showering of leaflets on how to write good personal statements, but they did organise two trips (one to each university) and a Women in Computer Science day in Cambridge. However, I long ago realised that help is there if you go looking for it; the year before we had got a new headteacher whom it was rumoured was giving mock Oxbridge interviews - we went to him, and he gave us them. Additionally, my further maths teacher, herself an Oxford graduate, decided to make it her duty to get me through the interview process, and consequently showered me with relevant books (Dorothy Hodgkin's biography, Virginia Woolf's feminist rant and an Oxford-set murder mystery) and organised her parents, physics lecturers at Sheffield University and previously at Oxford, to give me and three other science applicants mock interviews. All of my mock interviews were harder than the real thing.

In my own time, I went about preparation by taking everyone's advice, reading all the books my head of sixth form gave me about the sorts of questions to expect and cutting chemistry-related articles out of broadsheets, wikiing chemicals I was interested in to learn more about their properties, revising my AS physics material coursework on mercury and reading a large stack of science history books I had been meaning to get my teeth into for ages. Absolutely none of this was any use in the interview, but it made me feel prepared.

Shortly before the interviews, many applicants went to their rooms and revised in a panicky way. I had brought some revision material (some of which I read on the train down), but when I went back to my room after breakfast I couldn't face it and so read Latin for about an hour (Virgil's Aeneid; I would recommend it). Obviously, this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Chemistry, but I was revising it for a retake in January and I find reading Latin a calming activity. In hindsight, I would say reading Latin was the best thing I could have done, for not only did I perform faultlessly on my retake, but being calmed and distracted prepared me much better for the interview than trying to stack in more irrelevant knowledge.

Being in Oxford was also fantastic and memorable experience! The students arranged a bar quiz for us (where I was able to demonstrate my knowledge of bananas) and took us to all our interviews. The interviewees were thrown together so the night before my interview I stayed up until eleven chatting and playing foosball in the bar. I met a range of interesting people, many of whom I still know now!