Oxford Physics Aptitude test

The PAT

The Physics Aptitude Test (P.A.T) is a an admissions test set by Oxford, which is used to short-list and judge candidates (for more info click here).

According to Oxford, it's a much better predictor of future academic success than GCSE results, ye well no shit. I mean seriously, GCSE's have been so dummed down that its becoming increasingly difficult not to get an A* in any of the Sciences.

So, after doing 10 GCSE's, 4-5 sets of AS level examinations, before your January round of A2's, Oxford have decided to rape you with yet another exam and rape you it will.

Despite being an absolutely appalling test, with almost no bearing on any sort of Physics ability, the P.A.T manages to trip up hundreds upon hundreds of great candidates every year. A bad test result can mean a thorn in the backside of an otherwise great application. However, with the right attitude and a few tips, you should be able to turn this ship around to your favour.

The Test

The test is unlike anything you've ever seen before. Whist the problems are rarely difficult in the way that STEP of AEA (mathematics) would be, the questions are often tricky, long, strangely phrased and you are under extensive time pressure. Do not under any circumstances underestimate it. Don't get cocky. On first glance, the test looks like a complete piss-take. This is utterly misleading. The multiple choice has very similar but subtly different answers, often what the longer questions are asking for is not that obvious. They may require a lot of thought and care. Remember that answering the questions in the late afternoon, totally relaxed, your mind will be in a completely different and more flexible state than when your actually sitting it at 9:15, your entire Oxford application depending on your performance.

How to Prepare

Before you go an burn your P.A.T past paper supply, look through the Physics Olympiad AS papers. They start off with 10 marks of multiple choice questions, practically identical in style and difficulty to those set by Oxford. They've also got a really extensive set of mark schemes (unlike the P.A.T), which will really help to improve your understanding and your intuition. I would further recommend working through the calculator parts without a calculator just to get into the right mindset.

Make sure you've got good notes covering all the ground. Your AS notes should be a good start, re-write and condense them. There will be things on their that you may not have ever looked, for example phases of the moon, never learnt them in my life. Did them a few days before the test and discarded it the next day, shame it came up in my interview.. Other stuff such as Levers, Pulley's and other elementary machines also came under that bracket for me. For those of in Sixth form, you may not start learning about Capacitors until post January modules, that won't stop them coming up in the November test. Make sure you've supplemented your notes with their sylabbus.

Ensure that you have your c1 & c2 bases completely covered. I found the notes posted in my maths section particularly helpful.

When going through your P.A.T papers, be absolutely strict with yourself. Treat every single paper as though it were the real thing, see how far you get and in how much time, that will really show you where your at and allow you to improve your technique for the real deal. Furthermore, once you've done the papers, check the entire maths section with a calculator. Then check all your answers with other applicants/teachers/tutors who are willing to do so. You'd be surprised how many questions you were certain you got right were actually wrong. It's incredibly easy to misread a question.

There will be a few techniques you will learn whilst doing the papers. This whole idea of symmetry comes up again and again. The circles in the triangle, it all becomes pretty obvious when you realize that since the triangle is equilateral and that since the circle touches on both ends of the interior, that the bisector must have an angle of 30 degrees, the opposite being the radius of the circle r. Then you have the entire logic based area's. All they're really asking you do to is to set up simultaneous equations and solve them. When something is proportional to something it follows the form a = kb where k is a constant and b could be raised to any power n (I.e for area n would be two, volume n would be 3 etc..) clearly if something is all the same shape, I.e different sized ducks or w/e, the constant of proportionality will be equal for all the equations and thus cancel.

On the day of the Test

If you hit a brick wall, don't panic. If you realize that you've made a howling error, don't panic. I walked into my Aptitude test, tired and stressed. Bogged up on nurofen and emotionally drained from a phone call the night before, I hobbled into the room and needed to go to the toilet twice before starting. I raced through the initial part of the maths problems, only to come stuck at one on which I made no progress whatsoever. As I moved into the physics, I realized there were about 2 written answers I couldn't do and when in the final question, I was asked to show that the two answers I’d gotten were equivalent and they weren't, I knew I was fucked. I crossed out my entire attempt at the last question and in the last five minutes, re-did it, along with another written answer and the maths question I didn't get.

Those last 5 minutes bumped my score up to 90, securing my offer from Oxford. I don't think I can say any more to show that you don't need a good start to end up with a good finish. Good luck.

The Re-Application

So you’ve made up your mind, for whatever reason, just like I did, your going to try out for Oxbridge a second time. How are we going to make this work?

It’s time to be brutally honest with yourself, take a step back and look at your entire application, from each individual UMS score, your personal statement, reference, interview, admissions test etc.. What let you down? Why weren’t you considered good enough to be made an offer?

For me it was obvious. I just wasn’t good enough. The boys I met from St.Pauls/Westminster applying for the same course (NatSci), were just on a different league to me. Their minds had been cultivated to a level far beyond anything I could have imagined, the amount they had read and their approach to work was unparalleled, its no wonder that they dominate Oxbridge. Furthermore, there were many fundamental flaws in my application, such as having dropped a subject I claimed to be so passionate about (Physics) and a low to average Chemistry UMS score (86%). I had to accept the fact that I probably wasn’t even given a chance, despite being invited to interview. 

 

I asked Cambridge for feedback and there was little to no mention about my academic performance, which means I can deduce with a reasonable amount of certainty it wasn’t bad, but obviously not stunning, what they did mention is that they felt I was a bit of a “bluffer” a.k.a I’d come across as an arrogant prick that acted as though he knew a hell of a lot more than I actually did.

The question now, is how do I turn this around? Better myself to be in a position where I’m made an offer in a years time? 

 

For some of us, its simple, maybe we underscored a little in the admissions test, were incredibly nervous at interview, were so close onto the border-line its just a matter of playing the odds.

I believe if you want something to work, you’ve got to make it work. There’s no relaxation in re-application. 

 

From the moment my January exams finished, I continued reading “Feymann’s lectures on Physics vol 1”, making daily notes and getting up early to discuss the Physics with my then mentor at school. Beyond preparing for my exams in Chemistry, Further Maths and Physics, I advanced my mathematical techniques by preparing for STEP I and AEA. I did everything I could to try and fortify my application beyond that of having good grades. Once having achieved my grades, I further read through all the physics journals I could get my hands on, making notes on derivations, idea’s and complex problems, extensively prepared myself for technical interview questions by working through STEP II/III and Physics Olympiad paper 2.

Should I get help?

This is an often discussed question, and the answer to this is definitely YES. What is all this rubbish about the honour of not “needing” any help to get in? Do you or do you not want to do everything in your power to give you the best chance of success? If you feel like your able to go through the entire re-application process without any external guidance, your obviously not pushing yourself hard enough. No matter how smart you are, there will always be moments when you hit a brick wall, questions which even after staring at them for days you will fall short of any progress. It’s times like these, when you’ve put in the leg-work, that it really pays to have a great mentor. Someone who can really stretch your mind, teach you different methods of approach and most importantly inspire you. If you work and train with the best, its only a matter of time before you will join their ranks.

Interview training

Same thing here, giving a stellar performance in interview is just like any other skill, something that can and should be practised. The amount of people who spit out crap like “interviews are something, that cannot and should not be prepared for” is absolutely disgusting. The idea that you will be subjected to a variety of random nonsensical questions to see “how you think”, is absolute nonsense. So you walk into your first interview, completely unprepared, literally can barely open your lips because your shitting yourself with fear, can't start the half the questions and the ones you do you get completely and utterly wrong. For my first mock interview, the first question caught me by such surprise, I stuttered for about 5 minutes before the teacher gave up and asked a different question. Only with plenty of practice will your mind adept into such a manner that it will become second nature.

Remember that you're being interviewed to read Physics, a hardcore rigorous academic subject. At Oxbridge, such a degree will demand a lot of you. They want to see how you work under pressure, how well you react to new information and most importantly how able you are to apply your knowledge to unfamiliar circumstances.

Start off with asking yourself questions, about anything and everything mildly related to your course, really push yourself, research the answers you don’t know about. Find friends and family who had previous interviews, ask them what they were asked, see how you’d respond. Then go to your teachers, arrange as many mock interviews as possible, you want to walk out of each interview feeling that you did abysmally, that there were a million things you’d overlooked in your preparation, that there is so much more for you to learn, so much more that you could improve on. For those of you who don’t have particularly helpful teachers, you may want to consider companies that offer specific Oxbridge preparation. I never used them, so I can’t give an opinion, but take my word for it, that exposure to the kinds of problems you're likely to be asked is definitely very helpful.

Should I apply to the same University I got rejected from?

This is a very personal decision, something that you'll need to think about. My blanket advice would be not to. Out of the small sample of people I’ve known to re-apply, the success rate amongst people who’ve switched (i.e camb-ox or ox-camb) has been significantly higher than that of those who re-applying to same uni. The major factor here, I believe is purely psychological. I think it is much easier to motivate and throw yourself into a completely new application, for a different subject, different university and sell yourself as a completely different person, than it would be just to do the same thing for a second time. The other thing is, do you really expect the uni to look at you as a completely new applicant? Having tested and interviewed you, made an extensive file on you, it would almost be stupid of them to throw it away and not compare the 2^nd you to the 1^st you.

Then you’ve got the fact that both universities offer slightly different courses, have slightly different reputations and have a very different look and feel. I was personally very tempted to re-apply to Cambridge, my girlfriend at the time was studying there and on a global scale I would say their reputation for science is that bit more glitzy. The question you’ve really got to ask yourself, is can you stomach being rejected twice by the same university? I couldn’t bare the thought of being pooled one more time after another set of interviews which I felt went well, I needed a fresh start.

Other small pockets advice

Having given the rest of this article a really serious tone, I think its important to truly understand that this article is not the be-all and end-all. I don’t feel you should take a gap year solely to re-apply Oxbridge and consider it a failure if you don’t get it. At some point you’ve got to realize that a lot of it is really out of your hands and you’ve got to make the most out it! Whilst I definitely think hard work is necessity, you need to know when to relax.

During the application process, I was definitely out on the lash/clubbing with London uni students 4-6 nights a week, in fact I would argue this was essential to my success. You can’t advance mentally if you don’t allow your brain time to recover. You’ll find that by being that bit more adventurous in your personal life, your academic life will also benefit.

The Rejection

So you’ve just received your Oxbridge rejection letter and are feeling pretty down about it, what do you do?

Take that letter, take care not to crease or tear it, look at it in its utmost perfection. Consider each and every emotion which is running through your veins. Now lay that letter down and piss on it. At least that’s what I did. Everyone has their own way of dealing with it. A great friend of mine tore and binned his and then forgot about the whole affair. Another friend of mine, took the letter which her father (out of anger) had repeatedly stamped on, ironed out each individual crease, framed it and remained bitter at Oxford ever since. 

 

To those who can accept the fact that the application process is a competitive one, that they may not have quite made the cut, that they may have had bad luck with their interviews or tests and who are able to move on, I have the utmost respect for you. The ability to deal with setbacks is a great quality, one worthy of possession.

To those who are angry, bitter and personally disappointed that they failed to achieve that which they tried so hard for, I say this. Remember that every year, top notch candidates are rejected and that every year retards flock in to take their place. Whilst I was being at interviewed at Oxford, a fellow Physicist, whose knowledge was so extensive, his ability to tackle problems so thorough, that I felt ashamed to be his competitor, got rejected. Whilst a candidate so poorly informed and incompetent that they felt the need to copy the personal statement off a previous applicant, was given an offer at their first choice college. Both were clear-cut cases, where the admissions office just got it plain wrong. Let’s not forget that the man who in his mid twenties wrote 3 legendary and distinct papers, each of which was worthy of a Nobel prize, the man who later went on to revolutionize the concepts of Space and Time, was rejected twice by ETH Zurich. Have you ever heard of anyone from ETH? Didn’t think so, another classik example where the admissions cocked up royally, Albert Einstein came back to be more successful than any student that had ever attended ETH, there’s nothing to say you can’t do the same.

Oxford or Cambridge?

Unless you’re an organ scholar, the question running through the minds of most ambitious to be undergrads is which of the big-two universities they should apply to. Having applied to both and at some stage fallen in love with both, some of you may find it useful to read my down to earth analysis on each university.

Difference in Emphasis

As you will all know, whilst Oxford offer a straight Physics course, Cambridge offer Physical Natural sciences. There is no better or worse when it comes to questions like these, its simply a matter of preference and what you feel or think is most suited to you. I remember raving on about how amazing the thought of keeping my science base nice and broad on my SAQ (extra Cambridge) form and that I was really keen on the thought of looking into geology and materials science. A year later, I cannot tell you how glad I am that I will never have to look at another page of organic chemistry, how relieved after having an Oxford Materials interview, that none of it is going to be on my list of lectures, ever. All I want to dig my teeth into, is pure unadulterated Physics and that's exactly what Oxford is going to give me. The only other thing that interests me is Maths and that's part of the package. For those of you who are REALLY good and I mean really really good at maths, you may want to look at the Cambridge Maths with Physics course, but take a look at my STEP page before throwing yourself into that.

I've structured the rest of this page in the format, the good, the bad and the ugly. The good representing the things that attracted me to each university, things I would consider “better”. The bad are things that threw me off, the ugly are things that I didn't and wish I did know before applying.

Cambridge

The good:

It must be said that on a global scale, their reputation for Science supersedes that of Oxford. They do better in league tables, seem to be more advanced in research and better connected with spin-off companies. The colleges are larger and surrounded by more picturesque greenery than you would find in Oxford.

The bad:

Whilst Oxford is a university within a town, Cambridge is most definitely a town within a university. I had to hunt my way street after street to find a decent steakhouse, something unimaginable in the high-street of Oxford.

The worst clubbing night of my life, including an experience in the mountains of Switzerland where the girls were so fowl that when approached by one, I sprinted full pelt to the toilets in search of safety, was in Cambridge. Their students have coined the term “Ironic clubbing”, clubbing so bad its actually good. Either that or the old school of policy of turning up so wasted you can barely tell left from right and enjoy the night anyhow...

The ugly:

UMS

Cambridge ask everyone to declare their UMS scores for each and every module. For those of you with UMS scores under 90%, don’t even bother applying. A good friend of mine’s uncle is head of admissions at a Cambridge college. He told me that they are look for a modular average of 94%+. He furthermore mentioned that when it came to interview, whilst they interviewed about 95% of candidates, they had usually already narrowed it down on paper to about 2:1, i.e 35-40% of applicants. During my Cambridge general interview, the interviewer commented that I should have been pleased with my Maths score (97%) but asked why I had gotten such a low Chemistry score (86%) and then proceeded further to ask what mark I expected to get in my upcoming Physics exams.

In a mock interview video posted by Emmanuel College for Natsci the opening words spoken between the professors was “ah yes, he got very good A-level scores didn't he?”, I think you get the message.

POOLING

Pooling is a system by which Cambridge attempts to even out the admissions process between colleges, giving strong candidates a better chance of university entrance, despite the large fluctuations in volume and quality of applicants at each college.

For the prospective applicants who have never heard of this, I'm not surprised, I hadn't heard of it till I got pooled myself. The idea behind this is sound, if your a maths applicant and have applied to Trinity (“the” college for maths), whilst you may have not made their cut, you may certainly be considered good enough to enroll in another college. The execution, is problematic. Offers and pooling letters are given out at the same time, if colleges feel they have an in-sufficient quality of applicants, then they search in the pool.

The problem is, your asking a lot of the admissions team. Do you really believe them to be able to accurately judge the difference in quality between the worst applicants whom they've decided to give an offer to and the top quality of pooled applicants.. whom they haven't seen yet? They've interviewed hundreds of applicants, extensively read through their files and now you expect them to fish through thousands more just to make sure each applicant has exactly the same opportunity regardless of college choice? Forget it. I don't blame them, imagine the stress and strain on resources caused by the entire admissions process, in their position, would you want to extend it by a minute longer than necessary? Would you willingly spend extra days interviewing candidates you probably weren't going to take?

This makes the entire college choice a lot more relevant. When you apply to a college, they interview you, test you, etc... The moment your pooled, you become a document. Your relying on a professor, who has already given out most if not all of his offers, to see your paper application and take enough interest to either interview you or make you a straight offer.

Whilst many will contest every word I say and will endlessly repeat to you that college choice will make any difference in success rate, I would encourage you to be skeptical of pooling. With so many colleges, each giving different interviews and attracting different applicants, there will always be arbitrage.

Some colleges, notably girls colleges, actively claw the pool. Unsurprisingly, a lot of girls (having maybe attended single sex schools for the majority of their lives) choose not to apply to the female only college and are hence undersuscribed and thus use the pool extensively as part of their admissions process. I am inclined to believe that others may use the pool in an attempt to fulfill their monetary/political requirements, giving a stronger chance to minority groups, particularly high-paying international students. For those of you that tick these boxes, or those with incredibly high UMS marks but poor interview skills, pooling may be a god-send. For the rest of us, you'll probably find yourself in limbo waiting day after day for a phone call only to find a rejection letter at your door six weeks later.

Oxford:

The Good:

Walking around the high-street in Oxford you really feel like somethings going on, great busking, a McDonalds and phones4u in sight, what more could you need? Plenty of restaurants, shops and supermarkets, the town definitely has some edge to it and all without killing the scenic beauty. Haven't been clubbing there yet, so cannot give a fair representative view as of now, but will update when I can.

Oxford Pooling

Definitely the superior of the two systems. For my Cambridge interview, I made my way up for the morning, was tested and interviewed 3 times at the college which I applied to. In Oxford, I was interviewed twice at my first college and once at another college. On occasions, some people are asked to stay an extra night so that they can be further interviewed at other colleges to have their potential re-assessed. This means that the pooling process (I.e being re-allocated to other colleges) happens WHILST your in Oxford.

The other colleges get the chance to interview you and see whether they find you suitable for study, as opposed to being placed in a gigantic pool of semi-rejected applicants.

The value added by this system is clearly visible in the statistics, for my year of application in Oxford, out of the 190 physics places awarded, 71 were pooled. Well over a 1/3 of places. Whereas in Cambridge, out of the people pooled (about 20% of applicants), 20% received offers, that's about 4% of places and hence about a 1/6 of all places.

The bad:

lemme get round to it

The Ugly:

The Physics Aptitude test

Without a shred of a doubt, the defining characteristic of your Oxford Physics application. On the Oxford open day, The don at Brasenose called it “the most important day of your life”.

He mentioned that out of the 900 who took the test, the top 400 aptitude scorers were invited to interview (the rest rejected). Out of the top 100 scoring candidates, 86 were given an offer, the next top 100, 66 were given an offer and in the bottom 100, 2 were made an offer. I believe one of the 2 got hit by a truck the day before. He apparently took the aptitude test at the regular 9:15 am start in his hospital bed, whilst being repeatedly injected with morphene.

Don't think that you only need XYZ marks to get an interview and thereafter your all on a level platform.

Offers are made on a completely departmental basis, your aptitude score will be referenced by both the college you apply to and the one that your pooled to in so far as their interest in making you an offer.

Basically, you mess up that test, you can kiss that Oxford offer you've been gunning for good-bye. However murk that test and your basically in. Do you really expect that oxford will even consider rejecting the guy with the highest aptitude score? Do you even expect any of the constituent colleges to reject their highest scoring applicant?

The Personal Statement

how important is the personal statement? What should I say/not say to really make my application stand out/improve my chances of getting in? All very reasonable questions asked by young alumni in their quest for better prospects.

So let me clear it up for you in a neat short paragraph.

The personal statement, is an over-rated piece of turd. You will spend hours sweating, crying and bleeding anally to get it perfect and you know what's the best part of it...? no-one gives a shit. Yup I just told you the secret.

Just imagine you've got a guy, with 6 U's and 1 C at GCSE, AS results pending and he whips out an awesome personal statement, written in a perfect Iambic pentameter (Shakespeare style), do you throw him a lifeline? give him the unconditional offer? or press the sneaky little reject button?

As Ali-G would say, keep it real.

Well what if its close between candidates? Just imagine two dons sitting together, really thinking about which candidate is truly the “best”.

“Oh look, he's mentioned Einstein”

“but come on...! he's talking about Aristotle and Riemann!!!!”

cut the crap.

You've been studying Physics properly for one year now, if your like me 2. Nobody expects you to cite in detail which particular area's of quantum-electrodynamics you've spent the last decade reading about and want to take further. As one don in Oxford put it on the open day “I find Personal Statement such a load of crap that I've stopped reading them”, he reckons there was so much bullshitting about topics in there that every time he asked the candidates they were totally embarrassed and it messed up the entire interview.

Shall I mention my hobbies? I'm really passionate about playing my flute in the Orchestra and want them to know that... and they care because? Your applying (hopefully) to top notch academic uni's, keep it almost entirely academic. No-one cares whether your siik at brake-dancing, or can pick up chicks using only 3 words, whether your propper hench or any of a long list of achievements you can think of. I got this completely wrong with my first personal statement and I hope you can avoid the same.

The whole point of a P.S is to show that your taking your time and effort to attempt to write a decent document which they may consider reading. The theory goes that if you've tried hard to bring your passion across in a short document, then your clearly taking the course and the university application process, seriously. Definitely mention your hobbies, as it shows passion and it shows time management skills (in the word of an imperial don I think). But remember that your writing to a professor that has dedicated his life to the subject. If you've never done the Olympiad, now may be a good time to start, if you've not considered going to lectures, reading around the subject, sitting extra papers, reading lots of books/journals, now's the time.

Whilst some universities won't care, a lot of them will use the P.S as a start to a conversation, its one of the very few things they've read which is 100% you, be prepared to be tested and asked on it! Please don't quote a book you haven't read.

Just to give you an idea, in my Manchester interview I was asked about the specific heat capacity at near absolute zero and the theoretical implications and how it was derived and he attempted to further my knowledge using wave functions and kinetic theory. In Oxford, my first interview, they literally raced through the P.S, ripping me apart on every part of Physics i'd mentioned, asking me to in depth explain it, stopping me midway through making me clarify and correct myself, really prodding whether i'd actually understood any of what I’d written. To be honest it was more of a method of pressure/harassment than anything, but w/e. Cambridge took an active disinterest in it, the woman started glancing over it midway through the interview and asked me about my band, mentioning that she had a dog also called “Fury”, she then proceeded to ask me a question which I'd already answered in the personal statement...

The point I’m trying to make is, don't worry about making this into an absolutely stunning piece of writing. Chances are whoever is going to read it, will probably just skim through the odd bit. Just make sure that whatever you do write, has a lot of positive academic content and that all of it is something you are willing to be asked about from all angles.

Praise for this document

clearly only an arrogant prick would take the time to copy and paste praise he has received onto the same page as the website to boost his ego. That said, this comment was so good that it just had to be on here

“[I now] feel that drafting my ps seven times was now a tragic waste of time” - Bimal Patel, 1^st year LSE economics student, after being shown the first draft of this document.

My Story

Initially a keen Chemist, an idiot who realized the error of dropping Physics only after having the life beaten from his chest with an endless cascading failure of Organic Chemistry practicals, this is the story of an abysmal failure of an application, where I tried to change course midway through and was practically forced to take a gap year.

I'd originally fallen in love with the concept of Atomic Chemistry, the composition of the atom, the various inter-atomic and molecular forces, it explained so much, it sat so logically in my mind, it seemed an obvious choice.

As the year droned on and the hours spent in excruciating pain keeping myself awake during Organic lessons kept piling up, It became quite clear that Chemistry was not my thing. I hated half the course and was clearly retarded when it came to practicals.

I'm not sure exactly how it happened, probably by chance, but it happened. I picked up “Feynmann's Lectures vol.1” (a.k.a the Bible of Physics) and started reading, that changed everything. The way he analysed the Physical universe was astounding, the logic behind his arguments impenetrable, the beauty with which he manipulated the mathematical expressions to reach valid conclusions, miraculous. Beyond realizing that the crux behind the atomic chemistry I'd held so dear was Quantum Physics, I was introduced to Relativity, Classical and Wave Mechanics. By dropping Physics after GCSE, I'd written off the broadest and deepest science. Right then and there, moved by his writings like nothing in the academic world before, I realized I had to change direction and study Physics.

With the starting materials provided by my 6^th form tutor, I sat down in the last few weeks of summer and taught myself the entire AS syllabus. I entered an A2 set at the start of Sixth Form and applied for Natural Sciences at St.John's College Cambridge. The idea was to sell myself as keen Physical Chemist, who had realized his error in dropping Physics and wanted to make up for the lost knowledge so as to be able to gain a more fundamental understanding of Atomic Chemistry. And did that fail epically. During my “General Interview”, there was a very pro-longed awkward moment where she asked me where my Physics scores were and looked thoroughly unimpressed when I mentioned that I was doing them in January. She then proceeded to ask me why my Chemistry scores were so low (86%) and whether I had an excuse for that. I definitely felt that i'd murked the academic interviews, so it was a bit of a slap in the face when my pooling and thereafter rejection letter made their way into my hands. Words can't explain how gutted I was, I really threw myself into that application, I'd fallen in love with the university, the course, the people, and now, all those dreams were shattered. It didn't help at all, that my beloved grandmother died that following week, or that my Dog, who had been a close companion of mine since I'd been 4, was judged to be in such miserable health that he was put down for his own good. This was all whilst I was sitting 11 January exams.

At some point, I did my best to “man-up”, I reasoned that the main thing that had really changed since the start of the application was that I'd really grown a passionate and (hopefully) aptitude for physics. My second choice was Imperial (top notch uni) where I'd applied for Chemistry with Molecular Physics. The idea of molecular physics really appealed to me, the links with pharmaceuticals and hence industry was immense, a booming area of science. Problem was, the course was practically all Chemistry and only the odd option was Molecular Physics, which became highly relevant in the last 2 years. I was still going to have to sit through hours of Organic, not an option.

So I wrote to both UCL and Imperial, explaining my situation and asking about the possibility to switch to a Physics course. Imperial soon after invited me to interview. I walked in wearing my best suit, clean shaven, ready to give it my all. I absolutely stormed through his interview, (By chance I had seen literally all of them the night before) with him regularly telling me how much more he was asking me than the other applicants as I'd been progressing through the questions at such a pace.

He then came with one final resounding question, “so, why did you drop Physics after GCSE??”, I knew from the expression on his face, that I was truly and utterly fucked. I did what I could, flapped around with talk of the way my teacher handled the interesting/challenging parts of the topics, what i'd felt chemistry, it all failed, he didn't buy a word of it and basically ended the discussion saying “I was really impressed by your interview academically, but I'm not sure about your commitment to Physics and I think your a cock”. Whilst I feel I can quite adequately dispute the 2^nd, he was probably bang on about the 3^rd. I'm not sure what it was, maybe my mind had been already thinking about re-application, doubts about imperial, or it could have been the fact that my father was so vehemently against the idea of taking a year out that I felt that if I got this offer i'd be under such immense pressure to take it, worse still, if I took the offer, then rejected them after my results and re-applied how would they see me? I reckon psychologically I didn't want to be given an offer, either that or the events which had unfolded over the last few weeks had just utterly left me in a weak position, maybe a mixture of both even?

Whatever, cutting a long story short, I got rejected. Pretty embarrassing for a Physics candidate with 97% in Maths and predicted A in Physics at the time, but w/e, UCL emailed saying they'd given me an ABB offer, since I already had an A in german, and an A (technically A* but a year early) in Maths, it was a one B offer, the perfect back-up if I completely screwed up in the summer. Or so I thought.

I get an email a few weeks later asking me which of my offers at UCL I want, within in a day I reply Physics. Get an out of office email, so I figure, email sent, response sorted. A few weeks later during the intensity of summer exam revision, the school keeps calling me, so when I go in to sort it, turns out UCL has been frantically asking them which offer I want, wtf? So I call in to ask exactly that and then they break me the news that they've given my offer to an international student, FML. The pressure was on, I had an offer from Duhram for natural sciences (did I mention I got pooled to a really far out college with no catering facilities?) an offer I had no intention of taking, so I accepted and did what I could to get grades good enough for a re-application...

My exams started in May and ended on the 30^th of June. I hated every moment in it, I was under such personal pressure that I couldn't relax for a single moment. Even the exams that I was basically doing for “fun” I.e didn't matter, STEP 1 and AEA were complete disasters. I couldn't stop thinking about how failing them would look awful on my re-application and spent the first two hours faffing around, unable to grip the pen properly. Don't ask me how I got a 1 in STEP, clearly a mixture of grade inflation and the fact that I half answered about 7 questions. Towards the end, I worked so hard and under such time constraints for each subject, that for a period of about 3 days I completely forgot to shower, it just skipped my mind. I was so worried about my A-level Physics exams, whilst I'd gotten 100% in my self-taught AS, in the school taught A-level i'd scraped an A (80%) in January and I genuinely worried that with my appealing practical skills to hand, I wouldn't make the A* and would hence not be able to apply for it. I'd also gotten the lowest D possible in my January Chemistry Organic exam and I was unsure how I could ever improve on that, I spent 2-3 days solidly before it and feared that I'd be unable to better that mark and would thus end up with a B overall, again damning my application.

Unlike some people, who felt a huge sigh of relief after their last exams, were ready to start those summer holidays. I was never truly able to let go. I had no offer which I’d worked for, no offer which I was happy to fall back on, the heat was on from the middle of May and it lasted all through the summer.

It was a real moment of relief on August the 20^th or was it the 19^th? W/e, when I got that letter and saw that I'd scraped the A* in Physics, got a 1 in STEP (not too far off an S) and a Distinction in AEA maths. I had a rest for about a month before I powered out on the re-application, now that's a story for another time.

Introduction

It's been an epic two year application process, in which I was initially pooled and rejected from Cambridge, rejected from Imperial and subjected to an administrative error by UCL.

I then came back on the re-application to get all 5 offers from Oxford, Imperial, UCL, Manchester and Bristol.

Having benefited enormously from online discussions, worksheets and explanations, I felt that by documenting my experiences, what I have learnt and what I have come to believe, I might be able to give something back. This is an attempt to answer so many of the questions going through the minds of young applicants.

These pages are mainly aimed at those applying for Physics related courses, since it was in many ways a very close call between maths and physics for me, along with the naturally large overlap between the two subjects, much of my academic content which I have suggested and am willing to share will be highly mathematical in nature and much of the advice may be relevant for Maths applicants.

Much of this website will have Oxbridge specific advice, for a full on why Oxbridge? Click here. The other pages document academic advancements made during my Application and are applicable to all engaged students.

Whilst certain elements of these pages will be highly objective, I wish to make clear that the opinions and commentaries are and are meant to be incredibly subjective. I've purposely tried to stay away from much of the very vague general advice which can be found littered all over the internet and have instead attempted to give a very personal, down to earth and honest view of my own experiences and my own opinions formed during the whole process.

If you however feel that I have gotten something completely wrong or have used misleading terminology, please feel free to contact me/send me hate-mail.