Getting into Oxford

Getting into Oxford

Ahmed Ittihad Hasib | ahmedittihad12101@gmail.com
Mansfield College, University of Oxford
I apologize for writing the whole thing in English. The Bangla writing software on my computer
stopped working.

I think I should start off by mentioning that you don’t need to do IMO to get into Oxford. Of course,
being in the Bangladesh team was one of the most important part of my application. And I believe I got
the scholarship because of my participation at the IMO. But almost all of the maths students at Oxford
haven’t been to the IMO. That being said, the tuition+accommodation cost will reach around 40,00,000
BDT if you don’t have a scholarship and the scholarships are HIGHLY competitive. So I would advise
you to keep that in mind before considering Oxford as a choice.

Michaelmas (first) term at Oxford starts on the second week of October. And if you want to start your
undergraduate study in year X, you need to apply by October 15 of year X-1. In my case, the deadline
to submit my application was on 15th October 2019 (Coincidently my 18th birthday). Which means you
submit your application a whole year before you start your first year. So you need to start thinking
about your university choices when you start college if you don’t want to take a gap year.

Academic Qualification

Unfortunately, Oxford doesn’t recognise HSC as a valid academic qualification. So if you’re a Bangla
medium student like me, you will need to give some other exams to meet the qualification
requirements.

International Students Qualification

If you click on the link above and scroll down enough, you will see the USA students qualifications.
That’s what I did. I gave the SAT and the SAT subject test in Math 2, Physics, Chemistry. They ask you
to show results of three subject tests relevant to your subject. Since I applied for Maths, I did these
three. If you’re applying for some humanities subject, you should pick different SAT subject tests. Also
since I have been educated in Bangla, I had to give an English language proficiency test as well.

One nice thing is that you don’t need to have the test results by the time you apply. If they consider
other parts of your application to be good enough, they’ll give you a conditional offer. And then you
have time until July to actually meet the conditions. I did all the tests after submitting my application.
And I received a conditional offer in January which told me that I needed to show my college the test
results within June 30 to get a confirmed place in Oxford.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the important bit.
Getting into Oxford

Application

Oxford has a collegiate system. Which means that there are around 40 colleges in Oxford which admits
students. Every student in the University is a member of a college. My college is named Mansfield.
Lovely place. Anyway, you can either apply to a specific college or you can do an open application. If
you apply to a specific college, you might get pulled to another college because of demand. It’s a
complicated thing, here’s a hyperlink- college choice. I applied open because I didn’t know much about
the colleges. Ending up in Mansfield wasn’t bad.

You have to apply through the UCAS website. I think the application window starts from mid August.
The website is very easy to navigate. And there are a lot of videos and discussions online to help you
fill this out. I don’t really remember most of it. But you have to write a personal statement within 4000
characters (and within 47 lines where each line is 97 characters long (I don’t know why(haha triple
brackets))). This is your opportunity to demonstrate stuff that you want to but can’t through grades and
certificates. In my personal statement I wrote about my childhood experience with maths puzzles and
how that motivated me to start doing olympiads. I also bragged about IMO xD. I think for STEM
subjects the importance of a great personal statement is less than for humanities subjects but it’s still a
big part of your application. Another important part is the academic reference. You should get the
reference from someone who knows you academically. The reference plays an important role when you
don’t have the test scores by the time you apply. The referee will give a prediction on the test scores
(references and predicted grades) which Oxford considers quite seriously.

Admissions Test
Your application to Oxford will have to be in a specific subject. You can’t apply to more than one
degree in Oxford. So, choosing a degree which suits you is crucial. And you have to register for the
admissions test corresponding to the degree you’re applying for. Since I chose Mathematics, I had to
give the Mathematics Admissions Test. You need to register for the test through British Council. And
well, they’re not helpful. Chances are that the people you talk to at the British Council won’t know
what the Oxford Admissions Tests are. The registration deadline is in mid October. I suggest you
contact them before September ends. Also, British Council might not be helpful but they’ll still charge
you 10,000+ Taka for the test. I can’t speak about the other tests but the MAT is quite interesting. It’s
like a mix of school maths and olympiad maths. There are some questions which test your
mathematical knowledge and some questions which test your problem solving skills. The past MAT
papers are available online and I’m sure the other exams are available as well.

Interview
Each year Oxford offers interviews to around twice as many students as they’ll admit. Not being
selected for an interview means your application was unsuccessful. The interviews are quite academic.
They are designed to assess how well you would fit in a tutorial based system like in Oxford. There are
a LOT of videos on YouTube from different colleges on how a typical interview happens (just search
Oxford mock interviews).
In a normal year, the interviews happen in Oxford over a week. But if you live 8079 kilometres away
from UK like me, you can ask for the interview to happen online. If you go to Oxford for the
interviews, you can get 2-5 interviews. I only had 1 since it was online. The tutors asked me 4 maths
questions and I had to solve them under pressure (not fun).
Getting into Oxford

You get their decision in mid January. As I said, I got a conditional offer which said I’d have a
confirmed place in Oxford if I got at least 1470 in SAT, 700 in the SAT subject tests and passed the
English language requirements. I did those and got the confirmation letter in August.

Scholarship application
After you get an offer from the University, you can choose to apply to some scholarships. Oxford
doesn’t offer any financial aid like some of the US universities. But there are still some merit based
scholarships that you can apply for. There are two such scholarships available for a Bangladeshi
student. The Reach Oxford Scholarship and the Simon and June Li Undergraduate Scholarship. You
have to fill up a form and write 2-3 essays to apply for this scholarship. You also need to get a reference
again. The form asked me to provide an official/academic email address of my referee. So you need to
check that your referee has an official/academic email address. The deadline for this is in mid February.
And they decide on the scholarship by May.
Every year there are 2-3 recipients of the Reach Oxford Scholarship and upto 2 recipients of the Simon
and June Li Scholarship. So these are VERY COMPETITIVE. I have no idea how I got one to be
honest (Not complaining though).

I have tried to write up all the important stuff about applying to Oxford. Of course this document
doesn’t cover a lot of stuff regarding an application. Here’s a video series by The Virtual Vine. I hope
this document helps to clear some confusion regarding applications.