- Okay, well, hello and welcome to the recorded virtual version of the Oxford and Cambridge presentation at the UCAS International Conference. My name is Claire Canning. I am a deputy student recruitment manager at the University of Cambridge. - Hello, I'm Caitriona Woolhouse. I'm the head of outreach delivery at the University of Oxford and we're really pleased to be able to bring you this presentation today. - Yep, definitely. We will basically talk you through a few bits and pieces just to kind of get to know the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge a little bit better, kind of understand some of the things that are quite distinctive and unique about our institutions. And then we will talk you a little bit through the application process, particularly focusing on how you can advise your students and the kind of things that you can help them with throughout the process. So we'll get started on that. And, again, we'll also do a little bit of an update on Coronavirus as well and just give you a bit of information about what the universities have been doing in relation to that. One of the things that is sort of fairly, I say unique, but unique about both Oxford and Cambridge, really, is well, what is quite distinctive is the way that we teach. Both universities do quite a lot of small group teaching so that's something we're quite well known for so as well as having the larger lectures that you might expect at university but also do a lot of small group teaching. At Cambridge, we would call this supervisions. At Oxford, they would call this tutorials. And that is a major component of all of our courses that students do get either one-on-one or small group time with the academics. And they will also be provided with what we at Cambridge would call a director of studies. It may also be called a tutor. Somebody in their field who they can kind of consult with, discuss their career options and their study options with. A lot of our lecturers and our teachers are experts in their field so we're very lucky that we do have a lot of academics who are kind of at the forefront of some really interesting research that's going on at both universities all of the time. We also are very lucky that we have a lot of great resources and facilities. In terms of study resources and kind of places to study, libraries, and also the actual curricular resources that we have as well. We are quite different to some other universities that we're quite academically intensive. What that means is we have very short term times. At Cambridge, for example, our terms are eight weeks long. We have three eight-week terms, which means that the kind of academic study is really condensed into that short period of time and students kind of work quite hard and quite intensely through those eight weeks. That's just a few kind of key things to know about the study side of Cambridge. In terms of the sort of typical Oxford and Cambridge experience, a few things to note there. One is the collegiate system that we have. Both universities are split up into a number of different colleges. And those colleges are not departments so it is basically each college is kind of a mini university campus. They're spread all over the cities of Cambridge and of Oxford and that is where students will have their accommodation, it's where they'll eat, it's where they'll socialise, it's where they'll study in the library, it's where they might have their supervisions or tutorials. And what it means is that students will belong to that kind of smaller environment as well as belonging to the larger university. That is something quite unique to us. We'll talk about it a little bit more when it comes to the application process as well. Both institutions offer a wide range of kind of activities for students to get involved with and we do encourage students to kind of participate in extracurriculars just so that they get to explore the university beyond their course, kind of make some friends and socialise as well. And there's huge varieties of things they can get involved with, hundreds and hundreds of opportunities through sports, music, and drama, through to political campaigning or the Tea Drinking Club or whatever it is that they're interested in, in particular. They're also really supportive environments, in particular, that is because of that collegiate system. That means that a lot of the support comes from within the college. There's lots of staff members so people like the tutors, not just on the academic side, but also they're kind of past or non-academic tutors as well. As well as a range of other roles within the college that are specifically there to support students. While those students are working quite hard and intensely during those term times, both universities do make sure that there is a lot of support and also just to make sure that students can kind of make the most out of the experience and that they can maintain that really good work/life balance, which is kind of what they are always striving for. As well as that we, both institutions, are really well-ranked and well-performing in terms of employment prospects as well. Both universities are quite well regarded by employers. They like the kind of the skills and the attributes that our students come out of university with. Often it doesn't really matter what subject the degree is in but just that Oxford or Cambridge degree experience kind of gives them the skills to go forward into employment. Generally, students will do very well in the employment market and universities both have really good career services, as well, who can offer lots of support to students whilst they're students and then also once they've graduated and they become alumni, as well. There will be a lot that they can do to kind of help students maximise their job opportunities as well. Okay, so moving on to the application process. - If your students have decided that Oxford or Cambridge might be the right place for you, and many of you will know quite a lot about this kind of stage-by-stage process that we have when applying to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, much of which is very, very similar to applying to any other UK university through UCAS but there are a few additional steps that when students are applying to one of these two universities, they will kind of need to go through. This is the kind of general process that students can expect when thinking about going to these two universities, really starting from now. And we hope that many of your students will be in a position at the moment that they are kind of choosing their courses, they're deciding which of these institutions across the UK are going to be the right ones for them. And more specifically, that maybe one of these two universities has the course that is going to really inspire them for the next three, four, seven years of their education. The first stage, absolutely, is choosing your course and that does make quite a big impact in terms of their likelihood of getting into the universities later as well, making sure they've chosen the right course for them. The next stage might be choosing a college or choosing an open application. Essentially, here is where students can suggest a preference for which college they would like to go to. And that comes within the course code, and sorry, the campus code of the UCAS application. That's where they can state that preference. It's entirely up to a student as to whether they would like to choose a particular college that they want to go to or select an open application, which basically means I don't mind which college I go to. I'm sure I'd have a nice time at any of them, which by the way, is absolutely true. And we will, within our admissions offices, allocate students out across those colleges across the university. The next stage, which is really, really important, is making sure that they are checking what arrangements need to be put in place for doing their admissions assessments or admissions tests, depending on which university they are applying for. And more crucially, in terms of the deadlines as to when they need to either have registered or actually taken those tests. Most of these tests can be taken within your own schools or colleges but it's really important if you can support them in trying to make sure that your school is registered as a test centre. If you're not registered as a test centre, then there are kind of international test centres all the way around the world and students are able to kind of register at. Checking those arrangements early is really important and we'll come back to talking about that a little bit more later on. The deadline for the UCAS application, as most of you will know, is the 15th of October and that's 6:00 p.m. UK time so it's important to stress that to your students as well. And that deadline is absolute. We don't see any applications that are submitted after that point. The next stage of the application is if you have applied to the University of Cambridge, then there's the opportunity to fill in an additional form which gives a little bit more information about the courses that students have applied for as well as the qualifications that are currently taking. Typically, late in October, early in November is the time when most of our admissions tests or admissions assessments take place. And then after that, for Oxford, it's normally around the 10th of November. I think it's quite similar time at Cambridge as well. Students might be asked to send in an example of their written work, depending on the course that they're applying for. Typically our interviews take place early in December either kind of remotely or in person. And then finally, our offers are sent out early in January. It's normally the first or second Wednesday in January that those offers go out to students. This is the kind of view that yourselves and your students would get in terms of the application process. And then we thought it might be helpful for you to kind of have a look at what happens within the universities as well. On the next slide, you'll see kind of what happens when your application has actually been submitted to us. At Oxford and Cambridge, as we said, after the deadline of the 15th of October, normally a few days later all of the applications come through to us. Now why that's important is that we do absolutely use a gathered field. It doesn't really matter when students have submitted their application through UCAS. We know that they open their doors at the beginning of September to kind of click Submit, but to us, it doesn't make a difference whether it's the first of September or kind of closer towards our deadline. We receive all of the applicants at exactly the same time because we want to judge one student against another and we don't do it on that kind of rolling basis. All of those applications come into the admissions offices at both Cambridge and Oxford. And at that stage, that's when allocate the open applications. And that's before we send anything out to any of the colleges across the two universities. What that means for an applicant is that the tutors in the colleges would have no idea whether a student has selected that college directly or simply been allocated to them through the open application system. Only once those all of those applications have been kind of distributed across the colleges do we send them out to the departments and colleges for review. As soon as the admissions tests have taken place, or the admissions assessments, those results are also added to those records. Teachers will then have access to all of their acad-, the student's academic achievements, your teacher's reference, the personal statement, everything that kind of goes around the UCAS application as well as all of the test scores. And they will use all of those pieces of information to support them in short-listing students and for interviews which will take place early in December. Students may well have more than one interview, whether that's remotely or in person and we'll talk a lot more about those a little bit later. And then what happens is the kind of, the places are kind of moderated across all of the colleges through a number of different systems. Now, whilst Cambridge and Oxford have quite different systems for how we go about making sure that college choice doesn't make a difference in terms of students' likelihood of getting in to the university, the kind of end goal is exactly the same. Cambridge will typically use the pool system and at Oxford we have an admissions decision system, which is a kind of programme that goes across all of the different colleges. Then finally, the offers are then kind of sent out to those candidates in January, as I said before. That's kind of a little view behind the scenes in terms of what is actually going on at the two universities after you've clicked Submit on your UCAS application. The next thing we're going to have a think about is kind of what we are looking for and then also a little bit about what we're not looking at at all. One of the main things that we're interested in is academic ability and potential. And that's quite a hard thing to define, if you like, and a quite harder thing to explain. But essentially I think it can kind of be boiled down to just a few things. The first is we are looking for academic ability. We are looking for those students who really do have great ability in their subject and that they can kind of prove that in a number of different ways as part of the admissions process. We're also looking for students who are really strongly committed to the course that they have applied to, so that enthusiasm for the chosen subject is something that's very, very important. Now, we're not saying that someone has to have dreamed of studying chemistry from the age of five. You can show us that commitment in a number of different ways and it doesn't have to have been a lifelong dream. It could have come much more recently. But we need to see evidence of that real interest in that subject. And then finally, we're also looking for suitability for the way that we teach. As we said earlier, we teach in a slightly different way from many other UK universities in terms of our tutorials or our supervisions. And we want to make sure as part of the admissions process that students will really flourish in the kind of academic environment that we have at these two universities. I'll also just pick up on the things that we're not really interested in. Demonstrated interest is not really something that either of the two universities kind of pay any attention to at all. And the people who work in the admissions offices at both Oxford and Cambridge really are very much there to advise you and to support you and your students. Meaning that we don't have a big part to play in the admissions process. Any questions that come to us should be absolutely genuine questions. There's no such thing as a stupid question. And it will never be connected with a student's application. We're also not really interested in any particular backgrounds or whether students are from any particular countries. We don't have any kind of quotas or targets in terms of where students come from. The one exception to that is our medical studies courses where we have a government imposed quota where we're only allowed a small proportion of our study bodies to come from outside the UK to be able to take part in those programmes and that's fully described on our website. But for all of our other courses, it's absolutely a free competition around the world. For example, if all of the best students apply to us from France in one particular year then we have an entirely French undergraduate year and we wouldn't have any problem with that. We are looking for the brightest and the best students no matter where they come from all the way across the world. I think it's quite, that's quite maybe something reassuring to tell your students but also maybe a little bit sobering in terms of that their competition genuinely is worldwide. We don't pay any attention whatsoever to legacy places. The fact that their great grandparents went to Oxford or Cambridge is of absolutely no interest to us whatsoever. We are only interested in that individual and their academic ability and their potential to fit in within the institution. Then finally, we're really not interested in students' extracurricular activities. How good they are at playing sports, how good they are at playing musical instruments, how much fantastic volunteering they've done really isn't something that's going to factor into our decision-making process. Super-curricular is the things that they've done to further their interest in a subject. And we'll come back to talk a lot more about that later. How are we actually looking at all of these different elements as part of the admissions process? Now, most UK universities will be looking at academic achievements, they will be looking at the personal statements, and also the teacher's reference as well. And all of those things are very, very helpful to us, too, but because our courses are very competitive to get into, we will be looking at these additional elements as well. And what this slide is really trying to show is what we're trying to do at both of these two universities is build up a picture of each student as a kind of academic person. And to be able to do that, we need to take into account lots and lots of different elements to be able to build up that really true picture of each student as an academic within, potentially, within our communities. What we're going to do now is we're going to go into a little bit more detail about a number of these different areas of the admissions process just to give you a bit of advice as to how to support your students. - Yeah, so as Cat said, we've just focused on a few aspects of the admissions process hopefully so that we can clarify a little bit more what we're looking for, in particular, from those areas. The first of which is personal statements. In some ways it is similar to what all UK universities would look for from personal statements so the main thing really to focus on is the course because that is the main thing that's of interest to us. Why is the student interested in that particular course, what have they been doing that's relevant? That can be things within school, so the relevant subjects studied, but also things from outside of their coalescence as well. This is what we typically refer to as super-curricular and this is kind of really useful for demonstrating interest in the course, in the subject. Obviously, we're not interested in demonstrated interest in the university but we are interested, in that sense, that we want to know why it is the student is interested in the course. And we want to be sure that they really do have an interest because we don't want them to go and study something for three or four years or more and that they're not actually particularly interested in because they're not going to get a lot out of that course if that is the case. Super-curricular is a really great way to show that to kind of show that they're so interested in this particular course, the subject, that they're not just studying it in school, but they're actually going beyond that curriculum and they're doing some extra things as well. That's definitely something that can be touched on in the personal statement. We typically say to keep at least 80% of the focus on the academics. They can still mention extracurriculars that aren't relevant to the course applied for because, remember, this statement is going to viewed by potentially all five universities they might have applied to through UCAS. That can be mentioned but for Oxford and Cambridge, we're not really taking that into account so it's better not to focus too much on the kind of sporting achievements and things like that. And it is very different from a US-style application essay. We don't have different topics that they are writing essays on. The topic is effectively what is that you want to study and why? In terms of advising students on personal statements, kind of some of the things to look at there. And, yeah, remembering that there is no kind of secret as to writing your personal statement. There's no kind of secret tips that we can give out that you couldn't get elsewhere. It is really as simple as just the fact that we really do want to get an insight into the applicant and this is one of the ways to do that. Obviously because we interview as well and that does give places like Oxford and Cambridge that extra opportunity to get to know the student. But we want to see kind of the same student reflected on paper as the one that our tutors will see in the interview. They don't need to kind of try and present themselves as something other than what they are and think that they're presenting a certain type of student that we want because there isn't kind of one type of student that we're looking for. Important things you can encourage students to do: be reflective. If they are telling us about a particular book that they read, and they're kind of talking about that, we don't just want a really long list of all of the books that they've read in the last year because it's really not very interesting. We want them to kind of reflect on that maybe on one or two things that they've read. And not just tell us what they've read but kind of what they gained from it, what they agreed with, what they disagreed with, just to show that they can critically engage with the material and kind of look at it on that deeper level. Make sure they are honest as well. Particularly because of the fact that we do interview, if a student has said that they have read something or done a particular project in their personal statement, it's relatively likely that the tutor might ask them about that in interview. And students can be and often are called out by that so make sure if they mention something that they have done what they're telling us that they have just because it's quite hard to come back from that in an interview if they're called out when saying they've done something they haven't. And that's something that's really quite important. Don't over-edit. Obviously, guide them, give them suggestions and things when you're reading through but don't kind of take away that the student's voice that they have. And don't encourage them to be overly dramatic. Remember that we're kind of UK-based and we're not always so effusive in what we write so they don't have to kind of really exaggerate everything and kind of turn everything into a drama. Yeah, and as I mentioned, just don't just list but make sure that they're kind of expanding on that and giving us a little bit more. I mentioned already a little bit super-curricular activity. Just to kind of expand on that a little bit more, that basically is anything that goes above and beyond the school curriculum. And that kind of does take students on their first step into the academic world particularly because a lot of that is kind of self-guided by them. We don't give out prescriptive lists of what it is that students need to be looking at because we do want to encourage them to explore the areas of interest to them so that they can take that further and lead that themselves in terms of where that interest is going to go. But it absolutely can be supported by you. It's something that you can guide a student to slide in a couple of slides so we have got some kind of starting points that you can pass on to students. As I mentioned, this absolutely can provide a discussion point in interview so this is kind of a good, easy question a student might get in an interview is just being asked to expand on something mentioned in the personal statement. That is something that can help ease them into the interview later on. Super-curricular absolutely is for everyone and needn't cost a lot of money. It doesn't mean that these have to be kind of really expensive opportunities and events that students are going to, especially in these times at the moment where we're all not able to get out as much and a lot of people are kind of at home a lot of the time. The great thing about that is a lot of super-curricular activity is online so there are massive ranges of things you can explore for free from your own home. And with how we use the super-curricular activity, it does really help us to see that subject interest and also shows us whether a student has kind of research skills, is capable of independent study, organising their own time and those kind of things as well. And as we have mentioned previously, this is slightly different to extra-curricular and that distinction can cause a little bit of confusion sometimes. But essentially other activities such as things like sports, music, drama, volunteering. While those are great things for students and young people to do and we absolutely wouldn't tell them to give up playing the piano or anything like that, they still will give students a lot of great skills but they're not what we're looking for in the application process because we are an academic-based admission. When our tutors are looking at students' applications, what they're looking at is the student's academic ability and potential. But once you are admitted, if you, if your students do get into either Oxford or Cambridge, when they're here there are loads of activities for them to get involved with. That's a great thing for students to do but just for them to bear in mind when it comes to the application process, that it is really the academics that we are interested in. This slide has got a few of those super-curricular ideas listed. A couple of the big ones, HE+ in that purple circle that you can see. That is the Cambridge website so if you just kind of search for Cambridge HE+, you'll find it. And there is one for Oxford as well, which is called Oxplore. And they have been sort of set up by our universities and they have lots of resources for the subjects that we offer. The Cambridge one has lots of kind of starting points for super-curricular for the courses that Cambridge teaches and then the Oxford one has lots of kind of big questions that students can get into and start thinking about. Both of those are great starting points. There's also some subject-specific options and there is a site called IWantToStudyEngineering.org. There is another one called Isaac Physics, there's Access to Further Math. There's also all of these large mooks, the large online courses. You can find loads of those on Future Learn and EdX, TED talks, you can read kind of magazines and journals, nature magazines, British Medical Journal, anything like that can be a really good starting point. As I said, this isn't prescriptive so this isn't to say that these are the things students must look at, but they can be some quite good starting points. If you're kind of not sure where to direct your students, these can be kind of good places for them to start. - I think, also, in the kind of current climate that lots and lots of different organisations are putting kind of at-home learning stuff online so actually now is a really good opportunity to be able to kind of look at what different organisations have digitally that might be able to support the super-curricular learning of students from home whilst many of us are at home at the moment. I'm going to talk a little bit about the kind of school reference then, the teacher's reference. This is a really, really important part of the application process for both Oxford and Cambridge. Of course, it's part of the standard UCAS application. You get 4000 characters to say all you'd like to say about each of your students and we know that that is often very, very challenging. But it is really, really useful to us because it provides us with an insight into those students in terms of their academic performance and also their potential. We are really lucky at Oxford and Cambridge, the students that we actually admit to the universities we get to meet them in person. However, many universities don't have that opportunity and even if we do get to meet them, we only really meet them for, I would say, a maximum of around kind of two hours and, therefore, the opinion of the kind of school counsellors and the teachers is something that's really, really helpful to us in helping us to kind of formulate our own kind of impression of each of the students. Ideally, this reference should be kind of consistent with the rest of the application and very often, especially the personal statement and the teacher's reference are kind of read together, so it's really good if they are kind of complimentary to one another and certainly not repeating each other. The other thing is that we would like it to be kind of consistent with the application in terms of the fact that if you're saying in here this is an absolutely incredible student, this is one of the best students that we've ever taught, they're absolutely amazing, and then their kind of predictive grades or their kind of current academic achievement don't necessarily match up with that, that might kind of raise a few questions for us. It's also kind of worth bearing in mind that whist the applicant won't see this before the form has been submitted, they do have the right to request it afterwards. And as universities, we absolutely understand that pressure that counsellors in schools are under in terms of putting forward a really kind of positive reference for each of the students. And I think every UK university is absolutely aware of that and certainly Oxford and Cambridge are and I know that's a question that we quite often get from counsellors of can you read between some of the lines, if you like, because this student is really being encouraged by their families to apply and it's not necessarily somewhere, something that we would support. And we absolutely kind of recognise that. In terms of kind of producing a supportive reference, the kind of things that we would like to see within there, really what we're trying to do from the reference is we're trying to kind of build, again, as I said, build up this picture of each academic student and, therefore, giving us an impression of that student within the code, within the context, within what they're working is really, really helpful to us. If you are kind of, as a counsellor, in the role of kind of being a bit of an editor of that teacher's reference, one of the most helpful things that can be done is if you are collecting kind of quotes or kind of paragraphs of text from each of their subject teachers, having that kind of editorial role of trying to, as it says at the bottom, having kind of multiple contributors but just one voice across the whole thing, that can be really helpful. And even if you have many, many references that you're trying to put together, even if it's as simple as putting the subjects that are most directly related to the course that they're wanting to apply for up at the top and the other kind of less relevant ones lower down within the reference, that can just be quite helpful to a tutor who's reading through it. It's not essential but it's something that can be helpful. And what our tutors are really looking for is how strong this student is relative to their cohort. Is this the best student in this particular year? In fact, even better, is this the best student in a highly academic achieving year? Or you can take it even further, if this student really is the best student that's kind of come out of your school or come out of this particular subject, please do tell us about that. That's the kind of thing that we really want to know about. And in terms of the teacher's reference, something else that we can pick up from there is any kind of mitigating circumstances, extenuating circumstances that mean that they're kind of grades that maybe they've already achieved or you think they'll likely achieve might not actually reflect their true ability. Whether that's something to do with their kind of academic life, whether it's something to do with outside of school and things that have happened outside of school, please do use the teacher's reference to tell us about that. If they're applying to Cambridge, there's also an opportunity to fill out the extended, the extenuating circumstances form if you want to go into a little bit more detail. At Oxford, we would get all of that information from the teacher's reference. Now, I imagine that for quite a lot of you, there will be for the students who are applying for 2021 entry, you'll be thinking about how do you include the COVID-19 message within there. The sort of thing that's going to be really helpful is you telling us about the length of time that the school was closed for and the kind of expected impact that you think that that might have had on that student's schooling. It's something we will absolutely be taking into account in terms of our admissions in future years but it's worth kind of putting a small part in there, I think, going forward. In terms of our advice on kind of structuring a teacher's reference, it kind of mirrors, somewhat, as I said, the personal statement where kind of 80% of it, the vast majority of it, being subject-specific information and then 20% on other information. Often what we say is that kind of the first 10% should be a little bit about your school and the kind of cohorts that you tend to have within your school. You're very welcome to give us a hyperlink to the school website. It's not always absolutely guaranteed that all tutors will definitely click on that link so if there's something vital that you want to tell us, maybe try and put that within the body of the teacher's reference rather than just within the hyperlink. But many tutors will follow-up on that hyperlink, too. Then kind of 80% of it about the kind of subject-specific information and about the student's aptitude for the degree course that they have applied for. As I said in the previous slide, very much focusing on their kind of contextual achievement within their cohort or perhaps within the school cohort as well is really helpful. And trying not to repeat things that the students have already said in their personal statement would be great. And then the final 10% can be any mitigating or extenuating circumstances that you think we should be aware of as part of the admissions process. Whether that's something that's kind of affected their school work, whether it's something that we should be aware of as part of our admissions process going forward. For example, if a student does have a particular kind of disability or kind of learning difficulty, it's really helpful for us to know this here so that we can take it into account as part of our admissions process later. For example, if a student normally needs to have some additional time within examinations, we can make sure within interviews, for example, that we give them some extra time to read over any materials that they will need before they come into the interview itself. And then you can also include their concluding statement. The things that we most commonly see is we warmly recommend this student to you without any kind of hesitation, that sort of thing. You don't have to put a concluding statement in there but many schools do. - Okay, so moving onto looking at admissions tests, admissions assessments, which are a part of the application process that Oxford and Cambridge both use. The reason why we use them is it is basically a way for us to differentiate academically between candidates who, many of whom are well-qualified. It gives us a kind of a common test or assessment, a common data set, that we have all candidates for that subject taking that same assessment particularly because candidates are coming from different education systems and they're not all doing the same exams at school and things like that. It is really useful for us to have this kind of commonality between students applying for the same subjects so that we can see how they are performing academically in the subject. It also is a good way for us to challenge applicants because our admissions test or assessments tend to be slightly different to a school examination so they're not designed to capture all students, necessarily. They're designed to capture that top kind of group of students worldwide. They're designed to be really quite challenging which can come as a shock to some students so that's something you can kind of prepare them for and so that they expect that. But that is a useful way for us to kind of differentiate between those students at the top end. It can help us to assess their subject knowledge and understanding so we can basically work out are they where they should be at this moment in time, at this point in their education, do they know the things we would expect? And it can help us concentrate our interviewing resources. Particularly, that's the case for Oxford. We tend to do a larger sift pre-interview but also for some of the Cambridge subjects, they'll do this as well. They will look as assessment performance, in some cases to determine who to interview. Because, obviously, we don't have the capacity to interview every single student who applies so that's kind of why we ask the students to do the admissions tests. In terms of how you can help applicants prepare, and if it is a pre-interview assessment, then making sure that the students are registered on time, helping them with that. And also investigating whether or not the school is a test centre and so if not, whether you can kind of set up that process so that your students can do those assessments in school. And if that's not possible, looking at where those local centres might be. You can also look on our websites and find kind of syllabi to give you a bit more information about what topics are likely to come up in that assessment. And sometimes there will be, on the Cambridge website sometimes we have practise papers as well, with the marks seen so that students can have an attempt at some of the assessments from previous years. And we would recommend, if possible, they do that under timed conditions because these are sort of challenging assessments and the students won't have all the time in the world to answer each question so if they can kind of get used to moving through the questions at a reasonable pace, that can be really helpful. And I think it is really important that you do help them to understand that these are going to be challenging. Particularly, these are high-achieving students who are at the top of your cohort who were used to getting kind of 90%, 100% in every test that they do at school. They are going to need a little bit of pre-preparation to realise that it's very unlikely that they'll be performing at that level in these tests. We think that is something really key to prepare them for. And as I said, there are resources on our websites that you can take a look at and kind of refer your students to as well. - Okay, we're going to move on to talk a little bit about interviews at Oxford and Cambridge now. We know that this is a question that we very frequently get from teachers and counsellors as to how they can support their students in preparing for the interviews that take place at both Oxford and Cambridge, which are quite different from interviews that students might get at many other UK institutions and, in fact, institutions around the world. I think one of the kind of key things in terms of the differences that students can expect is the kind of subject-specific nature of it. Many universities, if they do hold interviews, they will say why do you want to study this subject, let's say, why do you want to study math? And students can have a really well-prepared answer about why they think math is really interesting and what specific parts of it really interest them and what it will mean in terms of their future career that they want to go on to. Many universities might also say, well, why do you want to study math at this university? And again, you can prepare really well for that in terms of the standing of that university, the reputation, or maybe the research interests of the department that really match with their own research interests and that's really great. And at Oxford and Cambridge, we might ask you those questions but it's quite unlikely. What we're much more likely to do is okay, say here's a really difficult math problem, let's me and you work through this together and see where we can get to. They are academic conversations within the subject that they are wanting to study. And basically what we're really trying to do in our interviews is we're trying to emulate the way that we teach, the tutorial, the supervision teaching system that we mentioned before. That's what we're trying to do within that interview to see how students would respond to that kind of academic environment. Now they will differ a little bit depending on the courses that students are wanting to apply for because they are all very much subject-specific. Within things like humanities or social sciences, students might be given a piece of text in advance, they might be given a picture, they might be given a graph, they might be given a painting, and they will have to kind of have a little look through and discuss their thoughts about those things and what it might relate to outside of that particular object or piece of text in front of them. Within the sciences, typically students will be presented with a problem to work through, as I said, or kind of maybe even an object or a specimen for them to be able to discuss depending on the course that they wanted to apply for. And normally what we're expecting students to do is to take all of the knowledge and the skills that they've gotten from their current studies and apply it to a situation that is different and unfamiliar to them. And how do they show that kind of flexibility of thought by taking those things that they already know or they already know how to do and applying it onto something that they're kind of slightly unfamiliar with. They should, as Claire was saying earlier, the admissions tests are designed to be challenging. The interviews are also designed to be challenging. They are stretching. We are looking to take students beyond what their kind of current knowledge is and to see how they respond to this new material or this new, these new situations that they're being presented with. It's also quite common in all of the kinds of interviews is to be presented with either things that they've submitted in advance, whether that's the essays that they've sent through in advance, or their personal statement. This kind of links back to what we were saying earlier in terms of making sure that everything within the personal statement is absolutely true. But also about being kind of selective about what they put in there. Tutors often feel that asking questions about the personal statement is kind of a way of getting students comfortable in an interview because they feel like anything that they've written in the personal statement, they must feel confident enough to be able to discuss that when it comes to interview. In terms of preparation, we'll come back to this a bit more in a little while. They need to feel confident that they could answer two or three additional questions on every sentence, more or less, that they've written in that personal statement. Making sure they're really kind of well-versed in what they've said there is going to be really helpful. But there isn't any kind of hidden agenda or kind of trick questions that you might have kind of read about in the media or online. We're not trying to trick students. They are designed to be difficult and challenging but they're, we're not asking trick questions. And also what's crucial to know about these is it's not the final hurdle, it's not, as many students think, they've done everything they can up to this point. We've looked at their personal statement, teacher's reference, we've looked at their admissions testing scores, their admissions assessment scores, and then it's up to them to make or break the whole of their application on the basis of the 20-minute interview. And that's really not the case at all. It is one part, an important part, yes, but it's one part of that much bigger whole that I was talking about earlier in terms of building up that picture of the whole student. In terms of what we're looking for within the interviews, we're looking for students to be able to demonstrate a number of different things. As I said at the beginning, one of the most crucial things that they should be doing at the moment is making sure they've chosen the right course for them. Making sure that they show us that enthusiasm within that interview for that particular subject. It's not that they should be running into the room saying, "I love history." it's showing that kind of quiet commitment and that real interest in it. There are some kind of core concepts that students will need to be absolutely kind of fluent in before they come into their interview. Essentially, revising for their most kind of any exams that they would be kind of hoping to take. Again, before they come into the interviews, it's probably quite helpful preparation because it is kind of like an in-person academic test, if you like. The next one here says fluency in expressing core knowledge and concepts and I think that's absolutely true but the word fluency, I think, kind of suggests that students need to be really good at public speaking and that's not really what this is getting at. It's much more trying to get at their being able to kind of recall those core knowledge and concepts and be able to express them within an interview in a way that is appropriate. That's not being able to kind of give a big speech about a particular subject because that's not what's going to happen. Some of the best interviews that I've seen, there was one in, especially, in engineering science where it was much more about the kind of mathematical side of things. The tutors and the students actually didn't really talk to each other much at all verbally. It was much more about what was going on on paper. The student kind of came into the room and then sat down and then the tutor basically kind of drew out a formula and then the students were kind of sketching the graphs of it. They were going backwards and forwards on paper and not necessarily talking to each other but they were talking in a language of kind of mathematics to one another and it was very fluent in that sort of sense but not necessarily in terms of the verbal side of things that you might have expected. We're also looking for a kind of enthusiasm with engaging with new ideas. As I said, we're looking for those students who can apply their existing knowledge to kind of new ideas, new concepts, new ways of thinking about things. And we're also looking for, as I say, the ability to assimilate and apply new concepts. This is basically kind of about listening. Kind of listening carefully to the questions that have been asked of them and the information and the prompts that are given by the tutors to be able to apply it to this new way of thinking. And I think a lot of this can be boiled down to the tutors aren't really looking for their final answer. It's about how they get towards it. And we're looking at the way they think rather than kind of coming up with the absolutely kind of correct, final answer because most questions in interviews don't necessarily have that final, correct answer. But having that ability to kind of think clearly and analytically within that situation. In terms of how you can kind of support your students in preparation for interviews, basically kind of the first step is encouraging them to refresh their memory about anything they've sent in to the university in advance. Whether that's pieces of written work, certainly their personal statement, make sure that they're really, really familiar with those things that they've sent in advance. But also about the things, the super-curricular activities that they've mentioned within their personal statement, all the things that they've been following up with in the interim between writing their personal statement and arriving or delivering their interview in December time will be really, really helpful preparation. And as I said before, sometimes kind of revising almost as if this is going to be an exam might be helpful preparation in terms of them feeling really, really secure on the subject knowledge that they have. And also giving students an opportunity to discuss their academic work or their interests in their subject with someone who is a subject specialist is one of the most helpful things. A generalist interview isn't necessarily going to be a really, really helpful preparation for this but subject-specific discussions about their subject is going to be useful. Whether that's with a teacher within school, whether actually it's kind of amongst groups of peers. And you can use lots of the resources that we've already mentioned on our websites in terms of HE+ or Oxplore, using some of those big questions as those starting points. That might be a way of starting those conversations with students. Also, in terms of the resources that are available on our website, at Oxford we have a huge long list of pretty much every subject. We have questions that have been asked at interviews before or are indicative of the kinds of questions that we would ask in those subject interviews for you to be able to have a look at and see how your students might approach those. Both universities also have kind of films about interviews. I have to say, I think that I think the Cambridge ones are absolutely fantastic. And I think one of the really useful things about them is they're kind of overlayed with the tutors talking over the top saying, "What I really liked about the way that that student answered that question was this." And it also showed a little bit about students kind of maybe feeling like they've gotten something wrong but actually how that's really, really helpful because they've listened to the tutor and then changed their point of view and then moved on. I'd really recommend the Cambridge interview films if you have an opportunity to read those. And then the last point there is kind of don't worry about what to wear. You should be thinking about, the student should be thinking about their academic side of things rather than what they wear. It really, really doesn't matter to our tutors. I've got to say, most of them, there are exceptions, but not all of them are the most fashion conscious people in the whole and so they're really not bothered about what students are wearing at all. Students should wear things that they are comfortable with wearing and that will put them in an academic frame of mind. - Yeah, so just to, really just to reiterate a lot of the points that we've been making, in terms of the main things that you can do to support your students, I do think the first point is a really important one. Just encouraging them to explore what interests them. A lot of students that I kind of meet, they want to know, they almost want a list of what are the things that I can do to make sure my application is really strong or stands out and they kind of want a list of super-curricular activities to explore. But it is really about students finding out what they're interested in and exploring that. So I think giving them starting points, particularly places like HE+ and Oxplore is great but then just really encouraging them to kind of be reflective and think, okay, but which bits of the subject do I really like, that's the bit I'm going to explore more of. And kind of giving them the freedom and encouragement to do that. Particularly, at the current time where going to in-person events and things isn't possible in a lot of the world, then these online resources are really important. Both universities have our own resources, as mentioned, but also any of these kind of podcasts, the mooks. Lots of universities are doing a lot more online sessions now and some are doing kind of academic taster lectures and things like that that you can get into as well. You definitely can look at university reading lists. And so lots of Cambridge departments will have a kind of a list of first-year reading that you can take a look at. I wouldn't suggest just working your way through that and reading every single thing because that doesn't give you any of that opportunity to explore further than that. But again, it can be a really good starting point. Another really key thing that ties into this choosing the course is researching the course content at multiple universities. Really thinking about not just a course but that course at that institution. Is it Oxford and Cambridge that offers the course that is going to really interest and captivate them. You can get a lot of information on university websites in terms of what's going to be taught, the likely modules that will be involved in the course, thinking about how it's going to be assessed, the kind of activities that they're going to get to do through the course, and just really making sure that they are applying to the right courses for them and they're not just picking Oxford or Cambridge because they've heard the name and they think they should, but because they've really thought about it and they think that that is the right course and the right university to them. Though that choosing a course is that first step, it is really, really one of the most important ones in a lot of ways. Just in terms of kind of keeping up to date with us and looking at our websites, particularly at the moment, as we'll just mention in a minute or two, with the Coronavirus, there may be potentially some slight changes to admissions. As we go forward, if things are changing, it is a really good idea to keep an eye on our websites because if that is the case, if that does happen, then we will be communicating that there. Do also look at our international events webpages as well. If we are able to start travelling again and we are going to be putting on in-country events, obviously, we'll put up that information. Both of our universities do run guidance counsellor conferences as well where we have guidance counsellors come and visit us. Again, it would be a case of whether we can run that in person this year or not. And at Cambridge we do have an international webinar series as well so you can sign up to that on our website. And do get in touch with us. We've put email addresses for Oxford and Cambridge on the final slide. And do just reach out to us if there is anything you're not sure about. As Cat said earlier, there are no silly questions whether that's from a student or from a counsellor. If there's anything you want clarification or you just want us to send through some more resources, then we are always more than happy to do that. Just in terms of a kind of a quick update with regards to Coronavirus, obviously that's kind of the topic in everybody's minds at the moment, both universities do just really want to stress that we are thinking about offer holders at the moment. And, of course, our applicants for next year as well. And we are absolutely here to support as much as we can. We're very aware and we're kind of keeping up with what's going on with different qualifications and with English language testing and things as well. We're in conversation with IBO, Cambridge International, IELTS, TOEFL, everybody that's kind of involved in these kind of things. And we do understand, obviously, students are concerned and because a lot of students around the world will have had disrupting into their schooling, but just to know that with both Oxford and Cambridge, we are going to accept the qualifications as they are. If your A-double exams have been cancelled or your IB exams or the other exams that you're doing, we will still accept the grades. If you're still going to be awarded a grade, then we will accept that for entry so try not to worry too much about that and just know that we are thinking about you and we are here if you do have questions as well. We will both continue to be in touch with our offer holders and we'll be sending you information as and when we need to. And for counsellors and teachers as well, if you have questions, do reach out to us and we'll be able to give you the information we have. But both universities do have dedicated webpages for this as well so the links are there on the slide. And make sure you visit those because those will be updated as well. If anything does change, if there is any new information that's where we'll be communicating that. - In addition to kind of thinking about our current offer holders, we are also, both institutions are thinking carefully about what we can do to offer different activities for students, and teachers, and counsellors as well, more often than not kind of digitally or perhaps kind of delaying some of our activities as well. In terms of open days, perhaps something kind of quite positive, actually, for teachers and counsellors from around the world is that we are, both universities, are offering some form of Open Day, an alternative Open Day in July. Certainly at Oxford we're not 100% sure exactly how that is going to look but it is kind of taking shape at the moment. In Cambridge, I think it's going to be a kind of virtual Open Day, digital Open Day sort of thing. Do keep an eye on our websites for more information. But it is quite exciting offering in terms of students who, at the best of times, might not have been able to have travelled to Oxford or at Cambridge for an Open Day. We're trying to offer a kind of digital version of that to everyone all the way around the world. And both universities are planning to run in-person events later in the year if we're told that it is safe for us to be able to do so. Again, just keep an eye on our Open Day's websites and we will be updating that really, really frequently. Both universities have also been putting a lot of effort into trying to make sure that we are supporting those students who might well be learning from home at the moment and to put together a lot of materials to support that. At Cambridge, shortly they'll be launching a new virtual tour platform over the summer and that will give the students a really exciting opportunity to look around different departments and also colleges at Cambridge. Plus, also, we've mentioned HE+ a couple of times within this presentation. It really is a great resource for students to begin some of their super-curricular activity and their exploration of the subjects that they're interested in. But actually for students who are kind of younger down in the school who might be interested in kind of finding out a bit more about what these subjects look like at university, that's a really good resource. At Oxford, we have just launched a range of digital resources that have all been created by the university, many of which are subject-specific, some are a little bit more generalist, that should be able to support students when they're learning from home. Do have a look on our website for those. And also, in relation to Oxplore, again, which we've mentioned quite a few times in this presentation, there are a number of really big questions that often bring together different cross-curricular subjects that allow students to start thinking in the way that they would be expected to when it comes to university level study. And there's quite a lot that are quite apt at the moment. For example, are kind of real life friends better than online friends? And we might well have to do a few updates to that one over the next few months, I should think. I think that is about all that we kind of wanted to bring to you today. As you can see there at the bottom of the slide, our contact details are there so please do get in touch if you have any questions at all for either of the two universities. We're really happy to answer any of those. But other than that, thank you ever so much for taking the time to be here today and to listen to this presentation about Oxford and Cambridge admissions. - Absolutely. Thank you very much.