How Did You Get into Oxford
Uncommon and uncommonly true advice.
Originally on Quora.
I applied. My number one piece of advice (especially for international students) is… apply.
I cannot tell you how many of my friends and students from universities in Australia (I attended two universities in Australia) and South Africa (I grew up there) have “dreamed” about studying at Oxford (or Cambridge, or Princeton, or MIT…), and yet have never applied.
Oxford (and Cambridge etc…) have acquired a sort of mythical reputation among internationals. I remember hearing about Oxford when I was in high school in South Africa — in my mind the place was no more real than Narnia or Atlantis — and the possibility that I might one day study there quite literally never occurred to me. I was simply not trained to think that way, and I didn’t value myself enough.
I completed high school in Australia, and once again didn’t even think about applying to Oxford. Nor did any of my friends, despite the fact that many of them were extremely intelligent, high-achieving, and undoubtedly capable. But we were not trained to consider this possibility. And so we studied at Australian universities.
Even during my undergraduate, the possibility of studying at Oxford (or Cambridge, or… ) for a postgraduate degree didn’t seem reasonable to many of my friends and colleagues. Yet so many of them would have been capable, and competitive for generous financial scholarships. I suspect that many of them would have been accepted had they applied.
Ultimately, I got in because I applied.
Looking back from my current viewpoint, it’s really not surprising that I got accepted. I’d worked hard for many years, and my academic history was excellent. But I remember feeling like I was tempting the gods by applying. I was taught to feel that way, and it hurt me. Honestly, I felt that I needed two degrees before applying. In hindsight, I had a decent chance of getting in straight out of high school.
Long story short, my point is this.
Of course you will need to have very good grades at school/undergraduate to get accepted into Oxford. However, the biggest barrier to entry is not inadequate grades. It is that people do not have **enough self-belief to even apply.
Please do apply. You have little to lose and much to gain.
Edit: I’ve had some comments about financial barriers. Indeed these are significant if the applicant has to self-fund. Fortunately there are many scholarships that one can apply for, and there are even websites hosted by the university to help you find them. E.g. Start your search | University of Oxford.
My advice still holds: please, have enough self-belief to apply for a scholarship. You have little to lose and much to gain.
