I’m a current junior looking at studying English at UK universities. My understanding is that the academic qualifications part of admissions for Americans is based on AP and SAT scores. I’ve also heard that UK universities consider some APs “softer” than others and that they’ll pick and choose which APs make up your offer depending on that and your course.
I’ve already taken AP Euro History and got a 5 on the exam and this year, I’m taking AP Lit, APUSH, AP Bio, and AP Psych. Next year, I’ll most likely be taking AP Calc BC, AP Enviro or Physics (undecided), AP Stats, AP Gov, and AP Macro.
I’m fairly confident I can get 5s on APUSH, AP Lit, and AP Psych, and I’m not entirely sure about AP Bio but I’m most likely looking at a 4 or 5.
Based on my AP course load, which subjects do you think would make up a potential offer (besides AP Lit because I’m fairly sure that’s a given lol)?
Also, I’ve heard two explanations for why Americans don’t really go to Oxbridge, (1) that Oxbridge doesn’t really accept Americans anymore because they’ll choose an American school over a British one and (2) hat Americans just don’t get in to Oxbridge because they’re not prepared for the admissions system, so I was wondering which one is really true (I don’t want to prepare an application for a school that’s pretty much automatically going to reject me)?
I’m also looking at Edinburgh, which some students from my school have gone to in the past, UCL, and KCL.
Plus the ELAT (for all applicants), and a marked piece of writing. SAT is really just ‘meet the threshold’ element.
Not completely accurate: obviously you must take the subject exams required by the course, and there is an expectation that your choice of courses will concentrate in your area of academic interest. Beyond that their interest drops rapidly in the specifics. IF you get an offer, they can indeed choose from your achieved and predicted subjects for what will make up your final offer, but relative ‘softness’ is not the metric in making an offer- it’s more about relevance.
Not true, but Cambridge people have been heard to make that point, and the success rate for Americans is lower at Cambridge than Oxford.
Not completely true- there are also two other big reasons: 1) it is actually highly competitive and there are more able applicants than places and 2) the Oxbridge system of teaching genuinely doesn’t suit all students- it’s not just about smart or marks.
At Oxford the people who do the selecting are the people who actual teach you once you get there. They say, over and over, ‘what we want are people who love our subject as much as we do’.
So, if I were an Oxford tutor looking at your app I would ask, why didn’t you take Lang?
Based on what you have posted, your offer would most likely be Lit, USHx & Gov (though if you are actually serious about Ox, I would swap out Stats (and/or self-study) for Lang, and get a teacher to give you a predicted mark for it). But, the profs are a puckish lot, so there’s no telling. IF the rest of your AP is off the charts good, they might let you use your existing Euro 5, but I wouldn’t bank on it.