I’m a student in the US who will be applying to study PPE at 5 schools in the UK this cycle (Durham, Warwick, LSE, KCL, and Oxford). Firstly, a couple questions about filling out UCAS.
My school was on a semester system my sophomore and freshmen years, is it okay if under my Modules on UCAS I write something like “English 9: Semester 1”
I took my SAT and SAT subjects at another school because my school didn’t offer it for the dates I wanted, should I list these qualifications under my high school still? I figure it’s fine if I do but just to be sure.
Answers to these would be much appreciated thank you!
Also, a chance me just cause because I’m curious what you all think.
Chance me for Durham, Warwick, LSE, KCL, and Oxford all PPE.
GPA: 4.02 UW, 4.55 W, school doesn’t rank
SAT: 1520 (EBRW 770, Math 750) taken once
Junior APs: Eng Lang, APUSH, and Bio all 5s
Senior APs: Eng Lit, Euro, US Gov and Politics, Calc BC, Stats, and Macro* all predicted 5s
*Duel enrolled for this one since my school doesn’t have it
I’d say my PS is pretty good. I read 2 intro books from each subject that were recommended on Oxford’s site as well as On Liberty. Also mentioned a lot of online lectures that have given me a pretty okay understanding of Marxist theory. Also some other random stuff I’ve read over the years that I liked. A student studying law at UCL helped me get it in decent shape so I at least think its not the typical “I’m an American who doesn’t know what I’m doing” PS. I will say I don’t have many PPE related activities outside of my reading. I do a debate club and have done social justice club stuff but nothing like interning at a campaign.
I’ve yet to start studying for the TSA as I’m still filling out UCAS but I took a practice test, ran out of time and missed 7/50 questions and still got like a 66 for the mc so I think with a little practice I can get it up to the 70s or even 80s.
That is more detail than necessary- English 9 is fine
They really don’t care where you sat the exams
I wouldn’t get over confident about the TSA for Oxford! Last cycle ~300 people scored over 80 on the Critical Thinking, fewer than 100 people achieved over 80 on the Problem Solving, and nobody got over 80 on the essay. But starting in the mid-60s your odds of getting an interview invitation go way up; once you get to interview you have a ~1/3 odds of getting an offer.
If you get to interview at Oxford, and then get an offer, your offer is likely to be along the lines of “scores of 5 on 3 of Calc BC, Euro, Macro and USGov, to include Calc BC”. If you get an offer from LSE (which I think is the least likely of the 5), the offer will be for scores of 5 on 5 of the APs.
Guessing that you will get offers from Durham, Warwick & KCL.
Sounds like you know your stuff, thanks so much for the advice! Yea I guess maybe 80s is a little high to shoot for on the TSA, but I’ll get studying! Just a quick question, I had been told that if I got an offer it would likely only be conditional on the calc BC score from this year, since I already have 2 of the 3 aps required for an offer from last year. Is that not true? Is it likely that any offers I get will be conditional on 3 AP exams from this year just because they can be? Thanks!
Depends on the uni. Oxford requires 5s on 3 relevant APs. The APs you took last year are not relevant to PPE, so any offer from them will likely be as @collegemom3717 wrote.
Told by whom? I have seen that happen, but more often I have seen Oxford give the usual 3 subject offer or (as above), your choice of 3 from a longer list.
You will know in December if you have an interview, and in January if you have an offer, so until then no senioritis!
For PPE I know History is listed as “helpful” (so US history last year may be part of my offer) and I had read somewhere on Oxfords site or maybe heard in a lecture that generally a strong background in essay writing was encouraged, so I’m hoping Lang will help. I could be very much mistaken though!
A North American outreach/admissions helper at Warwick had said I would likely just receive an offer conditional on calc bc. Looking back though it’s likley she was just speaking for Warwick. It’s okay though I’ve got lots of time to study for the exams!
You should get into all bar Oxford and LSE. LSE is mostly about grades but significantly more competitive than your other choices, but you have a good chance (would say >50% likely). You’ll most likely get an interview at Oxford providing your test is good, and then most of whether you get it comes down to that interview.
Any reason you’re not applying to UCL? Job prospects wise it’s a big step up from Durham and KCL and only a marginal step below LSE, but it will be a lot less competitive to get into (would say you’re pretty much guaranteed providing personal statement and references are good).
Hello again! I’m just replying again here cause I have another question and you seem knowledgeable on this. I know AP and SAT scores on UCAS are self reported but do I need to officially send the scores (through College Board) of the exams I’ve already taken when I submit the application? Or is it like the US and I only need to send official scores if accepted? Thanks!
Short answer- same as the US, don’t send them until you have an offer you want to accept.
Remember that you are applying to 5 places, and you will know what offers you have by April- but then you have to narrow that to 1 or possibly 2 before you have your AP results. If the uni you want to “Firm” has given you a conditional offer you are allowed to “Insure” a 2nd.
There are 3 possible responses: you get rejected, get an offer with conditions, or get an offer with no conditions. Given that you have Calc BC (a key class) scheduled for this year, it is unlikely that you will get an unconditional offer. The conditional offer language typically goes along the lines of “offer you a place for PPE for Sept/Oct 2022 conditional on achieving a score of X on exam 1, Y on exam 2, and Z on exam 3 etc.” or “verification of the following scores” or “scores of 5 on 3 of the following exams” (nb, I have only seen Oxford do that). The list can include exams you have already taken, in which case it’s a roundabout way of saying send your official score reports for those exams.
Yellow just pinging you once again for help because you’ve been so great so far!
Quick question: should my school counselor or a teacher knowledgeable with PPE be writing my reference? I get the sense it should be a bit of both but I’m unsure.
I elaborate more on this in my latest post if you wouldn’t mind reading that it will explain my situation a little better. Thank you if you can reply! If not, still thank you for the help!
Better to be a teacher in a relevant subject. Counselors rarely have the ability to give examples of how your work impressed them. Note it is very different to the usual US reference style (give them the UCAS/Oxford guide for references), and ideally needs to say (for Oxford) some paraphrase of “X was the best student I’ve taught in this subject in the last 5 years”.
It’s not quite the same but academic references (ie your undergraduate professor) for Cambridge postgraduate courses are asked if a candidate is “exceptional, strong, not strong, weak”.
The definitions are:
Exceptional: best student in last 5 years
Strong: best student in the year
Not strong: top 5% in the year
Weak: not in top 5% in the year.
My D22 is going through this as well but we’re in the UK. She told me that her “form tutor” (probably equivalent to a US “homeroom teacher” but I don’t know how things have evolved in the US since my school days there) will gather feedback from all of her current teachers (all of them relevant to the course she’s planning to study at university) and then someone else (my D22 doesn’t know who) writes an overview/synthesis. This consolidated reference is then reviewed by the school’s higher education coordinator.
In short, it might be a good idea to have both your school counselor and relevant teachers involved. Hope this helps.
Given that my counselor has basically already written the reference for me (and it’s so close to the deadline) I think I should probably stick with them as the actual referee. However, I will be sure to ask them to include specific quotes from my teachers about my academic thought and aptitude within the subjects of PPE, and I’ll ask them to review it with my teacher who knows the most about PPE. I just don’t wanna change stuff around so close to the deadline, and I think this will basically be the best of both worlds?
Also, my econ teacher is a professor at a uni who I’ve never met since its a fully online asynchronous course. If I’m missing feedback from him would it be bad? Should I shoot a quick email his way?
Completely agree that in the UK there will usually be a coordinator who knows how to write these references and can do them quickly. The problem in the US is that the counselor won’t and is unlikely to have the time to figure UCAS out if they are dealing with potentially hundreds of other students (our public school has one counselor for 400 students, 100 per year). Perhaps some private schools might have the resources to do this.
So a trusted teacher may be of more help - S was fortunate enough to have a history teacher he was close to who had done a master’s degree at Oxford, I believe @HazeGrey’s S also had a teacher who had taught in the UK.
Is this your US reference? It needs to be written specifically for UCAS, the format and content is somewhat different. Have you (and they) read the specification?
Do you and they understand the need to give predicted grades (all 5s in APs, which you can be held to in a conditional offer)?
Yes it is a UCAS specific reference fortunately! I had gotten some help navigating the application process with Warwick’s North American outreach team last year around May and they had given me a ton of info about UCAS references which I then gave to my counselor. They said they had read it and understood that they should be talking to my subject specific teachers about grade predictions and my overall academic ability. I just got a little worried because I saw a number of forum posts mentioning how Oxford applications will usually have a reference from a teacher saying “X was the best student I’ve had the past Y years.” I basically posted because I was worried that there was some rule I had missed saying references for top universities had to come from teachers directly. My counselor has likely written a great reference in the proper format for UCAS! I’ll check in with them over the next few days to be sure they did it totally right and included all my teachers quotes directly!
That’s good. You are very fortunate to have a counselor who cares enough with sufficient time to do this. We had enough problems with counselors failing to follow the US process (eg D’s counselor failed to send her transcript to UT because Texas doesn’t use the common app, and she nearly got rejected as a result).
The main issue to be super sure about is the predicted grades, it’s all too easy to have a teacher who mistakenly predicts a 4, thinking “they’ll get at least that” when the reaction from the UK will be “they’re not very good” (because a 5 is easy).
