How does one apply to OxBridge? International Baccalaureate?

Student Lounge International Students
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I’ve read many posts about applications to OxBridge and the test requirements. Frankly, I’m so relieved that they don’t make international students take England entrance exams. However, it does suck that they don’t consider ECs…
I know you need a 2100+ SAT or 32+ ACT. You need 3 subject tests 700+.

But for AP tests, they require 5 AP tests with scores of all 5’s. This worries me because what about the International Baccalaureate program? No one has addressed this issue. Do they have requirements with IB? What score do you need to meet the requirements? Do they consider IB as similar to AP tests? Do they give credit for IB tests?

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It’s significantly easier to score a 5 on the comparable AP exam than a 7 or even 6 on an IB exam. I recommend taking AP exams in addition to IB exams if you’re in the IB program, especially if your school pays for it.

Note that you can only apply to Cambridge or Oxford (not both), and the deadline for next fall is October 15.

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Also note that you’ll have to pay the full price tag - no scholarships for foreigners, so be expected to pay something along the lines of >$80,000 a year.

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@warblersrule First of all, is your name based on the acapella group from Glee? lol
Secondly, so should I take like APUSH when enrolled in IB History HL 3? Or AP CompSci with IB CompSci SL?
Holy cow thats going to be a whole lot of tests and money…
But really, the IB standards are extremely high… The highest score in all of my school’s history has been a 39, which doesn’t even fit Cambridge’s requirements. Maybe its best to take the AP correspondent.

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@BeCambridge Yeah that kind of sucks, but my parents have promised me that if I can actually get accepted, they will take loans and sell a house. That kind of sucks for me bc I don’t want my parents to have to do so much just to pay my ridiculous tuition.

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No, I lurked for a while on the [old forum](http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/) and then registered when this forum was created about 5 years before the first season of Glee. Not the username I’d choose today, perhaps, but after 11 years I’m used to it.

Some of the IB courses match up with the AP exams better than others. Glance over the syllabi on College Board’s website to get a feel for each AP course and exam. There’s practice exams available as well, both online and in book form.

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@warblersrule Aw what a shame, Glee is the greatest. Thanks! I’ll check it out

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There are a couple of people on this site who are very knowledgeable about Oxbridge applications, such @NotVerySmart and @collegemom3717. They can tell you much more than I can. But a few comments:

  1. Oxbridge looks for the "best of the best", similar to HYSPM here. Their criteria are different, but they are just as competitive and rigorous. Students are only allowed to apply to one of the two, and many people who don't meet the cutoffs don't bother to apply, so don't be fooled by "acceptance rates".
  2. Oxbridge doesn't provide a liberal arts education. You have to apply to a specific college in a specific field of study. These are not places for bright kids to explore what interests them - you'd better know what you want to do. Interdisciplinary programs are limited. Brilliance within your chosen field is much more important than overall ability, and the specific requirements vary by field. If you apply in math, you'd better be very, very bright and passionate about math, but your verbal ability is less critical; the same basic approach holds true for other fields.
  3. The general score cutoffs that you mention are just a minimum baseline to weed out potential applicants. Individual scores may vary by field of study, and may be more stringent. And meeting the score cutoff does not guarantee admission, it just gets you to the next step, which is the interview. All prospective candidates interview (some from foreign countries do it over Skype), and how you interact with the interviewers and handle questions about your proposed area of study will be critical in getting admission.
  4. Unlike U.S. schools, admission may be "conditional" on achieving predicted scores. If you are in IB, getting 6's and 7's on your final exams may be part of the condition of final acceptance. This can be very challenging.
  5. I think that @BeCambridge's $80,000 estimate is on the high side in some cases. But as a foreign student you will not be eligible for financial aid. Tuition varies by course of study - pre-med is generally the most expensive. Camrbridge tuition for foreigners (which is about twice that of British and EU citizens) ranges from about $23,000 for languages and humanities to about $55,000 for pre-medical and veterinary studies. And that doesn't include college fees (about $8,000-12,000 per year) and living expenses (about $15,000/year). So far pre-med/veterinary foreign studies those add up to roughly $80K. For a humanities student it would be more like $45-50K. But not cheap.

http://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/international-students/fees#college

Again, there are much more knowledgeable people than me about this process, and I would trust what they say over anything I’ve written. But from the limited discussion above, I would guess that you are underestimating the difficulty of getting in to Oxbridge.

What course of study are you proposing to follow? And to which university would you apply?

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I’d hardly call myself knowledgeable; I know about as much as any current applicant to these schools. I’m more familiar with the admissions process for Cambridge, so I’ll give advice on that basis. The two colleges are very similar from an admissions standpoint, but if Oxford does something differently I’m sure one of the other posters here will point it out.

Renaissancedad has addressed several key points already. I’ll add my two cents where I can, and introduce a few more. I’m essentially going to write a list of disparate observations, because I’ve had enough tests today that my ability to produce semi-coherent prose is flagging.

  1. Renaissancedad is right on acceptance rates. Applications to UK schools are done through the UCAS system (www.ucas.com), which only allows students to apply to 5 schools. This reduces the number of "your chances are 0 if you don't apply" applicants enormously, because while the cost of a quixotic application is $75 or so in the US, in the UK you're giving up 1/5 of your applications to more realistic colleges.

In most cases, UK guidance counselors will simply tell students who don’t meet Oxbridge’s minimums “You don’t have the grades. If you apply, I will not write the recommendation you need to get in. Apply to a more realistic school.” This can seem cruel, but it’s infinitely preferable to seeing that student with no acceptances at year’s end. The ~20% acceptance rate for Oxbridge is thus 20% of a self-selecting and highly qualified applicant pool who’ve already cleared one hurdle - their counselor believes they have enough of a chance at Oxford or Cambridge that it’s worth using one of their UCAS choices to apply.

  1. When I saw BeCambridge's post, I was poised to disagree, but Renaissancedad covered this as well. You won't pay $80,000 or thereabouts unless you're a medicine student.

I will note two additional points. #1 is that if you have an EU or UK passport (I’m a dual national, so I’m applying with my EU citizenship), tuition will be much lower. A friend of mine is currently studying at Cambridge, and his first year cost a total of approximately $25,000. College fees are waived for UK/EU nationals, and Cambridge provided him with accommodation on campus, lowering the overall cost substantially.

Point #2 is that if you’re a borderline applicant, and your family doesn’t need to worry about cost, applying as a US national can be a boost to your application. Cambridge likes having students from outside the EU and UK, whose tuition and college fees are a source of considerable revenue. The effect isn’t significant enough that you should choose this option if your parents will need to take loans and sell a house. It’s chiefly something to bear in mind if you’re the heir to a few million dollars and money really isn’t an object.

Of course, if (like most US applicants) you aren’t a EU dual national, the point is moot.

  1. I echo RD's point on the very specific nature of an Oxbridge education. It's virtually impossible to change your field of study once admitted; at Oxbridge, you're not so much admitted to the university as admitted "to read history at Oxford" or "to read law at Cambridge." This is because a few courses (law or math at Cambridge, PPE or history at Oxford) are so competitive that if the option to change course existed, students would apply to study literature or classics, then switch to medicine/law/PPE in droves. When you apply, you'll need to choose a very specific course of study, and before doing so you should be absolutely certain of the decision.
  2. @warblersrule is right that AP exams are generally easier than IB exams. However, as he/she also noted, some subjects' syllabus will overlap more than others. I personally decided not to take either of the SAT II history tests, for instance, because they were geared towards an AP curriculum that didn't seem very similar to the IB. The same is largely true of biology, in my experience.

The subjects where I can see the most potential for overlap are math, the languages, and physics/chemistry. No doubt there are others.

The requirements you’ve read about (subject tests/AP) seem to be a mishmash of the two schools’ demands.

Cambridge requires 5 AP scores of 5 and an SAT of 2100+ (with 1400+ in CR+M and 700+ in writing) or a 32 on the ACT. They don’t require any subject tests, however. Link: http://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/usa.

Oxford has the same SAT/ACT requirements, in addition to one of the following:

-3 or more AP exams with a score of 5
-700+ in 3 different SAT subject tests; or
-Some combination of AP/SAT II scores meeting the above requirements. These can’t be in the same subject (e.g. SAT Math II, AP Calculus AB, and AP Calculus BC). Link: http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses/entrance-requirements#.

At both schools, the AP/SAT II scores need to be in “appropriate subjects.” This would generally mean subjects related to your field of study - a 5 in chemistry tells them nothing useful about a student applying to study history. I don’t know what exactly Oxbridge considers “appropriate subjects,” as it’ll vary for each course. Your best bet is to contact the universities and ask.

Note that you don’t need to have all these scores already. You just need to be planning to complete them by the time you enroll. AP or SAT II tests that you’ll be taking next spring/summer are perfectly fine, as long as you make sure to list the future tests on your application. Of course you’ll then need to meet their threshold.

  1. You'll also be asked to fill in a couple of forms for Cambridge after you've sent your UCAS application: these are the Supplementary Application Questionnaire and the Cambridge Online Preliminary Application. I don't know if Oxford has similar forms, but it's not unlikely. The process will take a day or two at least, (I've got mine 99% done after a week), so don't submit your UCAS application on the 15th (or the 14th, or the 13th, or the 12th if you can help it). For the most part, these forms will just rehash the contents of your UCAS profile, but there are a few components which are new. Some of them aren't necessary (the additional personal statement, for instance). Others are rather important. Chief among these will be the list of your current courses (the IB will count as an A-level equivalent), and topics studied (more on this in the next post).

I realize this is a ridiculously long post already, so I’ll write another summarizing the application process itself.

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^ I would only add that the entry requirements for a specific course of study may be higher than the overall ones. For example, Cambridge is very rigorous about their engineering entry requirements:

http://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/courses/engineering

I should also add that education at Oxbridge is much more independent than at typical U.S. universities. Terms are shorter, and there are fewer hours of lecture, along with one-on-one tutor interaction and a lot of independent work and writing. No sitting in lectures and cramming before midterms and finals. This requires a high level of maturity and self-discipline, which again, isn’t for everyone.

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Great posts above…just a few more pieces:

  1. Tuition is only lower if you have *residency*, not citizenship: if you / your parents have not be tax-resident in the EU for the last 5 years you don't get the domestic tuition rates.
  2. Supplementals: Many subjects at both Cambridge and Oxford as for supplemental writing samples and/or tests. Most (but not all) subjects at Oxford have an Oxford specific aptitude test, which is taken in November, but you MUST register by 15 October; many also ask for graded school work. Cambridge is much more variable by course and college as to who wants writing samples and tests, and win- for some you do them before, some during interviews and some in June (after offers), so be careful to check.

3.Interviews are an absolutely critical part of admissions. They are a cross between an oral exam and a tutorial, and in almost all cases involve some element of doing something that is unfamiliar (eg, do a math problem that they know you wouldn’t have covered in school; analyze an unseen text, etc.). The idea is to see how you learn, how you think, how you bring all of the other learning you have done to the table.

  1. For 'relevant' subjects for tests, check the course listing on the website (the course listings are very detailed, and really worth reading carefully). The 'entry requirements' will tell you what courses you MUST have, and what ones they consider to be useful. Beyond any required courses, you can figure that a humanities course should have essay-based APs / SATIIs, and quantitative subjects should have quant-based subjects. Note that if Maths is listed as a required A level for UK students, that is AP Calc BC, not AB.
  2. To reiterate, it is important to know what you want to study, and for it to be something in which you have a genuine interest. Note that their view is that if you are genuinely interested in something you will probably find ways to engage with it on your own time- what you read, what you spend your time on. ECs are considered- if they are relevant to your field of study.
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I was planning before for med at Cam. Other subjects’ tuition will vary, though.

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So you want to apply to Oxbridge?

Here’s what to expect.

September/October 2015

Fill in the UCAS application. This will involve some basic info (name, address, nationality, etc) as well as details of the courses you have taken or will take by next fall, and a personal statement. You’ll need to enter SAT scores as well. The focus here should be on your personal statement.

The personal statement is not like US college essays. Writing it like a US college essay is a near-certain ticket to rejection. It’s essentially a summary of the reasons you want to study a given subject, and some ways you’ve explored it already. The limit is 4,000 characters and 47 lines, so be concise.

One good resource for advice on your personal statement is http://www.cife.org.uk/article/how-to-write-a-good-ucas-personal-statement/

OP, just sent you the text of my own personal statement, to provide at least one example. There’s a lot of “sample” personal statements on the internet, but most of them aren’t that good. Mine has gone through several rounds of feedback from my guidance counselor (who helps about 60 of our school’s ~90 graduates apply to the UK every year), so I’m hoping it’ll have some value.

18:00 GMT (noon EST), October 15 2015

This is the deadline for an application to Oxford or Cambridge. By this date, you need to have submitted your UCAS application and filled in the forms (SAQ and COPA). It’s only 9 days away, so hurry.

November 2015

You’ll (hopefully) receive notification of an interview date in December. There’s just one point where I have to correct renaissancedad, and that’s on the subject of interviews. Not all candidates will receive an interview at Oxbridge. The schools give about 80% of applicants interviews (the difficulty of arranging interviews for 80% of candidates is one reason you can apply to Oxford or Cambridge - they need to keep the number of interviewees reasonable somehow). This varies by program - I think the rate for Oxford PPE is well below 50% - but overall the rate hovers around 4 in 5.

Late November/December 2015

Your interview takes place. Since you’re a US applicant, it’ll likely be via Skype. Students in the EU are often asked to fly to Cambridge, while a few alternate sites (Singapore comes to mind) exist for people living at such a distance that they can’t make this sort of trip at the last minute. I gather students in Canada are asked to fly somewhere in-country for their interview.

The questions you’re asked during the interview will be based on two things: courses/books/activities mentioned in your personal statement, and course topics listed in the SAQ/COPA (as mentioned in my previous post). The responses you give will matter quite a lot - this isn’t like a US interview, which makes a difference only if it turns out very badly.

You won’t be asked to name the capital of Mongolia or anything of the sort (Ulaanbaatar, in case you were wondering). The interview questions will chiefly involve theoretical scenarios, and are a chance for you to show off your abilities. An Oxford PPE applicant from our school was asked to design a government from scratch last year. A classics applicant might be given a sample of a nonexistent language and asked to deduce its meaning. We had a Cambridge physics student two years ago who was asked to calculate the mass of the sun, on the assumption that a 2-square-meter solar panel could power a 75-watt lightbulb. It’s less about giving the “right” answer, and more about showing the interviewer how you think the question through.

The interview is the most important non-grade component of an Oxbridge application. If your guidance counselor (or any counselor he/she knows) has experience with the interview process, you’ll want to do 2-3 practice interviews before the real thing. This is something that is very much worth preparing for.

January 2016

Oxford and Cambridge evaluate student, largely on the basis of

-their grades/predicted grades (IB or otherwise)
-their interview; and
-“other” factors, such as instruments an applicant plays (Cambridge has a number of organ scholarships, for instance).

Around 80% of students received interviews. Now 25% or so will get an “offer” from the school they applied to. As stated by renaissancedad, offers from Oxbridge are conditional, and depend on your achieving a given IB score as well as minimum marks in certain subjects.

A typical Oxford offer is 42 IB points (including bonus points) with 7/7/6 in your HL subjects. If you’re applying for history, they’ll generally ask that you get a 7 in HL history. Medicine applicants shouldn’t plan on getting a 6 in biology or chemistry HL. Literature candidates need to do well in their IB English exam. You get the picture.

A Cambridge offer is typically 43 points, again with 7/7/6 in your HL subjects.

Both schools will extend more offers than there are places at the university, knowing that a certain number of students won’t achieve the grades they need. If you don’t make the offer they give you, that’s it. They make almost no exceptions; if you get a cancer diagnosis the day before your IB exams, they may disregard bad results, but few excuses will pass muster.

After you’ve received your offers from various colleges, and knowing what grades you’ll need for each, UCAS asks that you narrow your UK choices down to 2 schools.

May 2016

IB exams. This is a lot closer than it seems. Eek!

July 2016

IB results come out, and you discover whether you’ve met your Oxbridge offer. If so, congratulations. Let’s not consider the alternative.

The fact that US colleges’ enrollment deadlines typically precede IB results means you’ll be facing a dilemma. When you have your UK offers in hand, ask yourself: how likely are you to make that offer? If you’re one of 150 people in the world taking IB further math and your Cambridge offer is 35 with a 6 in math, you’re probably safe. If the offer is 7/7/7 with 44 points overall, do you want to turn down guaranteed acceptance at a US college and try to achieve that score? This is where difficult decisions need to be made.

I hope some of the above is useful, and at the very least it should give you some idea of the process as a whole. OP, if you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to post them here and I’ll answer them when I can. Good luck, and let me know how things turn out for you.

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@renaissancedad @NotVerySmart @collegemom3717 Firstly, thank you for the replies. Secondly, does this basically mean that OxBridge will offer you admissions and if you can get your IB score above their requirement, you get in?

That’s an awful lot of pressure. Thank you so much for all the information, especially regarding cost. I don’t think I want to put my parents under a financial burden. This has totally opened my eyes to the pros and cons of these schools.
It’s also a shame that they don’t let you experiment with your majors, like a liberal arts college. That interview also sounds hardcore. Instead of a friendly chat about your interests and unique qualities, they actually orally quiz you on the spot.
Thanks for the replies!!

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@NotVerySmart’s timetable is helpful for Cambridge but is off in some elements, especially for Oxford. Many Oxford applicants register for a subject-specific aptitude test in October and take it in November (also, many applicants to Oxford or Cambridge have to submit graded work with their applications). Many math-based subject applicants to Cambridge have to take the STEP exam in June, which is part of their conditions.

In some subjects, 80% of applicants get interviews- in others much less. US students can and do go to Oxford for their interviews; Skype is offered as an alternative for those who can’t make it there. To clarify on the interview question: applicants are shortlisted and invited to interview, but no applicant gets in without an interview.

It is misleading to say that the instrument that you play can be an “Other” factor in admission. The organ scholarships are a specific, exceptional thing. Your ace violin skills will not help you at all. The only other wild card is rowing- if you are a super-competitive rower that can (unofficially) be slightly helpful (an Olympic rower just graduated this year).

Otherwise, at Oxford, once you get to the interview stage the playing field is nearly level, and it is all about the interview, with admissions test scores helping to make final decisions . Predicted grades are not really part of the equation- because everybody HAS to have the requisite predictions to be considered, and pretty much they have to be top marks, so there is nothing to distinguish between candidates.

Also, offers can be unconditional, if you already have enough relevant test scores.

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@collegemom3717 Can’t thank you enough for the well written responses!!

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@divinggirl6 That’s correct: Oxbridge (and any other UK school) offers you admission if, and only if, you can earn IB scores matching their requirements. These vary by applicant, but meeting an offer is rarely easy, so you’re right that applying to Oxbridge is hardly the way to soothe one’s nerves. IB exams are difficult in and of themselves, and doubly stressful when university acceptance rests on them.

@collegemom3717 Good catch on the aptitude tests. I’d forgotten all about them.

I tend to see the “other” category as something that does go beyond organ scholarships. Cambridge also has choral awards, there’s the rowing element you mentioned, and many students will benefit from listing an ABRSM certificate on their application. As with most schools, connections at Oxbridge or national awards never hurt. These schools also like to see, from the interview or even the personal statement, that you’ve done something in furtherance of your academic interests outside the context of your school - a physicist interning at CERN, for instance.

In short there’s more to each applicant than academics and the interview, although Oxford and Cambridge certainly care about extracurricular activities less than US schools.

I didn’t know that Oxbridge gave unconditional offers - thanks for pointing that out.

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I get the impression that all this has been sobering for the OP. If anything, the process is more stressful and grueling than applying to the top U.S. schools.

From my simplistic perspective, a U.S. applicant thinking about Oxbridge might want to ask the following questions:

  1. Do I have a definite area of study that I want to pursue that fits within Oxbridge's courses?
  2. Do I have a documented record of brilliance and high achievement within that field of study?
  3. Do I meet at least the basic admission requirements for Oxbridge?
  4. Am I motivated and independent enough to be able to work well in the tutorial system?
  5. Given the lack of financial aid and higher fees for foreign applicants, is it financially feasible?

I would think those questions would screen out a lot of potential U.S. applicants.

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Overall, I’d agree that’s a good checklist, @renaissancedad, except for #2, which I would re-phrase along the lines of “Do I have a genuine and long standing interest in- and aptitude for- that field of study, that I can demonstrate through both test results and activities beyond the classroom?”. I know a fair few Oxbridge students who wouldn’t have even applied if they thought that they had to show brilliance :slight_smile:

20

^ Works for me. Though when I see an applicant who clearly does have “brilliance” and focus in one particular area, especially if they are very “asymmetrical” in their academic development, I tend to think of Oxbridge as something that might be worth exploring.

It hasn’t been noted in this discussion that Oxbridge is a 3 year program, in contrast to the U.S. schools. It essentially skips the freshman year of exploration and is for students who are ready to accelerate into a focused program of study. The 3 year length also factors into the cost analysis. It may also be worth noting that while it’s nearly impossible to switch courses of study, there is tremendous variabilty in terms of what graduates choose to do with their degrees, and many switch fields after they graduate.

@divinggirl6 , that’s not the point of the system. It’s not a liberal arts education, it’s a focused education for highly advanced and accelerated students.

For those interested in more of a liberal arts education overseas, University College London has an interesting program which does attempt to provide more of a liberal arts education, combining both humanities/social sciences and science/math into a customized (“bespoke”) course of study:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/basc/prospective

It’s a fairly competitive and prestigious program, and I believe it’s had some success even against Oxbridge as a model that integrates aspects of the UK and U.S. systems.