In this subject guide, Ayush talks us through his experiences when applying to study physics at Oxford, and what you can do to get a head-start on your application!
What’s the Course Like?
The Physics course at Oxford is either a 3-year or a 4-year course, depending on whether you wish to get the BA, or stay on for the MPhys. Regardless, there are exams at the end of each year, and the first two years are common to both, before the courses diverge. The details of the course structure can be found on the physics department website.
You’ll have roughly 10 lectures each week, which are generally in the mornings before lunch. Lectures for different topics usually run in parallel, and so do the tutorials. There are about 2 tutorials (or ‘tutes’) a week, for which you’ll be assigned problem sheets. These sheets can be quite challenging, so you don’t have to fret about being unable to answer a question. The tutors will then discuss the solutions and help clarify any part of the lectures you may not have understood in your tutorials.
Then there are the labs, which give you a chance to hone your experimental skills. You will be given a lab script with instructions to conduct the experiment and analyse the data, and take about 6 hours of your day. There are also incredibly helpful demonstrators who are there to save your day if your experiment goes wrong, or to just work you through it if you get stuck somewhere.
Your labs also have some computing work, either in the form of data analysis or as separate computing lab assignments. Don’t worry – there are introductory computing courses in the first year to prepare you, even if you haven’t coded before!
Personal statement
A general rule of thumb for the personal statement is to try to make the person reading it (your potential future tutors) think that you are the absolute biggest physics lover (nerd) to walk the Earth. Your tutors want to see that you’re going to be engaged during tutorials and enthusiastic about what you’re learning about (and able to stay motivated through the long study hours). In order to do this, try and get as many things written down that actually give evidence for your interest in the subject (rather than just waffling about how much it means to you and so on). For example, books you’ve read, lectures you’ve watched, magazine subscriptions you have, related projects/speeches/EPQs you’ve done and so on (make sure you’ve actually read/done these things by the time your interview rolls around or you risk looking like an idiot). Also, it might be worth skimming over anything you mention before your interview so that you know what you’re talking about.
There’s a bit of a balancing act with this, as other universities tend to care a bit more about general personal achievement and well-roundedness, so you really want to still mention that Grade 8 violin you’ve achieved, that scholarship you won, that job that you’ve worked at consistently and so on…. From my experience Oxford will mostly ignore anything that isn’t related to physics but you don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot for your other applications.
PAT
This is BY FAR the single most important part of your application process. Oxford wants results. This is how you can prove you can get them. An extra 2% here will probably make more difference than reading that extra physics book (you can focus on that after you’ve taken the PAT as well). To prepare, first look at the syllabus. Make notes on it just so you have all of the equations you need and aren’t going to be thrown off when they ask you about the difference between a lunar and solar eclipse (lunar = Earth’s shadow on Moon, solar = Moon blocking Sun, in case you don’t know!). Then do the past papers. All of them. At the end of the day, it’s good revision for your A-levels and there’s not that many of them anyway. You can find unofficial mark schemes online very easily and if you want a bit more help and you/your family have the money, you can get a physics tutor to go through them with you (this isn’t necessary in any way – I didn’t). Don’t be disheartened when you get 40% on your first try, it’s meant to be hard – I think a fairly standard score for successful applicants is around 65%. All in all, there’s a large amount of luck involved in the application process, it all comes down to how you perform on certain days and what questions you get asked but improving your PAT score is the most sure-fire way to get noticed.
Interviews
Physics at Teddy Hall normally has 2-3 interviews, but note that the number of interviews you get are NOT indicative of your chances of admission whatsoever. I had 3 interviews – one focussed on math and one on physics, along with one on both but at a different college.
The interviews are conducted by the tutors who will teach you at the college, and are intended to see how you approach the questions and how you would fit in the tutorial system. As such, you will be asked to explain your thought process as you go about solving the problem on the whiteboard (or virtually), and the tutors will ask you questions and try to guide you to the right path if you’re unsure about the solution. They’re intended to be conversational and engaging, and similar to how your subject tutorials would be.
The questions themselves are usually based off topics you hopefully already know, just applied in a more challenging way and requiring some analytical thinking. You will likely also be asked some graphing questions, where you’ll be asked to qualitatively sketch the graph of some function by considering certain limits and its extrema.
There may also be a few questions whose solutions you aren’t expected to be able to find, and are more of an exercise to see how you think about the problem. So don’t sweat if you get stuck on a problem – just talk through your approach and you’ll be fine.
Finally, try to not think about your interviews once they’re over. It may feel like your nervous clumsiness or silly addition mistake would’ve surely ended any chances you have of getting in, but remember that the interviewers are human too! They know just how nervous interviewees can get, and they’ll try their best to put you at ease instead of penalising you for it. So just try and enjoy the process (I know it’s easier said than done), and use this as an opportunity to meet new people and have fun!