Computer Science at Oxford
Completing the UCAS form
From Computer Science at Oxford
Computer Science specific)
The UCAS form is your most important opportunity to tell us about yourself. The information you give us will help us to decide whether to invite you for an interview. It will also help us to make sure that we cover in the interview everything that is relevant to your application. In deciding whether to offer you a place at Oxford, we will consider the information you give us on the UCAS form together with what we have found in the interview and written test.
UCAS publish a comprehensive guide to completing the form, so I will concentrate here on underlining a few points that are often overlooked. The UCAS forms are photo-reduced before we get them so that the whole form fits on two sides of A4, and we sometimes have to read a copy that has subsequently been faxed. That means that you should use large type if your personal statement or reference is word-processed: otherwise it can become almost impossible to read.
Page 1
Page 1 of the form is fairly simple to complete.
E-mail: We do not normally communicate with applicants by e-mail during the selection process, and I would try to avoid giving out the results of an application by e-mail for reasons of security, confidentiality and reliability. On the other hand, it is sometimes useful to be able to get in touch by e-mail after we have offered you a place. So it is not especially important to us that you give an e-mail address, but if you have one, do put it in.
Fee code: Most applicants from the UK are in categories 02 or 22. If you do not fall into one of these categories, please let us know as much as you can about how you will be financed. This will not affect your chances of being offered a place, but colleges will need to satisfy themselves that you have financial support before making an offer.
Disability: Do tell us if you have a disability or special needs. Giving us this information will not adversely affect your chances of being offered a place, but if you do come to Oxford, it will help us to ensure that everything is in place to enable you to take a full part in university life.
Choice of courses: Note that you must not apply to both Oxford and Cambridge, except in special circumstances. The reason for this is simple: applications to both universities are very competitive and we work to fixed quotas, so we need to be as sure as we can be that the people we offer places will tend to accept them. If we allowed people to apply to both universities, the result would be a chaos that would lead to less fair results for everyone.
Additional information: This information is removed from the copy of the UCAS form that we receive.
Page 2
This page is for you to tell us about the qualifications you have taken or are about to take. The rules about what you should include are clearly set out in the UCAS guide. Note that you must tell us about your results in any qualification for which you have been awarded a certificate, even if you are taking the qualification again with the hope of improving your results. You may think that poor results make your application look bad, but it looks much worse if we subsequently find out that you have hidden them.
Also note that module results for AS or A2 subjects should not be included in either part of page 2, although your referee may refer to them in his or her reference.
Page 3
The Personal Statement is your opportunity to be creative. You should use it above all to tell us why you want to spend three or more years studying your chosen subject at university, and give us some things to talk to you about in the interview. The list in the UCAS guide gives a good summary of the things you might want to cover, but for all of them the same advice is valid:
- Be personal. Tell us things that will set your application apart from others
- Be concrete. It's easier for you to show your enthusiasm by giving us brief details of things you have actually done, and why you found them interesting.
- Be specific. Pick out highlights of your experience in Maths, Science or Computing to give depth to the general picture.
Here are some other suggestions that you might like to think about.
If you follow these guidelines, then you will help us to form a mental picture of you as a person committed to your chosen course of study. We will be likely to remember your application even after we have read a pile of others, and to be looking forward to meeting you at the interview.
Remember that you only write one personal statement which will be used for all your course choices. If you're applying for a joint degree such as Computer Science and Philosophy you will need to explain why you are interested in both aspects of this joint programme. (Admissions tutors at other universities where you are applying for single honours programmes will simply ignore this bit if it isn't relevant to them.)
