Extra and Super Curricular Activites | Applying to Cambridge or Oxford

hey friends and welcome back to my series on applying talks in cambridge my name is ray and i'm a first year cambridge student studying physical natural sciences and in this video i'll be talking about extra and super curricular activities as always time stamps will be in the description below so feel free to skip to any part of the video you find useful but as a disclaimer most of what i will be saying won't apply to medicine i would suggest watching other videos or reading about articles and how extracurricular and supercritical activities work medicine but anyway let's get started so this may be

the first time you're hearing about the term super curricular activities what exactly are they and how can they be useful let's begin by discussing what extracurricular activities are they're basically any activities that you do in your own time that fall outside the school curriculum this can include playing sports doing theater playing an instrument if you're not applying to music drawing art art and much more whereas super curricular activities are basically anything that you do in your own time that is tied to the subjects you are applying for this can include participating in a debate club reading the economist listening to science podcasts or blogging about your subject i'll be covering a few more examples later on but they're basically anything that ties to your subject and you choose it in your own time so

you may be thinking what's the point well super curricular activities can help you in a number of ways number one they can help you decide which subject you want to study at university as you're learning about the subjects outside the curriculum number two it gives you more to write about in the application to university number three it shows universities that you're interested in the subject as you take the initiative to explore beyond what's taught in the classroom or in the syllabus number four it can develop important skills such as critical thinking absorbing information taking different viewpoints on topics and all of these can appear in admissions assessments and interviews and during your time at university and there are so many other things it can be useful for the range of things you do is massive and most of them can be free or very cheap so whenever you search about

applications to oxford cambridge you always hear that supercritical activities are much more important than extracurricular ones the reason for this being is that admissions decisions are based on academic criteria and how well you engage or explore a subject outside what you're taught at school forms part of this it even says on the cambridge website that a student's participation or not in specific extracurricular activities that are not relevant to the course applied for are not taken into account and do not affect the chances of being made an offer of a place at cambridge and i think an aspect of that comes down to fairness extracurricular activities are usually activities there are signs of a privileged upbringing while your parents may have spent hundreds of pounds for your music lessons or you live in a good area or you went to a school which offered a drama club or a range of sports you could compete and succeed in those from less privileged backgrounds would not have this level of opportunities money or time but bioxa and cambridge are not judging students based on extracurricular activities but instead in how good they are and how much they enjoy the subject they're applying for by their involvement in super critical activities which usually don't require much money makes the whole process a bit fairer and these activities are quite accessible to less privileged students as books exploring the subjects can be quite inexpensive and watching lectures on youtube or reading and critically analyzing the news and global events is free however as a warning many other universities in the uk do you like to see some evidence of extracurricular activities for example durham university you can see a video i linked in the description about it but then again these extracurriculars don't have to be amazing like being the captain of the schools football team they can simply be volunteering in a charity shop or even helping out at your local library or making youtube videos for example hey it's me ray from the future editing this video i forgot to mention that if you're applying for oxford and cambridge it does not mean that you should only do supercritical activities you have to remember that you can apply for up to five universities as part of your ucas application and some of them may like to see extracurricular activities and your interests outside your subjects but remember that these don't have to be anything amazing i would recommend that you still try and do some extracurricular activities if you haven't done so already so you can increase your chances of getting offers from other universities which can serve as your backups for if you don't get an offer from oxford cambridge basically i'm trying to say that don't put all your eggs in one basket and just try and think of the bigger picture so

there's an endless array of supercritical activities the most common examples include participating in a debate club reading the economist new scientist scientific american or any other newspapers or magazines or journals listening to podcasts about your subject you can always find more by looking your podcast app or searching it online reading books relevant to your subject blogging attending summer skills entering math science or writing competitions and even watching documentaries or youtube videos relevant to the subjects you're applying for and there's so much more i put some links in the description to places which gives super curricular activity suggestions but you can still google what's relevant to your subject by searching something like philosophy super curricular activities or you can try to be a bit more creative and buy parts online and build and program a robot if you're applying for engineering or you can take a weekend camping trip during which you observe and document wildlife if you're going to be applying for biology the possibilities and the ways of engaging with your subjects outside the school curriculum are basically endless i will be going through my examples of supercritical activities in the video where i go through my personal statement and explain why i wrote what i wrote

now that you have some kind of idea of what kind of activities you should be doing before applying for university i would share some of my own tips for doing them number one start early you don't want to be the person who crams in a bunch of activities days before submitting the application because you realize you have nothing to write about ideally you should be doing them throughout the year uh in the year before you're going to apply to university number two start small many activities don't take a lot of time to do you can easily go on the news after this video and read an article relevant to the subject you want to study personally i used to just read five to ten minute articles by new scientists on my way to school once or twice a week but then i did a few more during the summer including reading books number three keep a record keeping a record of any activities you're doing and how it is developing in your thinking knowledge and any other skills you may have can be really helpful when it comes down to writing your application for me i just made a few notes on books i was reading and a few articles using google keep but you can use any other note-taking app where you can even use pen and paper number four you should try and follow a story you don't want to read three books on x and 17 articles and why as if you're just trying to jump around trying to build up some numbers it's more interesting for the admissions office to read your application and see that there's a story here for example you could say that you read an article on new scientist which led you to pick up a book on a topic which led you to contact someone at a local university and ask to do a lab placement which you then blogged about and or made a video about or made a presentation for the students or an article could have led you to contact a local member of parliament and ask them if you can follow around them around for a day and get a glimpse of their decision-making processes and whatnot basically the possibilities for a story are endless and you should try to have a story when you're doing your super critical activities number five focus on what you're getting out the activity many people just write that they've read search and such a book on the application but never go into more detail during your super curricular activities you should try and focus on what you're getting out of this activity how is reading this book changing your preconceived ideas about a particular time in history or how it led you to do x and y or it could even be that going camping to observe animals has improved your analytical skills and your understanding of evolutionary biology the list basically goes on but this goes back to keeping a record of your activities note down anything you're learning any skills you're developing and really trying to focus on what you're getting out of this activities don't just do them for the sake of doing it otherwise you'll have nothing to write about when it comes down to writing your application this is much like focusing on the quality of activities rather than the quantity also if you're finding you're doing an activity and you're not getting anything out of it then it's much better to save yourself some time and drop it and move on to something else and number six most importantly do something you enjoy this activity can give you a flavor of what it is like to be doing that subject at university if you want to apply for physics and you're programming some simple physics simulations but you find you're enjoying the computer science aspects more than the physics theory then you may want to reconsider what you want to apply for and maybe do some super computer science super curricular activities and see whether you're better suited to apply for computer science rather than physics this can give you a chance to explore a few different subjects and ultimately settle on the one you you're going to be applying for but of course all my advice may not work for everyone because after all there is no one-size-fits-all solution and that's basically it if you want a

more formal introduction to supercritical activities as given by my cambridge college st john's college then i would recommend watching this following video on supercritical activities i will put a link down below in the description if you're interested in the activities that i did then you can find me talking through them in my personal statement and the rest of my planning talks within cambridge series otherwise you can look at the links in the description to figure out what things you should do next but as always thank you for watching if you found this video useful then leave a like if not leave a dislike and please leave a comment down below letting me know why and if you have any questions about anything i mentioned then leave a comment down below and i'll try to get back to you but that's basically it for now and i'll see you next time