Admissions Tests | Applying to Cambridge or Oxford

hey friends and welcome back to my applying for oxford or cambridge series so if you're new here then my name's ray and i'm a first-year cambridge student studying physical natural sciences at st john's college and i thought i'd make a video on admissions tests because often the misconception people have is that you can't actually prepare for oxford or cambridge admissions tests and my teachers at six film actually say the same thing for a number of years until um one year a few students decided to actually prepare for the tests um and in that year my sixth film actually had the most number of offers they ever had and from then on the teachers decided to encourage students to prepare for their admissions test also it's never too early to start some preparation because being consistent over a long time is key um you'll see more of what i mean by this as we go along so do watch the video in full and even if you have a few months to go i'm sure you'll learn a few things that you can put into action anyways i'll start by talking about registration and dates of the tests in general and then move on to ways of preparing for them but as always timestamps will be in the description down below

so registration the first thing to remember is that you have to register for the admission test in the subject you're applying to if you miss the registration deadline then you won't be able to see the test and your application may just end up being discarded i would recommend emailing your school or asking your exams officer as soon as possible because you don't want to miss out on the registration deadline you can find the actual deadlines online but sometimes schools actually have their internal deadlines which is a week or two before the actual one but it's worth making sure by asking your school if you're not sure which subjects you want to apply to then you have this number to figure that out i was actually conflicted between applying for physics at oxford or applying for natural sciences at cambridge but eventually i settle in cambridge but because both of them require different admissions tests i actually prepared for them both over the holidays and preparing for one also helps me when i set the other one in october time

so dates the tests usually take place whilst you're in year 13 which is the last year of school before you enter university so there are three dates for which oxford and cambridge admissions tests usually take place the exact date depends on which subject you're applying to and at which university so i would recommend googling it but um firstly there's late october slash early november which is when the vast majority of admissions tests take place on the same day and then secondly there's add to interview admissions test i know this is a case for cambridge at some colleges you may have to say an admissions test if you're invited for an interview these usually don't require registration but you should check on your college website to see if this applies to you so then there are may june admissions tests and these tests you sit alongside your a levels and they usually form part of an offer so if you're invited for an interview and you get offered a place it may say as part of your offer that you have to set this test and get this grade in the test and this is usually the case for when you're applying for maths at cambridge uh you have to set a test called step so in my case i had to say one admissions test on the 31st of october which lasted two hours and i had to set another one when i was invited for an interview at st john's college which lasted another hour and for some colleges you may not have to send another admissions test at the interview whereas for others you do so it's worth checking but this may be different in your case so the sooner you google the information relevant to you the better

now during your preparation don't get caught up in googling averages or other statistics for the admissions test you'll be setting um it can be really tempting to spend hours looking at all this information and weighing up your chances of getting in but it's important to remember two things number one you could spend those hours actually preparing for the admissions test to increase your score on the test rather than actually researching and weighing up your chances and because increasing your score will actually increase your chance rather than a bunch of googling and sure you can research a bit to know like what the average is and what you should be aiming for but don't get caught up in it and if you're not hitting the average or getting better than it then remember it's only your foot first as second even seventh try don't worry you can always improve if you follow some of the advice in this video and number two remember the test only forms a part of the whole application process so if you don't do as well as you would have liked um then the admissions tutors will look at other parts of your application to see what good things they can pick out and find any other strengths you may have of course you should still make an effort to do well but it won't be the end of your application if you don't do as well as you would have liked uh you may still be invited for an interview and you may have another chance to impress them but ultimately remember these questions are going to be hard because they're meant to differentiate between the most able students even 50 to 60 percent is considered a good score in many of these tests

also find the syllabus for the test you're going to be sitting if there is one and go through to make sure you've covered everything that could be on it if you're not sure about any minor details or what it could mean or it's a bit vague then either google it ask your teachers or if you do enough past papers and you'll sort of figure out what that meant usually the syllabus isn't a major concern as it closely follows what most people do in their a levels but if you're international student and you don't do a levels then it would be worth looking at it so using

past papers this section mainly applies to stem subjects because i did maths for maths physics and chemistry for a level but hopefully some humanity students can take some inspiration from my device so the most valuable resource is to go through some actual past papers for the admissions test you're planning on setting you can usually find them on a website after a bit of googling but i recommend doing these papers because the question format um is a bit different to what you usually do in a levels but you can quite get quite used to it after a few past papers so i personally decided to do all the past papers for the admissions test i'd be doing and that's because there were only a few of them but i went from the oldest to the newest and i saved one for a few days before my actual test i spaced them out and made sure i was doing enough practice between uh between each paper using some of the other resources i'll mention later to make sure i was improving my skills between each paper but i'd say the earlier you start doing them the better i personally started a serious preparation about um a third of the way into my summer holidays but of course you can start earlier um and even if you're like halfway through year 12 or on the summer holidays after year 11 then you can focus on improving your problem solving skills for hard problems from some of the resources i'll mention later over the next couple of months because improving these skills will make the process of doing and preparing for admissions tests easier you should also practice these admissions tests under timed conditions if possible because usually time pressure is the biggest problem for many students i find that many questions can be done if you have enough time but combining the number of questions you have to do with the amount of time you have ends up making the exam quite difficult but of course when you're starting out and you're finding it quite difficult then you can do on time to get into to improve your skills but be sure to move on to doing them under timed conditions as soon as possible and once you finish doing a past paper timed then it would be a good idea to market you can find the official mark schemes sometimes on the official website or you can find ones written by older students by doing a bit of a googling and you'll find it on like the student room or something but remember not to mock your paper straight after doing it any questions you skipped because they were too hard do not look at the solution right away i find the problem is that many students will give up and look at the solution to an answer too soon or when they're marking the paper they'll just look at the solution of a question they skipped um and i don't think this is a good idea because reading someone else's solution to a question might make sense in your head because you feel like you're following the steps they did but i often find it's not about the steps themselves it's about making the jumps between steps and making the jump from the questions to the first step which is a challenging part that jump could be between turning the statements into set of equations to solve or spotting a trick or spotting some kind of symmetry which makes the question easier it's quite easy to read the steps and see the jumps that other people have made but i think the real challenge comes from making the jumps yourself on the timed conditions so you're gonna have to fight with the question to be able to make the jumps on your own and once you've made those jumps at once then they'll be gradually easier the next time and even easier the following time to make the same jump or a similar jump in questions so by fighting with hard questions i mean that you shouldn't look at the solution for a question you couldn't do right away or skipped you shouldn't look at the solution rather you should attempt the question again after you finished doing the paper under timed conditions outside those timed conditions you should do the question again and you may be stuck for 10 30 minutes maybe even an hour or more um but you will have to take a break um in between thinking about the question and i often find that many people after taking a break and they come back to a problem they can spot a mistake they've made um or they can uh they'll have a new approach a new fresh idea of how to tackle a problem um and i find that this is the most effective way of like learning to tackle hard problems because once you've tackled it once it makes questions in that category much easier to do the next time around but of course that doesn't mean you should spend forever on the same question and just endlessly being stuck if you still have no idea how to do the question like after a day then it's a good idea to look at the solution and make sure you really understand it understand the jumps being made between steps and why they're being made and then make a note of that question and come back to it in a few days or weeks and try and do it again without the solution and see if you can follow the same kind of jumps and argument the person who wrote the solution made so once you've done that for every question on the paper only then should you look at the mark scheme for the whole paper and then you can calculate how many marks you gained in the time you spent in the two or three hours the test however long the test is and then calculate how many marks you gained uh outside that time by attempting the questions in your own time so ultimately your aim is to improve after each paper and get better and the most effective way would be to learn from your mistakes after each paper so you can make the most out of it i personally think that if your admissions test has like 20 past papers and you did seven of them would spend a good amount of time improving your skills and learning from your mistakes after each paper then you'll do much better than someone else who rushed through like all 20 papers and spent no time getting better after each paper and understanding like some of the more challenging questions also if you still don't understand the solution or you can't figure out a question at all then i would recommend asking some of your friends or asking your teacher for some help i did this a few times for some chemistry questions on the admissions test i did because at a level chemistry was my weakest subject finally if you have some time it may be worth thinking about some alternative solutions for questions you've already done and got right because it could be faster in certain cases and save you some of the time so you can attempt more questions in the exam um and it may even be worth googling the question to see if other people have solved it in different ways and whether you can understand the ways they've solved it and add those techniques into your own toolbox to solve questions that like that later on anyways i can make a whole separate video on all my advice for problem solving but for now i've just left a link in the description to show a problem solving guide i've written so

besides doing past papers of course there are a number of other resources you can use to improve your score and of course they don't have to be directly linked to your subject so in my case because you can't apply for both cambridge and oxford i actually practice for the cambridge natural sciences as missions assessment and the oxford physics aptitude test which is abbreviated to the pat um because i wasn't sure whether i wanted to apply for oxford or cambridge until about september but using the techniques i outlined above i managed to improve my pet score from like the low 40s uh from the start of the summer holidays to about the high 80s by the end of it which is almost double the score i even did some uh oxford mathematics aptitude test papers to improve my math skills as well which i found quite useful but ultimately it's about using any thing that improves your problem-solving skills sometimes i even did some step questions and other times i did questions from the british physics olympiad to improve my score and because me referencing resources could end up being a whole video of its own i thought i'd just make a short list of resources which i've linked in the description down below and i'll be adding to it over time so i would suggest reading it and then coming back to it a few times by bookmarking it and just see what's new i also recommend googling whatever people use to prepare for your specific admissions assessment online

and finally tracking your progress so i also made a spreadsheet to track my progress with doing papers and making sure i was being consistent i think the key is being consistent it's not like gcse or a level where some people can do 10 papers in a week and then come out with an a or a star in the actual exam it's about consistently doing past papers and making sure you're improving your problem solving skills and subjects related skills between each paper by using other resources and other websites and other papers so when i was preparing for the pants i personally had a plan of which papers i was going to do on which days and i aimed for doing one every three to four days under timed conditions and then between those days i spent time improving my problem solving skills and my physics skills using the resources i've linked to and by watching a few videos but of course your plan may be different depending on how many past papers you want to do and how much time you have left remember that it's sort of like doing exercise uh doing 30 minutes of exercise every day is gonna be much more effective than doing three hours and 30 minutes on a sunday even though it's the same amount of time but because you're being more consistent by doing 30 minutes a day you're going to be improving much more with each day ultimately you should do some research of the format of the test of what past papers you're going to be using whatever resources between doing those past papers um but don't spend ages coming up with a plan otherwise you'll have less time to actually put the plan into action and remember that with this plan you can always change it as you're going along if you find some things aren't working so well so

that's basically thanks for watching and i hope you learned something new i would also suggest watching my video on a level exam techniques because some of the techniques i mentioned can also apply to admissions tests and also watch from the rest of my series on applying to oxford or cambridge which should be linked somewhere right now but anyways i hope you liked the video and if you did then leave a like and if not then leave a dislike and let me know why and if you have any questions and leave a comment down below and i'll try my best to get back to you but anyway that's basically i'll see you next time so bye