For our Year 13 students, Amy and Katie, their aspirations to join the ranks of our Oxbridge students are on track to come true! Amy has received an offer to study Biology at Oxford, while Katie has an offer to study Classics at Cambridge. Both girls have worked incredibly hard to achieve these offers, which involve a rigorous and hugely competitive admissions process.  

Each year our Blackheath High School students head off for new climes to a variety of exciting destinations and our current Year 13s are no different. Our students have now started to receive a range of great offers from leading universities such as Durham, Manchester, Edinburgh, Exeter, Birmingham, King’s, Queen Margaret University, Warwick and York. In order to realise these offers, they will now be very much focused on their final A-level exam preparation with the support of our brilliant Sixth Form team. 

Hear from Amy below on her key reasons for choosing Oxford, her career aspirations and what it is like to go through the competitive admissions process:

A truly positive Oxbridge admissions experience 

I couldn’t say exactly when I decided I wanted to apply to Oxford; in fact as a child I thought I would want to go to Cambridge as I had been told that it was more suited for studying STEM subjects. However, my mum went to Oxford, and I have grown up hearing stories of the amazing time she had there, which prompted us to spend a short weekend there after GCSE results day. I immediately fell in love with the feel of the city. I felt inspired by the multitude of old libraries and beauty of the colleges, and I think it was here that I really started to imagine myself at the university. While my mother is undoubtedly my biggest inspiration (and supporter), my decision to apply was confirmed as my interests became more refined and I realised that it was Biology I wanted to study. I felt that Oxford offered the best course that allowed me to fully explore the depth of the subject.  

In the future, I would love to be part of something that really makes a difference to the wider world: whether this is research into cures for diseases or finding solutions to tackle climate change, I feel I have chosen a degree with huge scope for discovering new interests and jobs that I would like to be a part of.   

The admission process was definitely stressful at times, but I truly felt supported by school at every step of the way. Biology requires no admissions test or submitted written work, making it a lot less complicated than other applications - this gave me more time to read material relevant to my course, which I found really interesting. I found my personal statement quite difficult as it was hard to communicate everything I wanted to in such a short piece of writing. But it put me at ease to hear from professionals at the Oxford open day that the personal statement was mostly used to find a genuine passion for the subject. In my experience, it ended up being more of a point of conversation in my interviews than anything else.  

With regards to the interviews, I can honestly say that there were certain aspects of them which I enjoyed and I found it really exciting to discuss topics I was passionate about with people at the top of their fields. I would say the most important piece of advice is to try to stay calm and to be prepared as possible – practicing with different people really helped me. The most stressful part of the whole process was the wait to hear back as I felt I had done my best, but I couldn’t be sure if it was enough!  

Now that I have received an offer, I’m more motivated than ever to put everything I have into preparing for my A-levels in order to achieve the grades I need. I am trying my very best not to count my chickens before they’ve hatched, but receiving an offer has really given me the confidence I need to make it through the next few months of hard work. 

Written by Amy, Year 13