Take us back to the moment you received the notification that you had been given the offer to study at Oxford University.
I remember that morning I was obviously quite stressed so I put everything on Do Not Disturb so I could at least try to focus on my lesson. I thought the best thing to do would be to check with people around me, so at break I went to the common room and checked my phone. I actually didn’t get an email from the University straight away, just a UCAS one, so I logged in and saw I’d been offered a place. My friends were there with me, and others started to come over, and I told them I had gotten an offer. I did scream a bit but I was also conscious that not everyone had gotten an offer so I tried to not be too obnoxious about it. Also, I knew that getting an offer didn’t mean I was actually in, as I first needed to get the grades, so even if I was obviously happy, I knew that I still had a lot of work to do.
Oxford interviews are famous for being intense or asking ‘weird’ questions. What was your actual experience like? Was it as scary as the rumours say?
I really enjoyed my interviews; I thought it was so cool to be able to have discussions on things that I am interested in with world experts. Some questions were definitely tricky, but I found that saying what I knew to start grounding my answer really helped. I think the weirdest thing from my interview was when I got shown some playing cards with really odd images drawn on them, and the interviewer asked me to talk about what I could learn about the society that had made those cards. That was quite challenging, but I enjoyed having a discussion on it. The tutors were really friendly, so even though the interview wasn’t easy by any means, I definitely had fun. I also thought that being myself made the whole experience less nerve-wracking, so I never pretended to be someone I’m not and even managed to crack a couple of jokes whilst still having an academic discussion.
A lot of students look at you now and assume you found school easy. Was there a time in Year 10 or 11 where you struggled or failed at something? How did you bounce back?
I would say that I definitely found GCSEs much easier than A-levels, but I obviously still struggled. I remember a big thing for me was getting better at maths because I really enjoyed it as a subject and I found it quite easy in lesson but then during mocks I would panic and forget everything. I really wanted to get a 9, so I had to do as much practice as possible to expose myself to different types of questions, which eventually helped me to be calmer during exams. For my actual GCSEs, I found P1 quite hard, and I felt very bad about it afterwards because I was scared I wouldn’t get a 9. What helped me the most was talking about it to my friend Godsfavour, because he really helped me to put things into perspective and to not be so hard on myself. The other two papers were much better than the first and I was able to get my 9, which was very nice.
If you could give one piece of advice to the current Year 11s, what would it be?
Nerd out!! Be passionate about what you find interesting: talk to people about it, read books, listen to podcasts, enter competitions. This is obviously great stuff to do because they are all things you can include in your personal statement later on, but mostly your own personal enjoyment is what matters most. In secondary school, I was very passionate about English literature, and even if I gravitated away from that in Year 12, I still cherish all the times I was able to write random essays or talk about books with anyone. Sometimes it can be intimidating to be passionate about your interests when no one around you shares that passion, but I still think pursuing them in the long term will reward you both academically and personally.
