The University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge are the most famous universities in the UK; they are both extremely prestigious and notoriously difficult to gain admittance to, resulting in driven, competitive, and aspirational students and graduates.

To support students applying to these universities, we are publishing a series of articles on the admissions and applications process required, the courses available, and the universities themselves. In this article, we discuss the collegiate system and key steps to follow in choosing a college at the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge.

The Collegiate System

Neither the University of Cambridge nor the University of Oxford has a central university campus; instead, they are split into colleges spread across their respective cities. Oxford University is made up of 33 undergraduate colleges and Cambridge University is made up of 29 undergraduate colleges. However, it is the university, not the college that determines course content and awards your degree.

An Oxbridge college is a self-enclosed community within a complex of buildings including accommodation, common areas, libraries, cafes and bars as well as staff offices. Most colleges include between 300 to 500 students studying a range of subjects.

Academic supervisors tend to be based in the same college and run student seminars in their college rooms. However, lectures and larger classes are usually held in faculty buildings with students from other colleges studying the same subject.

The collegiate system allows students to become part of a smaller college community and meet students studying other subjects in the same college. Many activities and social events are based around the collegiate system as well as some friendly intercollegiate rivalries. There are also many university-wide clubs and societies which foster an intercollegiate community.

As part of your applications to Oxford or Cambridge via UCAS, you will be required to submit the College choice. You can choose a particular College or can make an ‘open’ application where a college is assigned to you at a later stage if successful. Applying to a particular college or making an ‘open’ application does not affect your chances of admission and interviewers can’t see whether you made an open application or selected a preferred College.

Choosing a College

Below are key considerations when deciding which college to apply to:

• Does the college offer your subject?

• Does the college require an entrance test before or for work to be submitted?

• What are the entrance statistics for the different colleges?

• What does the college look like?

• What types of accommodation does the college provide?

• Where is the college located?

Identifying which colleges offer your course is the first step in narrowing down the list of colleges to consider applying to. For the University of Oxford, you can access this information here. For the University of Cambridge, you can access this information by checking the profile of each college here.

It is also worth considering which colleges require an at-interview assessment or written work to be submitted. You can find information about what courses and colleges require here (Cambridge) and here (Oxford).

Understanding college admission statistics is useful for your decision of which college to apply to. However, caution is strongly recommended in making your decision based on this data; the success rate will vary depending on the number, strength, and course choice of applicants in a given year. You can visit the University of Cambridge website here to use the interactive graph generator to examine the different statistics for the particular course you wish to study. For the University of Oxford, you can access information regarding their admissions data from previous years here.

Looking at the college profiles here (Oxford) and here (Cambridge) will provide you with an idea of what each college looks like alongside more detailed information about their features, facilities, accommodation, and aspects. The University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge also offer virtual tours: here (Oxford) and here (Cambridge).

For more advice or for a free personalised application plan contact our team at info@libraeducation.co.uk.

We hope that this article will provide you with greater preparation for your application to study at the University of Cambridge or the University of Oxford. We wish you success in the next stage of your academic career.