1 00:00:11,220 --> 00:00:16,140 OK. Hello, everyone, thank you for joining us today in Oxford. And welcome to you, the Mathematical Institute. 2 00:00:16,140 --> 00:00:22,590 Welcome to the mats open that I hope you have have you have a fantastic day? Say it's great to see so many of you here today. 3 00:00:22,590 --> 00:00:27,240 So my name is James. I'm the admissions coordinator for Masa Oxford. 4 00:00:27,240 --> 00:00:34,230 It's my job to make sure the admissions process is fair between all of the different colleges to make sure we take the best mathematicians. 5 00:00:34,230 --> 00:00:35,670 Here's the structure of the day. 6 00:00:35,670 --> 00:00:42,690 I'm going to take half an hour at the start to talk about mathematics at Oxford, and then I'm going to give you two tasters of mathematics. 7 00:00:42,690 --> 00:00:49,290 First thoughts. Becky Neal is going to talk about pure mathematics. And then it's Dominic Vella is going to talk to you about applied mathematics. 8 00:00:49,290 --> 00:00:53,190 Just to leave come between the sessions if he wants to. 9 00:00:53,190 --> 00:00:58,350 Later on, we've got 11:30. Neil Lawson James starts talking about two of the joint honours courses over here, 10 00:00:58,350 --> 00:01:04,050 and you might also be interested in talks over at the computer science faculty over the right. 11 00:01:04,050 --> 00:01:09,930 OK, but first, honestly, everything you need to know about mathematics at Oxford. 12 00:01:09,930 --> 00:01:16,350 So I'll forget. So welcome to the Andrew Wiles building. We've been based here since 2013, when the new building opened. 13 00:01:16,350 --> 00:01:19,350 It's a really nice building. It's got lots of maths built into it. 14 00:01:19,350 --> 00:01:26,160 I hope that while you're here today, you get a chance to look around the building and see some of the mathematical features that we built into it. 15 00:01:26,160 --> 00:01:28,650 This is where all of the maths lectures happen. 16 00:01:28,650 --> 00:01:35,010 It's also where we keep all of the maths researchers and all the lecturers and all the people doing cutting edge maths research. 17 00:01:35,010 --> 00:01:39,570 It's really nice having everyone in the same place in the same building as the Andrew 18 00:01:39,570 --> 00:01:46,230 Wallace building home of maths in Oxford has an intro to the courses that we offer in maths. 19 00:01:46,230 --> 00:01:53,310 We have eight of these really for four different courses maths and three joint honours courses maths with philosophy, 20 00:01:53,310 --> 00:01:55,890 maths statistics and maths with computer science. 21 00:01:55,890 --> 00:02:02,520 Each of those are offered as a three year BA or a four year master's course, and I put the approximate intake up there. 22 00:02:02,520 --> 00:02:11,290 We don't have a precise number, but the approximate size is about 190 mathematicians, about 20 or 30 on each of the joint honours courses. 23 00:02:11,290 --> 00:02:16,830 So say a little bit more about the joint honours courses in a moment, but I always talk about just mathematics first. 24 00:02:16,830 --> 00:02:23,700 Since that the that's the biggest of those four courses. So here's what you might study in the first year of our maths skills. 25 00:02:23,700 --> 00:02:28,410 These are the courses that we've currently been lecturing to our first years in this lecture room. 26 00:02:28,410 --> 00:02:31,880 So we've put all of our first year mathematicians together and we tell them about these topics, 27 00:02:31,880 --> 00:02:38,280 and it's a mix of things you've already heard about at school. But towards the end, from the ground up, things you've never heard of, 28 00:02:38,280 --> 00:02:43,780 possibly your new favourite sort of maths introduced to you in first year through these topics. 29 00:02:43,780 --> 00:02:47,670 So we've got things that you might have seen before, from pure maths like algebra and calculus, 30 00:02:47,670 --> 00:02:52,440 but thought again, new things like group actions that maybe don't get to see at school. 31 00:02:52,440 --> 00:02:55,770 We teach remote very calculus and apply techniques like partial differential equations. 32 00:02:55,770 --> 00:03:00,030 These are core skills that we think every mathematician should have so that later on, 33 00:03:00,030 --> 00:03:06,640 as you specialise into different sorts of maths, you've got these core skills at hand off the first year, 34 00:03:06,640 --> 00:03:09,690 we the second year where we go again, some some core courses, 35 00:03:09,690 --> 00:03:15,000 more of those skills that we think all mathematicians should have at the top there in large writing. 36 00:03:15,000 --> 00:03:22,500 And then some options for you to choose from. So you'll take five or six of these options from this list here in smaller writing. 37 00:03:22,500 --> 00:03:26,280 And again, this is more and more options for you to think about taking. 38 00:03:26,280 --> 00:03:29,370 So we've got some pure maths up there, things like modules and topology, 39 00:03:29,370 --> 00:03:36,300 but also more applied maths options like learning about fluid dynamics and waves and quantum theory and mathematical biology as well. 40 00:03:36,300 --> 00:03:40,120 We teach our mathematicians special relativity if they want to know about special relativity. 41 00:03:40,120 --> 00:03:44,290 So as a second year and then in third year, it's kind of more of the same. 42 00:03:44,290 --> 00:03:45,000 I put the slide up. 43 00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:52,230 Not really, so that you can read it, but just to demonstrate the huge variety of courses we're currently teaching to our third year mathematicians. 44 00:03:52,230 --> 00:03:56,160 You'll take maybe eight 10 of these courses in third year. 45 00:03:56,160 --> 00:03:59,910 So there's a huge variety of subjects up that we try to keep this up to date based 46 00:03:59,910 --> 00:04:03,690 on what our researchers are looking into based on cutting edge mathematics. 47 00:04:03,690 --> 00:04:08,700 Lots of these topics of maths didn't exist when we started teaching mathematics hundreds of years ago. 48 00:04:08,700 --> 00:04:11,320 As we try to keep it up to date, that's all. That's our third year. 49 00:04:11,320 --> 00:04:18,300 It's just to either specialise into your favourite bits of maths or chance to do broad study in different areas of maths, 50 00:04:18,300 --> 00:04:22,380 putting together these different topics that you might have seen. 51 00:04:22,380 --> 00:04:28,470 It's just like I don't have a slide for fourth year of mathematics the Masters course, because there are even more courses to choose from. 52 00:04:28,470 --> 00:04:35,250 There are about 50 or 60 courses at the moment in fourth year just to really specialise into certain areas of maths. 53 00:04:35,250 --> 00:04:41,790 One of the aims of our fourth year maths course is that it's a good preparation if you want to do the current research in mathematics. 54 00:04:41,790 --> 00:04:46,170 If you're interested in doing a Ph.D. or defence research and then our fourth year maths course is supposed 55 00:04:46,170 --> 00:04:53,010 to get you up to date in those areas of maths that you're interested in lots more topics in fourth year. 56 00:04:53,010 --> 00:04:58,410 So it's a little bit about the joint honours schools. I'll start with Matins statistics because it's the easiest to explain. 57 00:04:58,410 --> 00:05:05,640 The first year for maths and statistics is exactly the same as maths. You do that that same core skills sets of courses in the first year. 58 00:05:05,640 --> 00:05:09,930 After that, you get access to more options in second and third year. 59 00:05:09,930 --> 00:05:17,070 I more statistics options are, you know, the option to do more than 50 percent statistics if you want to assess the maths and statistics course, 60 00:05:17,070 --> 00:05:21,240 the chance to learn about machine learning and cutting edge data techniques. 61 00:05:21,240 --> 00:05:26,100 We also offer mathematics and philosophy, which is a chance for you to learn some core mathematical skills. 62 00:05:26,100 --> 00:05:26,580 But also, 63 00:05:26,580 --> 00:05:34,560 the underpinning philosophy will take some philosophy courses alongside some of some of the core mathematics doing about 50 50 in the first year, 64 00:05:34,560 --> 00:05:39,480 with a chance to specialise through second and third years into those areas which really interest you. 65 00:05:39,480 --> 00:05:43,860 Mathematics Computer science starts out exactly 50 50 between maths and computer science, 66 00:05:43,860 --> 00:05:49,810 but has the chance for you to take more maths or computer science courses as you go through second and third year. 67 00:05:49,810 --> 00:05:53,670 There's a joint on his courses again with a kind of flavour of mathematics throughout them, 68 00:05:53,670 --> 00:05:57,720 but the chance to take options from those other other subjects as well. 69 00:05:57,720 --> 00:06:03,510 I thought I'd say a little bit about the choice between three and four years. 70 00:06:03,510 --> 00:06:09,780 So the good news is you don't have to decide now whether you're going to be doing three years of mathematics or four years of mathematics. 71 00:06:09,780 --> 00:06:14,040 This is a choice that I see lots of our students haven't made yet because we only asked them to make this choice at the 72 00:06:14,040 --> 00:06:19,440 start of third year based on how exams are going and how the sorts of topics that they're interested in developing, 73 00:06:19,440 --> 00:06:24,210 they might choose to stay on for this fourth year of mathematics. 74 00:06:24,210 --> 00:06:29,850 Students, I'm a as I've said, we use that fourth year as a way to get up to speed with cutting edge mathematics. 75 00:06:29,850 --> 00:06:37,260 But but both degrees the three are in the four year degree, are well respected by employers for teaching you problem solving skills to be numerous. 76 00:06:37,260 --> 00:06:42,060 And in some cases, schools are really good at arguing logically about what's what's true. 77 00:06:42,060 --> 00:06:46,320 That's a choice between three and four years. You don't have to choose yet. 78 00:06:46,320 --> 00:06:50,880 Always want to throw in a quick advert for another fourth year course. I'm good maths and theoretical physics. 79 00:06:50,880 --> 00:06:57,390 You can't apply for this one now because it's it's just a fourth year master's course and it's in cutting edge physics. 80 00:06:57,390 --> 00:07:00,480 It turns out that modern physics is really mathematical, 81 00:07:00,480 --> 00:07:06,900 and the sort of skills that you need to be a modern physicist includes lots and lots of mathematical skills. 82 00:07:06,900 --> 00:07:12,050 So this is the fourth year course that we have met people from, from either mathematics degrees or physics degrees. 83 00:07:12,050 --> 00:07:16,140 And so after three years of doing maths, all three years of doing physics or physics in philosophy, 84 00:07:16,140 --> 00:07:20,550 you can apply to this fourth year dream master's in matters where theoretical physics and a huge 85 00:07:20,550 --> 00:07:25,410 variety of cutting edge physics in the based on maths topics and physics topics it's taught from. 86 00:07:25,410 --> 00:07:29,850 Taught by both departments because a quick advert for a master's course that you can't just apply for. 87 00:07:29,850 --> 00:07:35,040 OK, so how do we teach all of that content? We've got a kind of unique teaching model. 88 00:07:35,040 --> 00:07:40,170 We've got lectures which you might expect to imagine 200 or so mathematicians in in this 89 00:07:40,170 --> 00:07:43,620 room in first year and somebody standing here and teaching you maths at the boards. 90 00:07:43,620 --> 00:07:49,200 We've got a taste of what that might look like in half an hour if you stay for 15 hours. 91 00:07:49,200 --> 00:07:54,150 Obviously, as a company by problem sheets, we like to tell all mathematicians what to do to test how, 92 00:07:54,150 --> 00:08:01,380 how well they understand the topic so they can think about this in detail. But the nice thing we do in Oxford is we run these tutorials as well. 93 00:08:01,380 --> 00:08:08,250 So in a small group with maybe two or three students and one cheetah will be a college lecturer or a college member 94 00:08:08,250 --> 00:08:13,890 of faculty or a graduate student or someone who really knows the course to go through those problem sets with you, 95 00:08:13,890 --> 00:08:21,360 to talk about the course and talk about where the course is going on is the chance to have an hour of discussion about the course in some detail, 96 00:08:21,360 --> 00:08:26,670 which is really helpful for our students. It means we can put a lot of maths into our maths scores because we know that we've got 97 00:08:26,670 --> 00:08:30,960 that tutorial support to keep everyone up to speed with all the maths this developing. 98 00:08:30,960 --> 00:08:34,950 If there's something you don't really understand in the lectures, you can think about it on your own and then talk. 99 00:08:34,950 --> 00:08:39,240 Talk about it in the tutorial to keep up with all the maths that we're showing you. 100 00:08:39,240 --> 00:08:43,990 That's in year one and two in years three and four. Again, we're still doing lectures for each option, 101 00:08:43,990 --> 00:08:48,950 normally in smaller class rooms as people who specialise more into those options and we run intercollegiate classes. 102 00:08:48,950 --> 00:08:54,030 So pulling people together from different colleges into a slightly larger group to talk 103 00:08:54,030 --> 00:08:59,240 about the problem sets with a teaching assistant and possibly lecturers lecturer support. 104 00:08:59,240 --> 00:09:04,290 So that's the third or fourth year that we support everyone. Here's where it might look like for a typical week in first. 105 00:09:04,290 --> 00:09:09,840 Or at least you'd have 10 lectures here in this room 50 minute talks about mathematics these days, 106 00:09:09,840 --> 00:09:14,130 the lecturer might have handed out the notes beforehand on paper or online, 107 00:09:14,130 --> 00:09:19,830 and there's one problem sheet sets for every teach for lectures, something for you to work on in your spare time. 108 00:09:19,830 --> 00:09:23,370 I want to really stress the independent study is an important part of university 109 00:09:23,370 --> 00:09:27,270 study of being a mathematician to have these problems that you're stuck on. 110 00:09:27,270 --> 00:09:28,720 You don't know how to do. 111 00:09:28,720 --> 00:09:35,220 You have to think about how you're going to overcome these, these challenges by really thinking about all the maths that you've seen before. 112 00:09:35,220 --> 00:09:42,030 So independence is important. I put that up as a research in libraries talking to other students because communicating about maths is important. 113 00:09:42,030 --> 00:09:45,720 And as I've said, we've got these tutorials to support you as well. 114 00:09:45,720 --> 00:09:51,570 While you're here, I can. What a typical week might look like in first year in terms of assessments. 115 00:09:51,570 --> 00:09:59,580 We run mostly exams to assess our students at the end of the year. In fact, you have five exams of length between two and three hours. 116 00:09:59,580 --> 00:10:02,460 But this also tells you some computational mathematics projects. 117 00:10:02,460 --> 00:10:08,460 We don't expect our mathematicians to know any programming languages or have any programme experience when they start. 118 00:10:08,460 --> 00:10:14,090 But we do expect that. If you taught them a bit of maths that it becomes easier to learn how to tell a computer how to do some maths. 119 00:10:14,090 --> 00:10:16,940 So we have these computational projects as well. 120 00:10:16,940 --> 00:10:24,230 In years three and four, there's a chance to do an extended project or write a dissertation alongside assessment through exams. 121 00:10:24,230 --> 00:10:31,100 This is also have some writing skills alongside of your maths skills. Employ a standard like if you can explain yourself. 122 00:10:31,100 --> 00:10:37,010 Explain your mathematician. Explain your mathematics, as well as doing mathematics assessment. 123 00:10:37,010 --> 00:10:41,540 How can I convince him to put Oxford down? Is as one of just five universities that you apply for? 124 00:10:41,540 --> 00:10:43,370 Three. You? Well, I hope you've. 125 00:10:43,370 --> 00:10:49,250 I convinced you that there's there's a lot of maths in our maths scores and we pack all of our maths into into that course. 126 00:10:49,250 --> 00:10:54,080 If you want a course with lots of different maths topics with lots of great teaching for that maths. 127 00:10:54,080 --> 00:10:57,290 And then this is a great course that you should consider applying to. 128 00:10:57,290 --> 00:11:03,650 It's also quite a difficult maths course, which means it's a challenge for people and for some mathematicians, that's really great. 129 00:11:03,650 --> 00:11:10,880 That's what you want. Of course, with lots of maths in it so that this is a sort of challenging test of how good you are at maths that's 130 00:11:10,880 --> 00:11:15,110 backed up by that tutorial support that I've mentioned through a friendly collegiate atmosphere, 131 00:11:15,110 --> 00:11:17,270 which I'll say more about in a minute. 132 00:11:17,270 --> 00:11:25,400 You might be impressed by the academic reputation of our course and cheaters, or by the employability prospects of our graduates. 133 00:11:25,400 --> 00:11:29,490 So our say a little bit more about colleges. I've mentioned this friendly collegiate atmosphere, 134 00:11:29,490 --> 00:11:34,550 not something I really believe in that are mathematicians aren't just members of the mathematical S.G. 135 00:11:34,550 --> 00:11:40,430 They're all associated with a particular college. And there are 29 colleges which admit mathematicians. 136 00:11:40,430 --> 00:11:46,190 I mean, that's the sort of community of not just that club of mathematicians, but also people studying other subjects. 137 00:11:46,190 --> 00:11:49,580 It means that our first years come to the lectures and they meet other mathematicians, 138 00:11:49,580 --> 00:11:54,290 but they also have a college community where they meet people who aren't mathematicians, which is always healthy as well. 139 00:11:54,290 --> 00:11:58,760 So meeting people, not mathematicians, and those colleges tend to organise student societies, 140 00:11:58,760 --> 00:12:05,510 sports activities and canteen a dining hall and opportunities to really gel as a as a college community, 141 00:12:05,510 --> 00:12:11,330 at least in first yacoobi accommodation in a lot of cases, second and third year accommodation as well through the colleges. 142 00:12:11,330 --> 00:12:14,360 If you're here in Oxford today, you've got a chance to visit some colleges. 143 00:12:14,360 --> 00:12:20,420 They're all open and very keen for you to have a look around and see the accommodation, see what the college site is like. 144 00:12:20,420 --> 00:12:27,650 People often ask me how to choose a college or which college is the best, and it's part of my job to say that every college is the best. 145 00:12:27,650 --> 00:12:32,600 Every college is fantastic in its own way. The colleges are much more similar than they are different. 146 00:12:32,600 --> 00:12:38,300 Remember, everyone comes here for their maths lectures, so everyone's getting the same quality of maths education. 147 00:12:38,300 --> 00:12:40,820 We get the same lectures and the same problems, that same exams. 148 00:12:40,820 --> 00:12:47,510 At the end, we take the best applicants, regardless of which college you've applied to. 149 00:12:47,510 --> 00:12:53,750 So we've got lots of processes behind the scenes to compare candidates from different colleges to make sure that we're taking the best people, 150 00:12:53,750 --> 00:13:01,880 regardless of which college they've applied to. As a result, 25 percent of our first years in this room aren't at the college that they applied to. 151 00:13:01,880 --> 00:13:08,330 But if you ask them which college is best at the end of first time, I've got a feeling that all of them know that their college is the best. 152 00:13:08,330 --> 00:13:11,870 Something about a college atmosphere again makes it a really nice place to be. 153 00:13:11,870 --> 00:13:15,530 And there's also the thing you can do good an open application. 154 00:13:15,530 --> 00:13:18,800 If you really can't choose between the colleges, then you might put an open application, 155 00:13:18,800 --> 00:13:26,210 in which case you'll be automatically assigned to a college by a computer algorithm and then treat it exactly as if you'd applied to that college. 156 00:13:26,210 --> 00:13:30,020 The Cheetahs won't know that you've made an open application. 157 00:13:30,020 --> 00:13:36,810 I'm quite keen to get treated exactly as if you made a direct application to that so that college is of no advantage, no disadvantage to them. 158 00:13:36,810 --> 00:13:43,130 OK, so I like thrown together, hear some some details of how the application process actually works. 159 00:13:43,130 --> 00:13:48,470 If you put the Oxford on your UCAS form, as I hope you will, and then you'll need to apply by the 15th of October. 160 00:13:48,470 --> 00:13:55,790 Deadline is 6pm on 15th October. Placing A-levels you expect to be doing maths on if your school offers both maths. 161 00:13:55,790 --> 00:14:02,600 We expected to be doing further maths as well. More on that in a moment. You also need to be registered to take the maths admissions test. 162 00:14:02,600 --> 00:14:08,360 I have some boring registration details coming up, I'm afraid, so most candidates will say this in their school or college. 163 00:14:08,360 --> 00:14:14,300 If you're if you currently sit tests in your school or college, then you'll probably set the maths there as well. 164 00:14:14,300 --> 00:14:18,410 Your school or college needs to be registered as a test centre, and they need to register you to take the test. 165 00:14:18,410 --> 00:14:24,890 In practise, this just means make sure that your school knows that you're you're going to be taking this maths admissions test at the end of October. 166 00:14:24,890 --> 00:14:31,210 The registration process takes at least day, and there are details on this website of the people who administer our test for us. 167 00:14:31,210 --> 00:14:35,930 OK, just details about how you register for the maths admissions test. 168 00:14:35,930 --> 00:14:44,690 I should say, if you're sitting this worldwide, then we say maths test for everyone around the world and you'll see this in a registered test centre. 169 00:14:44,690 --> 00:14:51,770 You can find a list of registered test centres on our website, the same website that you set for open test centres where you can take this test. 170 00:14:51,770 --> 00:14:55,700 OK, so details on the maths emissions do some actual actual maths. 171 00:14:55,700 --> 00:15:03,650 The test is on the 30th of October 2019. It's a two and a half hour long test, just maybe a bit longer than some of the other tests. 172 00:15:03,650 --> 00:15:08,270 It's a mix of multiple choice questions and longer questions where you'll need to show you're working out. 173 00:15:08,270 --> 00:15:14,230 So your reasoning? This photo marks on the Multiple-Choice section and 60 marks on the longer questions. 174 00:15:14,230 --> 00:15:19,510 It's marked by our graduate students and we got our graduate students into market because they're really good at maths. 175 00:15:19,510 --> 00:15:22,130 They're really good at noticing when your method is going to work. 176 00:15:22,130 --> 00:15:28,270 So if you do a question in a way that I wasn't expecting, then we've got the graduate students that see to work out how many marks to give you. 177 00:15:28,270 --> 00:15:33,730 So there's no one way to see the question that they're really respecting. Any attempt to questions that that will work. 178 00:15:33,730 --> 00:15:42,400 I put lots of pass papers, lots of solutions, average scores for past years, even histograms of different maths score distributions. 179 00:15:42,400 --> 00:15:49,600 If you're into that on the website, the only website needs go to, which is Maths Stockstill Act UK slash R slash MIT all lowercase. 180 00:15:49,600 --> 00:15:55,450 That's the maths the emissions test website's got. I hope everything you need to know about the maths emission test if anything's missing. 181 00:15:55,450 --> 00:16:01,390 Feel free to email me and suggest most up more stuff I can put on that website. So a little bit about the content. 182 00:16:01,390 --> 00:16:05,530 The maths is based on a really limited set of mathematics. 183 00:16:05,530 --> 00:16:11,650 I don't know if, even if, even if I know you're taking A-levels, I don't know if you're doing A-level maths and then further maths, 184 00:16:11,650 --> 00:16:18,370 or if you're doing both of those at the same time so that the only maths I can assume, you know, even if you're doing A-levels is a single maths. 185 00:16:18,370 --> 00:16:26,710 So if this really limited syllabus based on maths, we expect you to have seen by the 30th October 2019, it's one side of A4 and it's on that website. 186 00:16:26,710 --> 00:16:29,860 So if you want to check that you've seen enough maths to do this test, 187 00:16:29,860 --> 00:16:34,660 maybe you're sending a different exam board and you want to check that your exam board lines up at least slightly with A-level maths. 188 00:16:34,660 --> 00:16:38,950 I can take that one page syllabus on the website and see what maths we make. 189 00:16:38,950 --> 00:16:45,520 We make the questions difficult then, not by asking you about breadth of maths, but testing your depth of understanding. 190 00:16:45,520 --> 00:16:54,010 Can you apply these maths topics in unfamiliar situations? If I give you a question, that's a mash up of two different maths topics. 191 00:16:54,010 --> 00:17:00,160 Can you work out how to apply both of them? At the same time, you untangle that all of the problems look quite unfamiliar. 192 00:17:00,160 --> 00:17:03,190 When you first look at a problem, you won't know what to do. You'll be stuck. 193 00:17:03,190 --> 00:17:09,340 And that's kind of the fundamental state of being a mathematician to be stuck on a maths problem and say, we want to test, can you get unstuck? 194 00:17:09,340 --> 00:17:13,670 Can you work out what to do and how to make progress with that maths question? 195 00:17:13,670 --> 00:17:20,410 And then once you've thought of a plan, can you actually execute your plan fluently to get through that maths question? 196 00:17:20,410 --> 00:17:27,280 I guess the maths missions test these past papers online and an answer as well if you want to try out some, some past ask questions. 197 00:17:27,280 --> 00:17:32,980 I think I also encourage you if you're going to go down the route of practising lots of questions and maths, not the only test out there. 198 00:17:32,980 --> 00:17:39,580 There are loads of other maths emissions tests, I won't name them. It actually loads of other great sources of maths questions on on the website. 199 00:17:39,580 --> 00:17:47,230 If you can find other ways to practise being stuck on maths problems, then that's probably good practise for not just a matter of admissions, 200 00:17:47,230 --> 00:17:51,070 but good practise for being a mathematician, which is why I'm really interested in. 201 00:17:51,070 --> 00:17:57,130 OK, so I've got a list of all the stuff that we used to decide who's make offers to you. 202 00:17:57,130 --> 00:18:02,170 So you're put in a UCAS application and we get your previous academic performance from your UCAS application. 203 00:18:02,170 --> 00:18:08,170 We get your predicted grades. We also get a teacher's reference. Your teacher will tell us how keen you are on maths. 204 00:18:08,170 --> 00:18:13,300 You all right? A reference. You'll write a personal statement yourself, but tell us how keen you are en masse. 205 00:18:13,300 --> 00:18:18,820 We'll have your maths emissions test score, of course, and we use all of that together to decide who to invite to interview. 206 00:18:18,820 --> 00:18:23,380 We're lucky in that we get lots of great applicants and we can shortlist down to 207 00:18:23,380 --> 00:18:27,970 about three times as many applicants as we have places for the interview stage. 208 00:18:27,970 --> 00:18:30,860 If we're interviewing you, it's because we think we stand a chance of making you an offer. 209 00:18:30,860 --> 00:18:34,480 We interested in you from your application and your maths school. We look at that all together. 210 00:18:34,480 --> 00:18:39,050 There's no hard cut-off on GCSE use, for example. There's no hard cut-off on on that score. 211 00:18:39,050 --> 00:18:45,790 We we consider everything together. What we advise you to interview, obviously, will have the information from that interview as well, 212 00:18:45,790 --> 00:18:50,140 and we use everything together again to decide who to make the offers to. 213 00:18:50,140 --> 00:18:55,300 So we won't just use the interview as some sort of final hurdle. We've still got your UCAS application and your Mac school. 214 00:18:55,300 --> 00:18:59,770 And in fact, the paper that you wrote on for that for the map have the actual booklet that you write in, 215 00:18:59,770 --> 00:19:02,230 as we have really quite a lot of maths information. 216 00:19:02,230 --> 00:19:09,070 I suppose I should say at this stage the stuff not on this slide that we don't use to judge applications. 217 00:19:09,070 --> 00:19:12,400 We don't take into consideration things like your extracurricular activities, 218 00:19:12,400 --> 00:19:16,040 like if you're really good at karate or the tuba, then we don't take that into consideration. 219 00:19:16,040 --> 00:19:24,190 We really try to take the best mathematicians based on maths ability. OK, so here's more information about interviews if you're invited to interview. 220 00:19:24,190 --> 00:19:31,110 This will be in early December, and as said, that we invite about three times as many people as we have places to interview. 221 00:19:31,110 --> 00:19:36,310 We would invite more people, but we don't have the resources in early December to invite more people. 222 00:19:36,310 --> 00:19:37,900 If you live outside of Europe, 223 00:19:37,900 --> 00:19:45,130 then you're probably going to be invited to be interviewed by phone or over the internet through a programme a bit like Skype. 224 00:19:45,130 --> 00:19:48,490 If you live in Europe, though, we'll invite you to come to Oxford. 225 00:19:48,490 --> 00:19:53,560 If you've made it to Oxford today, then we'll invite you back for your interview here in December. 226 00:19:53,560 --> 00:19:57,910 You'll be accommodated if you come to Oxford at the college that you apply to or the college you were assigned to. 227 00:19:57,910 --> 00:20:03,430 If you made an open application and you'll have a chance to meet current undergraduates while you're here. 228 00:20:03,430 --> 00:20:10,060 If you come to Oxford, then you'll be interviewed not just by that college that you apply to, but also by a second college. 229 00:20:10,060 --> 00:20:15,850 That's been assigned to you by an algorithm. And that's one of our processes to make sure that you've been seen by two sets of 230 00:20:15,850 --> 00:20:20,390 tutors to make sure that we're we're cross comparing and taking the best applicants. 231 00:20:20,390 --> 00:20:27,350 OK, so you can expect as a result, at least two entities while you're here in Oxford and those interviews are going to be academic in nature. 232 00:20:27,350 --> 00:20:32,440 We can ask you maths questions and find out what happens when I guess you're stuck on maths problems again. 233 00:20:32,440 --> 00:20:37,450 I'm going to give you a quick, hard maths problem, probably because it's no fun watching you do maths problems that you give easily. 234 00:20:37,450 --> 00:20:40,570 We can give you a maths problem that you need to think about. 235 00:20:40,570 --> 00:20:46,150 And my main advice here is that to talk out loud about what your ideas are during that interview to do maths, 236 00:20:46,150 --> 00:20:50,440 but also tell us what you're thinking and tell us what you're doing. Listen to the hints that your interviewers are giving you. 237 00:20:50,440 --> 00:20:51,490 We're trying to get you unstuck. 238 00:20:51,490 --> 00:20:57,820 We're trying to give you hints and see how you responds to unfamiliar maths and a little bit of teaching academic in nature. 239 00:20:57,820 --> 00:21:03,910 You should expect prompts and hints. We know how to do the question. We're which to help you do the questions and see how you respond to that. 240 00:21:03,910 --> 00:21:07,720 And if you're applying for one of those joint degrees, you can expect to be interviewed in both disciplines. 241 00:21:07,720 --> 00:21:11,320 Nothing besides you expect questions from each of those disciplines. 242 00:21:11,320 --> 00:21:18,400 OK, so you be interviewed at least once by your First Choice college, usually twice, actually, and then at least once by your second choice college. 243 00:21:18,400 --> 00:21:23,470 You give a candidates in Oxford lots of interviews. We know that people tend to be quite nervous in their first interview, 244 00:21:23,470 --> 00:21:29,590 but then by the end of that three day period of interviews and people within quite a few interviews and more relaxed and doing better at maths, 245 00:21:29,590 --> 00:21:36,340 we've noticed, OK, that interview process. I should say we use all of this together to decide who's make office do, 246 00:21:36,340 --> 00:21:42,010 and we send our offer letters these days, I suppose offer emails in some cases in January, 247 00:21:42,010 --> 00:21:48,040 after after the Christmas break, I should say by that point in January, we've essentially made all of our decisions right. 248 00:21:48,040 --> 00:21:52,540 We don't we're not in the business of making dramatically more offers than we have places. 249 00:21:52,540 --> 00:21:57,980 We make about as many offers as we have places knowing that almost everyone we meet is obviously 250 00:21:57,980 --> 00:22:02,410 going to have no trouble with their A-level or equivalent is just going to start in October. 251 00:22:02,410 --> 00:22:06,970 So that's kind of the end of the decision process in January. Here are our standard conditional offers. 252 00:22:06,970 --> 00:22:14,050 But as I've said, these these tend to not be much of a hurdle for the people we've made offers to perhaps motivated by having an Oxford offer. 253 00:22:14,050 --> 00:22:18,280 People find that actually they can get a star in maths and they they can get a nice to our investments. 254 00:22:18,280 --> 00:22:21,100 That's the standard conditional offer for A-levels for mathematics, 255 00:22:21,100 --> 00:22:27,640 statistics and maths and philosophy I saw in maths and further maths and a in any third subject. 256 00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:28,990 We've got this system of reduced offers, though, 257 00:22:28,990 --> 00:22:34,800 because we know that some schools can't teach for the maths to full A-level or can't teach for the maths at all. 258 00:22:34,800 --> 00:22:39,160 If that's the case for you, then please mention this somewhere on your application. 259 00:22:39,160 --> 00:22:44,140 Our standard offer in that case is to base our offer on the maths that you are doing. 260 00:22:44,140 --> 00:22:46,180 So if your school doesn't offer advice at all, 261 00:22:46,180 --> 00:22:51,430 then we have the capacity to make an offer a a with the star in maths and an eight in two more subjects. 262 00:22:51,430 --> 00:22:56,650 I should say if you're doing four A-levels because you're lucky enough to be at a school that will teach you for four A-levels, 263 00:22:56,650 --> 00:23:02,980 and these are still the offers that we'd make on on three subjects, we don't make offers based on four full A-levels. 264 00:23:02,980 --> 00:23:09,160 The offer would either be worded to say a sorry maths, a in further maths, a in either of your other two subjects. 265 00:23:09,160 --> 00:23:14,950 Or we might pick one of the other two subjects we find it doesn't make much difference which of those we do in practise. 266 00:23:14,950 --> 00:23:18,970 OK, so three three A-levels Iby offer is thirty nine overall, 267 00:23:18,970 --> 00:23:23,980 with seven six six higher level four advanced highers two or three, depending on how many your school can teach. 268 00:23:23,980 --> 00:23:28,870 Obviously a in mathematics and for maths and computer science that joint on course, it's a little bit different. 269 00:23:28,870 --> 00:23:34,390 We're looking for one e-store that's in maths or further maths, but again, the reduced system of offers. 270 00:23:34,390 --> 00:23:36,520 If your school can't teach further maths, okay. 271 00:23:36,520 --> 00:23:43,540 But as I've said, when we get to exams, this doesn't prove much of a hurdle for the people we've made offers to almost everyone. 272 00:23:43,540 --> 00:23:52,090 We make an offer to you in January starts the course in October. OK, here's some advice very quickly on preparing for this application. 273 00:23:52,090 --> 00:23:57,220 I suppose my main bit of advice is to revise the maths that you've already seen before. 274 00:23:57,220 --> 00:24:02,900 Look at your A-level maths or equivalent. Look at the maths that you've done already and think about how it joins together. 275 00:24:02,900 --> 00:24:06,400 Think about the connexions between mathematical topics that you've seen. 276 00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:10,120 If you've got a favourite bit of maths from school, try and look into it a bit more. 277 00:24:10,120 --> 00:24:15,580 There is so much stuff out there on the web now. Wikipedia is quite technical and complicated. 278 00:24:15,580 --> 00:24:21,910 There's also Maths World, which is an encyclopaedia of maths and loads of YouTube videos or things recommending ways 279 00:24:21,910 --> 00:24:26,470 to to teach yourself a little bit more maths if you're interested in a particular topic. 280 00:24:26,470 --> 00:24:30,670 There's probably more stuff out there that you can find out about to look into. 281 00:24:30,670 --> 00:24:34,870 So this is a great time if you're interested in doing a little bit of independent study or research. 282 00:24:34,870 --> 00:24:38,680 That's a great skill. I'm not really recommending that just for application, but just for practising. 283 00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:44,710 Being a mathematician is looking into things on your own back. You might have a go at some past emissions tests. 284 00:24:44,710 --> 00:24:48,220 I hope you also have a go at some some other maths questions as well. 285 00:24:48,220 --> 00:24:57,790 There are things out there like UK, MTV Challenges, British Maths Olympiad Papers, Step four papers, AAA papers and rich website Underground Maths. 286 00:24:57,790 --> 00:24:58,870 There's a bunch of them. 287 00:24:58,870 --> 00:25:04,930 We don't use any of those in our actual admissions process, but I'm recommending that you have a look at them just because that cool maths problems. 288 00:25:04,930 --> 00:25:09,540 And if you think about doing maths for three years, then you might be interested in doing a little bit of maths now. 289 00:25:09,540 --> 00:25:14,550 You might like to arrange a mock interview with a teacher if you can't do a mock interview with a teacher, 290 00:25:14,550 --> 00:25:18,870 then perhaps consider talking to a friend about mathematics. 291 00:25:18,870 --> 00:25:24,750 I know that's drastically uncool. But if you can find someone who is willing to let you talk to him, talk about mathematics. 292 00:25:24,750 --> 00:25:29,910 That's really helpful practise of you explaining the mathematics that you're interested in. 293 00:25:29,910 --> 00:25:35,370 Perhaps they're also preparing for an interview, and they can explain French revolutions or historical studies or something. 294 00:25:35,370 --> 00:25:43,410 And then you can tell anyone else that this ever happens. You can also visit our website, which is a master AI expert, Oxford, the academic UK, 295 00:25:43,410 --> 00:25:48,390 the United Kingdom, which got loads more details about what you study on our course at the moment. 296 00:25:48,390 --> 00:25:54,570 What we're currently offering, it's got a synopsis of all of those courses that I throw up on the screen really quickly. 297 00:25:54,570 --> 00:25:58,350 If you want to find out what you actually do in 30 year fiscus flows and you can check 298 00:25:58,350 --> 00:26:03,150 on our website for more details about courses coming up and application details, 299 00:26:03,150 --> 00:26:10,470 I suppose as well. Final tips on how to find out more so you could ask questions today. 300 00:26:10,470 --> 00:26:14,610 I'll be taking questions in the livestream comments at 10:30. 301 00:26:14,610 --> 00:26:19,410 All the lights have just gone off. I'll be taking questions in the livestream comments from 10:30 to 11:30. 302 00:26:19,410 --> 00:26:24,810 I'm going to be taking questions in embryo life after that before the next session is over the lunch break. 303 00:26:24,810 --> 00:26:34,740 If you're here in Oxford today, you've got a chance to visit some colleges to find out more about that. 304 00:26:34,740 --> 00:26:39,570 And we're back. You got a chance to find out more about colleges. Maybe you visit a college and fall in love with what it looks like. 305 00:26:39,570 --> 00:26:43,560 Maybe accommodation would be great. Maybe you'd be really near a cricket pitch and you want to be near the cricket pitch. 306 00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:47,430 Maybe we'll have a couple of ducks in a pond and that'll be just the best thing ever. 307 00:26:47,430 --> 00:26:52,170 But I would encourage you to visit some colleges and talk to them about maths. 308 00:26:52,170 --> 00:26:59,250 If you're watching on YouTube, then you can email us. Undergraduate admissions master OKC's the UK. 309 00:26:59,250 --> 00:27:05,670 You also grab a copy of our prospectus, which you've handed out today. It's also online our slash prospectus. 310 00:27:05,670 --> 00:27:09,660 As I've said before, check the website for all the most up to date details. 311 00:27:09,660 --> 00:27:17,280 That's maths, the Oxford Actor UK all for general application details on Oxlade UK slash apply. 312 00:27:17,280 --> 00:27:21,660 OK, thanks very much for listening to all that rattling lightning speed took on this going be 313 00:27:21,660 --> 00:27:26,310 a minute now to swap over talks as we get ready for Vicky Neil to show you some maths. 314 00:27:26,310 --> 00:27:31,380 This is your last chance to leave if you don't want to see any pure maths. If you're watching on the livestream, we'll be back in two minutes. 315 00:27:31,380 --> 00:27:51,140 Don't go anywhere. Thank you.