A vast amount of nonsense is written about the Oxford admissions process. Any university that has more applicants than places to offer must clearly make a selection, and Oxford is no exception. We operate within a carefully designed agreed framework which is as fair and transparent as we can make it. Quite simply, we aim to offer places to the applicants who we think have the greatest potential to do well on our course, which offers an excellent but undoubtedly demanding training in Mathematics. We won't select on any other basis.

Nobody finds university level Mathematics easy. After all, many of the ideas and techniques we study have taken hundreds of years to develop! It takes a combination of intuition, imagination, technical ability and sheer persistence to do well in Mathematics, and these are the qualities we look for. We consider your record to date, detailed on your UCAS form, as well as what we can find out about your potential though our own test and interviews.

The admissions process is in two stages: an aptitude test, open to all candidates and taken at your school or test centre, followed by interviews for shortlisted candidates.