Oxford and Cambridge Super-Curriculars: Start Where They Tell You To

Both universities publish, free and in public, what they want to see. Most applicants never look.

• Oxford's Super-Curricular Hub — lectures, articles, podcasts, videos and challenges, organised by the Oxford courses they relate to.
• Oxford's Oxplore — built around big questions with no settled answer, which is a better starting point than a topic.
• Cambridge's Super-Curricular Suggestions — per course, for every course they offer. They are explicit that it is not a reading list to be worked through.
• Cambridge's HE+ — subject activities and reflective questions built with Cambridge academics and students.

Starting anywhere else is a strange decision. These are written by the institutions that will read your application.

What the offer rates actually are

There is a lot of folklore about Oxbridge selectivity. Here are real figures from the UCAS 2025 end-of-cycle data, for Oxford, by subject group:

Subject group	Offer rate
Subjects allied to medicine	9%
Mathematical sciences	11%
Law	11%
Engineering and technology	15%
Physical sciences	15%
Biological and sport sciences	15%
Medicine and dentistry	16%
Historical, philosophical and religious studies	23%
Geography, earth and environmental studies	25%
Language and area studies	31%
Design, creative and performing arts	32%

These are the subject groups our course catalogue covers at Oxford. UCAS publishes offer rates per provider per subject group rather than per course, so every Oxford History course shares a figure with every Oxford Philosophy course — both sit in the same official group.

Two things to take from this.

The variation is large. Applying for Modern Languages at Oxford is a materially different proposition from applying for Maths. Roughly one application in three receives an offer in language and area studies; roughly one in nine in mathematical sciences and law. If you are choosing between courses, this is real information.

The published grades tell you almost nothing about this. Oxford asks similar grades across many of these subjects. Grade requirements measure the height of the bar; the offer rate measures how many people clear it. They are different questions and only one of them is about your chances.

Depth over volume, and they mean it

The thing Oxbridge applicants get most wrong is treating super-curriculars as a quantity to accumulate.

Both universities interview, and the interview is where the statement is tested. Anything you write can be the first question. An applicant with eight activities listed has eight opportunities to be caught out and no depth to fall back on. An applicant with one thing they have genuinely thought about has one conversation they can hold their own in.

Tutors are not counting. They are looking for someone who can think in a supervision or tutorial — which is a room where you defend a position to an academic who knows more than you. Preparation for that is not breadth. It is having taken a position on something and having reasons.

Access programmes worth applying to

If you are eligible, these are the highest-value structured options and they are free:

• UNIQ — Oxford's access programme for UK state-school Year 12s, across 30+ subjects, with online work plus a residential.
• Sutton Trust Summer Schools — free residential summer schools at leading universities including Cambridge.
• The Scholars Programme (The Brilliant Club) — a PhD researcher tutors you through a university-style course with a final assignment marked to undergraduate standards. The closest available preview of how you will be taught.
• Pathways to Law — for law specifically.

Not getting a place on one of these costs you nothing. Neither university expects them, and plenty of successful applicants have none.

College essay prizes

Cambridge and Oxford colleges run a large number of essay competitions open to sixth-formers — across History, English, Economics, Law, Philosophy, Classics, Natural Sciences, Linguistics, Music, Psychology and more. Our catalogue holds several dozen.

They are worth entering for the same reason they are worth entering anywhere: writing a sustained argument to a question you did not set, against a word limit, is the assessment format of the degree. The prize is incidental.

Do not list which ones you entered. Write about the argument you made.

The interview changes what to prepare

For most universities the statement is the end of the process. At Oxford and Cambridge it is the beginning of a conversation.

That has a specific consequence: do not write anything you cannot go one level deeper on. If you name a book, be able to say what its argument was and where you think it is weak. If you name a paper, know the method. If you name a case, know the dissent.

The most damaging Oxbridge statement is one that overclaims. A tutor who asks about the theory you mentioned and finds you cannot discuss it has learned something worse than if you had never mentioned it.

What goes wrong

Working through the suggestion list. Cambridge says explicitly that its suggestions are a springboard, not a syllabus. Reading everything on it, shallowly, is the opposite of what they are asking for.

Prestige-hunting. Choosing an activity because it sounds impressive rather than because you were interested. It shows, because you have nothing to say about it.

Writing to the university. The statement goes to all five choices. A statement obviously aimed at Oxford reads badly at the other four.

Ignoring the tests. For most Oxbridge courses the admissions test is a large part of the decision. TMUA, ESAT, TARA, LNAT, UCAT — check exactly which applies and prepare for it. It is not super-curricular, and it may matter more.

Common questions

How many super-curriculars do I need for Oxbridge? Fewer than you think. Two or three you can discuss in depth is a strong position.

Do I need a summer school? No. They help, they are unevenly available, and admissions tutors know that.

Should I read the whole Cambridge suggestions list for my subject? No, and they say so. Pick the thing that interests you and go deep.

Does a college essay prize matter if I do not win? The writing is the value. Entering and writing seriously is worth more than not entering.

Is Oxford or Cambridge easier to get into? The wrong question. As the table shows, variation between subjects at one university — 9% to 32% — is far larger than the difference between the two universities. Choose on course structure and how you want to be taught.

Where do these offer rates come from? UCAS end-of-cycle data for the 2025 admissions cycle. We publish every source we use, including what each one can and cannot tell you.

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Writ coaches the new three-question UCAS statement one section at a time, with a hard rule that no verdict is given before at least two rounds of questions — because a statement that has not been pushed on is not ready for an Oxbridge interview. Try it free.