Filling in the Oxford application form

Date: around ?/09/2002

Now I had decided I was applying to Oxford I could start filling in the form. I had decided I was applying for economics and maths but as this was unavailable at Oxford I applied for economics and management instead. I had already picked up the form at my school's Oxford meeting (link) so it was a simple job to fill it in and hand it to my teacher with the rest of the UCAS stuff.

The form was pretty simple to fill in mainly, just personal details, but there were two sections which were slightly more difficult. The course information section and the additional information section.

Course information section

Most of this part was not too bad. I knew my school's UCAS code (it was already printed on the form), year of entry (2002), proposed course (economics and management) and UCAS course code (LN12) and that there were no further details for this course from looking in the UCAS directory at my school.

I didn't know what to put in the pre or post qualification box but from looking at the help provided with the form I found I should put "pre" because I hadn't finished my school leaving exams yet.

Lastly was the college of preference part. I hadn't gone to any open days and knew very little about any of the courses. I couldn't think of any reason why I should put once college in preference to another and had no idea how I would explain my choice in an interview. I was also running out of time to get the form in so I decided not to put anything, go for an open application and let the university pick a college for me. Apparently applying with an open application does not disadvantage you against other students so I went with that

Additional information section

This was the section where you were supposed to put down any extra information which you thought might be relevant to your Oxford application. I took this to mean anything you want to tell Oxford but are afraid to tell the other universities because they will think you only want to go to Oxford. Luckily this part of the form was optional and I couldn't think of anything to put anyway so left it blank.

All I had left to do now was write a cheque for the £10 admin fee, scrape together the rest of my UCAS stuff, give it to my teacher and not have to worry about it again.