By Oliver Hayman, a first-year mathematician from Keble.
I wanted to write about my experience studying mathematics at Keble and give advice to current applicants.
What does a typical day studying Mathematics at Keble look like?
I have no idea what a “normal day” is supposed to look like, since my entire time at Oxford has been during pandemic. However, at the beginning of term before the U.K. had its second lockdown, a normal day probably looked something like this:
7:00 AM - Wake up/have breakfast
7:30 AM - 8:30 AM - Walk around University parks
9:00 AM - 11:00 AM - Watch lectures in the HB Allen Center
11:30 AM - 12:00 PM - Have lunch in the Keble Hall
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM - Analysis tutorial socially distanced in tutor’s office
2:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Work on problem sheets in the JCR
6:30 PM - 7:00 PM - Have dinner
8:00 PM - 10:00 PM - Go out with friends (society events are also normally around this time)
11:00 PM - Sleep
This might seem somewhat idealistic, but while Oxford’s workload is high, I wouldn’t say that it’s unhealthy. If you manage your time well you can get all your work done, do several societies, have a social life, and get 8 hours of sleep a night.
Of course, you will occasionally have a day that looks like this:
8:00 AM - Wake up
8:30 AM - 2:00 PM - Finish 1st problem sheet in room
2:00 PM - 2:30 PM - Have lunch in room
2:30 PM - 8:00 PM - Finish 2nd problem sheet in room
8:00 PM - 8:30 PM - Have dinner in room
8:30 PM - 2:00 AM - Finish 3rd problem sheet in room
2:00 AM - 7:30 AM - Finish 4th problem sheet in room
7:30 AM – Sleep
This is kind of an exaggeration, but it will probably happen at least once. My advice on days like this is to just embrace the chaos.
Why do you like studying Mathematics at Keble?
You’ll have a great experience studying at any of the Oxford colleges, but there are a few reasons why I particularly like studying mathematics at Keble.
For one, all of the tutors are super easy to talk to! Pretty much every person I’ve talked to from the other colleges has had at least one tutor that was difficult to understand, but everyone I know has walked out of tutorials feeling clear about everything. There are also one or two tutors that encourage talking about life in general and broader ideas such as rationality. I think these kinds of conversations are the most valuable thing about tutorials, and I’m pretty thankful to have something to think about other than just maths problems.
Additionally, people at Keble are really friendly! I don’t think Keble attracts any one type of personality, so everyone coming in is pretty open-minded and easy to collaborate with. Keble also has a lot of spaces where you can work with others, which has been particularly useful due to the pandemic.
Finally, this is more of a personal preference, but I love the coding atmosphere at Keble. Since Keble is right next to the CS department, there are a lot of strong programmers in the maths and computer science major (in my year, 3/10 are doing maths+cs and 2 others have expressed an interest in switching to it). I’ve actually learned a ton about coding and how it’s related to maths just by talking with friends, which is super useful given how often coding is used in modern day mathematics.
The Application
Personal Statement
This is probably the part of the application that I’m least qualified to talk about, so you should take anything I say with a pretty massive grain of salt. That being said, I would recommend that people try to tell a story with their personal statement rather than just making it a list of accomplishments. Not to say you shouldn’t talk about your achievements - you definitely should - but it might be more compelling to talk about how they affected you as opposed to just what they were. For example, you could talk about how a certain book changed how you approached a certain type of concept, or about how the connections you made at a maths summer program affected how you collaborate with others. A strong way to wrap up a personal statement would be to talk about what you hope to gain from an Oxford education, and why it would be a natural “best step forward”. Overall, I think it’s important to highlight who you are as a mathematician as opposed to just what you’ve done.
Interviews
The main thing to remember about Oxford maths interviews is that you’re not being judged at all based on how many problems you solve - that was the point of the MAT. In the interviews, they’re looking at how you think and how you learn.
I’m guessing most people aren’t rejected because they said anything “wrong” in an interview, but rather because the tutors didn’t have enough information about them. Because of this, my best advice for interviews would be to verbalize every step of your thought process. You should essentially have no filter about the questions you’re wondering about, approaches you might try, etc., so you’re giving the tutors as much information as possible about how you think. If you got through the MAT you’re already competent at solving problems, so whatever you’re thinking about is probably a good thing to think about.
I think one thing to also keep in mind is that some people freeze up during interviews due to nervousness. I guess the way to prepare for this ahead of this is to just talk to adults a lot, and to keep in mind that the interview is just one part of your application - you don’t have to ace it to get in.
The MAT
The best way to study for the MAT is to practice a ton of past papers until you’re consistently getting a score you want. There are pretty much no shortcuts to this.
Past papers can be found here. If you practice enough exams, you will probably get the score you want in a few months. However, if you do “flatline” and get to a point where you’re not getting any better but aren’t where you want to be in terms of score, I would recommend doing one of two things:
Start practicing harder questions. There are a lot of good maths contests on the website AoPS that you could practice (personally, I looked at past AIME exams), and if you do well on these, the MAT should be a breeze. One thing to note about some of these contests is that some competition maths techniques won’t be used on the MAT, so I wouldn’t stress too much about learning a ton of geometry theorems or something like that.
If you really feel you’re not improving, spend a lot of time nailing your personal statement and preparing for interviews. This might still grant you a decent shot of getting into Oxford even if you end up bombing the MAT.
In terms of score, I personally think if you want to be a likely acceptance to Oxford, you should be shooting for at least an 80. Most people would say this is pretty high (and if you aren’t getting this, don’t worry!), but I’ll explain why.
This is the graph for 2019 MAT results:
Grey bars represent people who got into Oxford, white bars represent people who got interviewed, and black bars are people who did not get interviewed.
I think one way people might interpret this graph is that 66-70 seems like it’s around the “average” MAT score of Oxford students, so that’s what you should aim to get. However, I think this sort of an incorrect interpretation.
It’s important to keep in mind that probably around ⅔ of Oxford maths students were more likely to get rejected than to get an offer. Based purely on the graph, you need to be getting at least a 76-80 on the MAT to increase your chances to 50-50. However, even under 80 might not be enough. People tend to do better on practice tests than actual tests, so there’s a pretty sizable chance your score drops to below 75, at which point your chances drop pretty drastically. Additionally, a lot of people I’ve talked to had gotten MAT scores that were 3-7 points lower than they expected, so if you think you’re getting an 80 on practice exams that might translate to a 76 on the actual exam. If you really want to get into Oxford, I think 80 is the score that gives you a 50-50 chance.
However, again, if you aren’t getting an 80 or above I would not stress about it. My best advice is just to keep working at practice exams until you don’t think you can get much better at them, then move on. In general, it’s important to remember that no part of your application makes or breaks whether you get in.