Current Applicant Information 2026-7

Tests

Tests form one part of Oxford's admissions process and are used alongside a range of information to help assess a candidate’s academic potential and suitability for many of our courses. Not all course applications require applicants to sit a test.

From 2026, Oxford will be using admissions tests owned and managed by UAT-UK, in addition to the existing LNAT and UCAT tests for Law and Medicine courses.

Full guidance on which courses require an admissions test, along with an admissions test timeline, can be found here.

If you are taking a UAT-UK test, please read this information carefully to help your test day go smoothly. It also tells you what to do in the unlikely event that you need to report something that affected your test performance.

Written Work

Many of our courses require applicants to send in a sample of their written work as part of their application. The deadline for submitting written work is 10 November. More information about who needs to submit written work, including a link to our upload form, is available on the written work submission page.

What happens after I've sent in my UCAS form, sent in written work and/or sat a test as required?

The tutors will use all the information received about you in your UCAS application, plus, where available, the results of your admissions test and your written work to decide who to call for interview.

Applicants will be notified by email if they have, or have not, been invited to interview, from mid-November until early December, normally no later than a week before the start of the interview window for that course. More on this in the dropdowns below.

Please check the details of the interview window for your subject and mark this in your calendar.

Disability support

If you have a disability that you have not already disclosed on your UCAS application, or if you have mentioned your situation on UCAS but would like to tell us more, please get in touch with our Disability Coordinator, Becky Unwin, via rebekah.unwin@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk.

Please let us know if there are any special arrangements or support that would help you so that we can make any appropriate, reasonable adjustments for you in good time if you are invited to interview. There will also be an opportunity to tell us about your requirements if you are shortlisted for interview, via the 'interview reply form', but it's helpful to us if you don't wait until then to get in touch.

Mentioning your disability or Specific Learning Difficulty will not affect your application, as admissions decisions are made on the grounds of academic merit. Please note evidence may be required for adjustments to be made.

Extra documentation (CVS, certificates, English language certificates etc.)

Please do not send extra documentation to the Admissions Office. Unless you already have a degree from a university, we do not require any certificates, transcripts or other documents at this stage.

If you are offered a place at the University, we will contact you to request any required documents from you, including English language certificates. If you send additional documentation to the Admissions Office, it will not be added to your file at this stage as it is not required.

Please note, you cannot submit more personal statements or extra referee statements. They must all be submitted via UCAS. We do not accept extra statements, CVs, or letters of recommendation.

As the one exception to the above, if you are applying for a second undergraduate degree, please send a copy of the transcript from your first degree to arrive by 10 November. No other references, transcripts, or certificates are required or accepted.

Who should I let know if there have been any changes to my academic record or personal circumstances since submitting my UCAS application?

Please ask your school to contact the College Admissions Office to let us know of any changes to your academic record, contact details, or personal circumstances. Contact details at the end of this page.

Only factual information in your academic record can be changed: corrected or additional exam grades or test scores, or changes of exam board. You can't change your personal statement or reference, or send any additional statements or references.

Emails and notifications from St Hilda's

As an applicant, it is your responsibility to check your emails, including your junk folder.

Please make sure you check your emails regularly as you may receive more than one interview invitation on different dates. If you do not check your emails and miss an interview, it is unlikely that we will be able to reschedule as interviews work on a very tight schedule.

If you change your address or email address, please first update UCAS, and then immediately email the Admissions Office. Please note, we will not receive an update from UCAS regarding this, so it is imperative that you update the College. When you notify us, please email us from your old email address and cc in the new one.

What Should I Expect During an Interview? How do I prepare?

Please carefully read through the interview guidance advice, particularly noting the tab on 'technology'. Please note all interviews will be held online.

Some Oxford faculties also provide detailed, subject-specific interview advice, so please do also check their undergraduate admissions webpages.

If you are an international student, or you are a UK student who will be abroad during the interview window for your subject, please let us know where you are going to be, and what the time difference is, so we can try to plan your interviews at a sensible time of day by filling out the 'time zone form'. We will add a note to your file so other colleges who are considering your application will know too.

Have interview invitations been sent out yet?

The table below will be updated when notifications regarding interviews have been sent out by St Hilda's for each subject. Please do not email the Admissions Office to ask if invitations have been sent for your subject; please refer to the below table instead. Invitations for any given subject normally go out over the course of a few days; exactly when will vary from college to college. This is nothing to worry about. Please do refresh this page/clear your web browser cache to see updates.

Subject	Interview Invitation Status
Ancient and Modern History
Biochemistry
Biology
Biomedical Sciences
Chemistry
Classical Archaeology and Ancient History
Classics including CAMES
Computer Science including Maths & Computer Science and Computer Science and Philosophy
Economics and Management
Engineering Science
English
English and Modern Languages
European and Middle Eastern Languages
Geography
History and Joint Schools
Law/Law with Law Studies in Europe
Mathematics, Maths and Philosophy
Medicine
Modern Languages
Modern Languages and Linguistics
Music
Philosophy and Modern Languages
Physics
PPE
Psychology, Experimental
Psychology, Philosophy and Linguistics

Invitations to interview

The 'invitation to interview' email will contain a link to the 'interview reply form'. You need to complete this within 24 hours. This provides us with information that helps us to create the interview timetable for each candidate. For example, it will ask which time zone you are going to be in during the interview window for your subject.

If there is an extremely good reason that you are unavailable for some of the interview window that is outside of your control (for example if you're undertaking compulsory military service, have formal exams, or you have scheduled hospital treatment), please tell us on the form and we will do our best to work around it. We are unable to work around social engagements or travel plans, even if they are pre-booked.

Once you submit the form, the page refreshes, the form disappears and you should be able to see a couple of lines of text that confirm you've submitted the form. You won't get a confirmation email that this has been submitted.

Teams invite(s)

If shortlisted for interview, you will then receive, no later than 24 hours before the interview, Teams invite(s) which include the exact time and date of your interview(s) plus a link to join the online meeting. It will also tell you who is interviewing you. Most shortlisted applicants will receive two or more interview invitations. You are expected to attend all of the interviews you are offered: different interview panels will often specialise in different subjects; for example if you apply for a joint degree in Maths and Computer Science you are likely to get one interview focusing on Maths and one on Computer Science.

Shortly after we have sent you the Teams invites we will then send you an email letting you know how many Teams invites you should have just received, plus instructions on what to do if you've not received one or all of the expected Teams invitations (this might be the next morning if they've gone out late afternoon). You are expected to attend all of the interviews you are invited for. The initials in brackets in the title of the Teams link are shorthand for which interview panel you're seeing.

Please read this Teams invite carefully as it may provide further information about pre-reading, or links to a Miro board (see the 'technology' tab for more information on Miro). Please note that you won't be able to access the Miro board at this point. The content will be released to you during the interview. There is no need to request access to it.

Before pressing 'accept' on your interview invite you may wish to take a copy of the details. Email clients do sometimes hide the email once you've accepted the meeting.

A few email clients, such as iCloud, don't allow you to 'accept' Teams invites. That's not a problem; we will just assume it's fine. You don't need to email us to tell us you can't accept it if it's just a matter of there not being a relevant button.

If there is a problem with your invitation please don't just press 'reject.' Please get in touch by emailing the Admissions Office to explain the issue.

Joining the Teams meeting

When you join your interview on Teams, please be aware that you are likely to be labelled as a 'guest' and as such may be required to wait in an interview lobby. This is nothing to worry about, as your interviewers will admit you into the meeting when they are ready to begin. We apologise if things are running slightly behind schedule, but please be patient if you are in an online waiting area.

Help! I've not received any Teams invites, but I have had a 'invitation to interview email'

Please check the section of this page titled 'Have interview invitations been sent out yet?'

If you are in the time period between filling out the interview reply form, but it's not yet 24 hours before the interview window for your subject starts, please don't contact us asking where your Teams invite(s) are. That will just slow things down. We will send you the information as soon as we can.

If you have been notified that you are being invited for interview but haven't received a Teams invite, and it is now less than 24 hours before your subject's interview window starts please first check your spam folder. Are you sure you've checked the email address listed on your UCAS form? If you still can't find anything then get in touch by emailing the Admissions Office including your UCAS number and the subject applied for. Contact details at the bottom of this page.

Every year, some Departments reallocate shortlisted candidates to a college other than the one they applied to, just before interviews. This happens when a large number of students at one college, who applied for a particular subject, are shortlisted: too many for the tutors there to see. Most commonly, a proportion of those candidates, randomly selected from those shortlisted, are re-allocated to another college, which had less applicants shortlisted for that subject. This allows us to interview the best candidates, no matter which college they applied to and evens things out across the colleges.

So, if you've received an invitation to interview email from St Hilda's, but we weren't your application college - great to have you with us. We're now your primary point of contact. If your subject does second interviews, you will still be interviewed by a 'second' college. It is unlikely to be your application college, but it does sometimes happen.

As with all applicants, you can still be offered a place by any Oxford college that offers your course. Around a third of successful applicants are offered a place at a College that is not the College they first applied to.

The slight exceptions to this are Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, who both operate a college-blind interview process. If you are shortlisted by either of these subjects you will be invited for interview by two colleges. We will both treat you as if we are your primary point of contact. So you might find there's a bit of duplication with both colleges asking you to fill out forms. To keep things 'blind' please don't tell us which college you applied to.

My TEAMS INVITE MENTIONS PRE-READING. What Do I Do?

If your interview panel intend you to receive pre-reading in advance of your interview, this will be indicated on the Teams invite for that specific interview. Different interview panels, even for the same subject, operate in different ways.  If you've received multiple Teams invites please read each of them carefully; the instructions on them may differ.

Pre-reading will be emailed to you. If you've not received your pre-reading at the time specified, please first check your junk folder. Then double-check that you're looking at the email account that you've used for your UCAS application. If that hasn't solved the problem, then email the St Hilda's Admissions team using the contact details at the bottom of this page. Please include your name, UCAS number, subject applied for and the date and time of the interview.

What happens if the tech fails during my online interview?

Please don’t worry. We know that these things can sometimes be a problem, and your interviewers will understand. We do recommend that you - and your school if that’s where you’re having your interview - test the technology beforehand, to make sure it works and that you’re comfortable with it.

Remember your interviewers will want you to do well, and be able to see your potential. If the technology goes wrong or the connection is bad, make sure you tell your interviewers so that they are aware. If the interview can’t proceed then don’t worry - the college will rearrange it as soon as they can. But please do drop us an email to the Admissions Office to let us know what's going on. Our contact details are at the bottom of this page.

Will I get extra interviews? What are second College interviews?

For some courses all interviews will be arranged in advance. For other courses, there will be an initial block of pre-organised interviews which may then be followed by additional interviews. This could be with the same college, or it could be with a different college.

Where additional interviews are possible, the interview timetable gives the time by which you will be informed about them, and the days they may occur on. You should be given at least 24 hours notice of any additional interviews. Please check your email regularly.

You won't get an email telling you there are no further interviews.  If the deadline on the timetable for additional interview notifications has passed, and you've not heard from us or another Oxford College/Faculty, you can assume that you've not been called for extra interviews.

To help you keep track of deadlines and the admissions process, see the admissions timeline.

Second college interviews

Different subjects work in different ways when it comes to interviews. For many subjects you will be invited to participate in additional interview(s) at another college; these are called second college interviews. Some subjects do this as standard; others don't.

On rare occasions, you may receive your second college interview notification before your notification of an interview at St Hilda's College. It is common that interviewees may have their second college interview held before their St Hilda's College interview. Neither of these are things to worry about.

Can I ask for feedback?

Information on requesting feedback is provided on our 'feedback' page.

Code of Conduct

If you are shortlisted, it is important that you recognise that in accepting your invitation to interview, you are agreeing to the following code of conduct:

•I agree not to share in any form the content of interviews with others, including but not limited to candidates or teachers at my school/college or at any other school/college. This includes discussing the content of interviews verbally, as well as disseminating any materials shared in advance of or during interviews (e.g. documents, images, etc.)
•I agree not to research online any materials shared with me as part of a pre-interview task (unless explicitly permitted to do so by the interviewers)
•I agree not to use any assistive technology (including artificial intelligence, and including automatic transcription tools) beyond that required for my subject during my interviews (unless explicitly permitted to do so, for example as a reasonable adjustment for a disability)
•I agree not to record interviews (in transcribed, audio or video format), or to permit others (including but not limited to teachers, family members, etc.) to record interviews
•I agree to take part in the interview myself and not to ask or allow anyone else to impersonate my identity fraudulently
•I agree not to ask or allow anyone else to observe the interview.

Candidates will be at serious risk of having any offer withdrawn if they do not abide by any aspects of this code of conduct.

Decisions

Shortlisted candidates for 2027 entry (or deferred entry to 2028)  will be told whether or not their application has been successful on 12 January 2027. Decisions will be released via UCAS in the morning. This will be followed by direct communication from the St Hilda's College Admissions Office.

Need To Talk To Us?

We understand that applying to the University can be a stressful time for candidates. However, there is a lot of information available to all candidates on the St Hilda's website and the University website.

Make sure you check through this page and the Frequently Asked Questions webpage first.

If you cannot find the answer to your question, you can email the Admissions Office via undergraduate.admissions@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk. Please clearly state your full name and UCAS ID (no spaces or dashes) and the course you're applying for.

A standard format for an email is as follows:

• UCAS ID:
• Dear/Hello/Good morning/Good afternoon,
• [Email message here]
• Kind regards/Best wishes/Yours sincerely,
• Your name

We receive a lot of emails between October and February every year. We try our best to respond as quickly as we can, usually within three to five working days. During the end of November and early December, this may take a bit longer. We thank you for your patience during these incredibly busy periods.

Please do not try to contact us by hitting 'reply' on a Teams invitation. We are very unlikely to see information submitted in this way.

Contacting Tutors
It is not appropriate to contact the tutors before or after an interview, asking them questions about your application or for an update. You do not need to email them thanking them for their time at interview as they are very busy and will not be able to reply to emails. Please refrain from doing so. If you have any questions or comments, please email the Admissions Office.