Statement on the 2020 undergraduate admissions process

Update – 24th August 2020 

 A-level students’ official Centre Assessed Grades (which have been provided by teachers and not been subject to any moderation by exam boards) are now available to universities. As of today, we have confirmed places for all our offer holders who have met, or were close to meeting, the conditions of their offer based on their Centre Assessed Grades.  

 We have confirmed 158 places in total, 18 more than our target intake. We are pleased to confirm that all of these places are for 2020 entry and none of our incoming students will be forced to take deferred entry in 2021. Once again, we would like to warmly congratulate all of our new freshers and very much look forward to welcoming them into our college community. 

 We share the concerns that have been expressed about the effect of the pandemic on next year’s applicants, and in particular those students from less advantaged backgrounds who are aspiring to apply to Oxford next year. We are pleased to confirm that we plan to make the usual number of places available next year as none of the Catz freshers are being forced to take deferred entry in 2021. We are working with all other colleges and departments in the University to minimise the impact of the pandemic on the next admissions round. 

 

17th August 2020

Many members of our college community and beyond have expressed their concern over the impact of this year’s A-level grading system on our admissions processes, as well as the disproportionate impact that has been felt by the most disadvantaged candidates. We share their concerns.

Despite these unprecedented circumstances, a large proportion of our offer holders met the conditions of their offers and were therefore accepted automatically. We are delighted that all of our students holding offers as part of the Opportunity Oxford programme achieved the necessary grades for admission and we are proud to be supporting this University-wide initiative in its first year of operation.

All our offer holders have gone through a great deal of uncertainty and anguish this year, and we have been keen to support them as much as we can and make the continued admissions process as simple as possible. Having explored options to increase the number of places available for 2020 entry, we were pleased to be able to notify the majority of our initially unsuccessful candidates earlier today that we would be able to confirm their places. There was a small number of cases for whom the same process could not be used, and for whom we devised a different approach, but this is now likely to have been superseded by the Government’s announcement this afternoon.

In cases where courses are already at full capacity for 2020 entry at the departmental level we will confirm places for 2021 entry. We congratulate all of our students with a confirmed place on their considerable achievements, obtained in difficult circumstances, and very much look forward to welcoming them to Catz.

This means that as of this morning, we have been able to confirm places for 97% of our offer holders and that number may well increase further as we complete the process. We are proud to announce that at Catz 71% of our confirmed UK freshers are from state school backgrounds – this represents a significant improvement upon last year’s figure of 61%.

We are looking forward to welcoming all our freshers to Catz and, despite the many challenges presented by the pandemic, providing them with all that the Oxford experience has to offer. We will be offering support to any students confirmed for deferred entry in 2021 from now until their arrival next year.