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Congratulations to Solomon Yi-Kieran ’23 who was recently accepted into the history and politics program at Oxford University’s Magdalen College. Though Solomon is still undecided on if he’s going to accept the offer, he is very happy as Oxford is one of his top choices.
“I was ecstatic,” recalled Solomon. “It has a 17% acceptance rate, and it’s a very prestigious school. Knowing I got accepted made me feel great. They looked at my application, tests and interviews and said they wanted me for their program. It’s great.”
Applying to Oxford University was a complex and long process for this graduating Gryphon.
“I had to do my application first and write a personal statement. It was a very academic personal statement,” he said. “It wasn’t like the ones you do for UBC or American applications. You basically have to write about how you engage with your academic discipline outside of school, and any extra co-curriculars should be things that have built up your engagement with that particular academic discipline.”
Because Solomon applied to the history and politics program, he was able to use his experience with Model UN and politics to talk about real-world learning. Solomon also had to submit a written piece of academia on a certain topic.
“I was able to use my IB History Independent Assessment,” he added. “It worked out really well for word count and was a relatable topic for both history and politics.”
Solomon also needed to gather letters of recommendation from teachers and received assistance with this process from our University Guidance team.
“I did ask for a fair amount of help in filling out the application from our University Guidance,” he said. “It was a complicated university application to have to navigate. Also, with Oxford you don’t get letters of recommendation yourself. You need the University Guidance counsellors to request them from every teacher.”
Additionally, Solomon had to take the History Aptitude Test (HAT), which was held in Vancouver. HAT is a one-hour exam where students are asked to answer a question in essay form based on an extract from an unseen primary source.
“It was similar to the IB History Paper 1,” he described. “We were given a text on a subject we knew nothing about and were told to analyze it and write an essay on it. I thought it went really well, and that the process was all very fun.”
A month later, Solomon was shortlisted for virtual admission interviews with Oxford professors.
“It’s kind of like a class, where they give you various questions to answer and sources to analyze,” he said.
The long process was worth it for Solomon, and he has some advice for his peers who might consider applying to post-secondary institutions in the United Kingdom.
“The main thing is you need to know what you want,” he said. “With Canadian universities, you apply to the faculty and choose your programs as you go. With schools in the United Kingdom, you decide on your application what programs you take and what you want your degree to be. You need to have it planned everything out a lot more. Also, it’s intensely academic and you need a lot from an academic background to talk about.”
Congratulations, Solomon!
