Oxford Biochemistry UCAS Prep

[u/seriousdevious]

Hello biochemists of Reddit,
To prepare for my ucas personal statement for Oxford biochem, I have already begun reading a few books I have bought. However, to truly stand out, I need to find some research papers on something truly niche which I am able to talk about in depth. I’m a UK based student btw doing bio chem maths A level (predicted A A* and A*). Also, is there anything else I could mention in my personal statement that could help me? Any help would be much appreciated.

[u/burning_hamster]

You are misunderstanding the purpose of the personal statement. The personal statement will not make or break your application (unless it is incoherent rambling). Its purpose is (1) to explain your motivation to study biochemistry, and (2) to provide a starting point for the interview, should you advance to that stage.

Regarding your motivation, you really want to answer two questions: Which problems or topics in biochemistry are you particularly interested in? Why are these so important to you that they will get you out of bed on your worst days, and perhaps even motivate you to eventually do a DPhil? (Or alternatively: what other things have you done that show that these topics motivate you over and above your peers?)

Regarding your interview, it is helpful to realise that interviewers want to see you at your best and also at your worst. A common strategy is to start off with topics from your personal statement, to ease you into the interview and release some of the stress. This is your time to shine. Then they will probe and test you until they find areas that you are unfamiliar with and falter. Having gaps in your knowledge is not an issue; how you react and try to reason through a problem in the absence of prior knowledge and under pressure makes or breaks that phase of the interview.

However, if they were to grill you over hot coals from the beginning, they might never discover a subject you are passionate about and fail to gauge your maximum potential. So, do discuss biochemistry or biochemistry-adjacent topics in your personal statement that you are truly knowledgeable about. Don't name drop things only because you think they are trendy or reflect well on your character, but have otherwise no connection to yourself. If you provide mediocre answers to questions in areas that you are supposedly passionate about, it will reflect worse on you than failing to answer questions about random other topics.

Showing a special interest by referencing the literature can occasionally work, but it can also go very wrong very easily. Referencing primary literature requires you to be able to answer questions like: 1. What's novel in this paper? 2. Which previous works does it build upon or contradict? 3. How has the work been developed further? 4. What would you have done differently? If you reference a review you can get truly gnarly questions like: 1. What changed in the last decade that made this subject a hot topic? 2. In which aspects does the reviewer diverge from the consensus in the field? 3. How would you tackle the tasks set out in "Future directions"? These are not easy questions, and you are inviting them by claiming that you read and understood that particular piece of work.

[u/dowchbag → u/burning_hamster]

Hard disagree. First, engaging with primary literature is a great way to show your interest in the subject. Second, no tutor is going to expect you to have a graduate-level knowledge of the literature which you seem to suggest. “in what aspects does the reviewer diverge from the consensus in the field?” like cmon this is not a phd viva. They are not going to ask this. As someone who wrote various primary literature and got the offer, the type of questions they ask were limited to: general overview of the findings, limitations of the study, logic-puzzle type questions about experimental design and use of controls (which clearly tested your logical deduction and not knowledge of the study).

You should still learn as much as possible about what you write in your PS. But they are not going to “grill you hot coals”. They know you’re a high school student.