Hi! I am a rising senior in high school from the US. Based on these stats, I was wondering what my chances at Oxford might look like. I’m applying for the Law/Jurisprudence course (Course I, not the European-focused law course, which is Course II).
SAT: 1560 (Reading/Writing: 770, Math: 790)
AP Scores
AP English Language and Composition: 5
AP US History: 5
AP US Government & Politics: 5
AP Seminar: 5
AP Physics 1: 4
AP Precalc: 4
AP Research: 4
Next year I will take AP Economics, European History, Lit/Composition, Statistics, Calc AB, and French. Not sure if my scores on these would be a condition for possible acceptance into the Law course.
Rec letter: very strong; I will be submitting my letter from a teacher who knows me very well, knows my academic strengths and passion for law/government and a lot of activities I did in and out of school with that, and knows me as a person
Personal statement: I started brainstorming ideas for the personal statement; I’m a strong writer so I hope that will help! I know it’s different from the personal statement on US Common App
LNAT: I’m reviewing some practice tests/materials for when I take it. It seems similar to the SAT Reading and Writing section.
Extra info: Some qualifications I might mention in personal statement if relevant? Thoughts on which ones would help would be appreciated!
Received AP Capstone Diploma (Research + Seminar)
3rd place in international essay competition in law category
Mock Trial VP + star witness for all years of high school
Currently working with college professors as a legal research intern
Intern at my town’s chamber of commerce, working with state government
Studied Harvard undergrad course in law, political theory, etc.
Attended selective (<15% acceptance) Notre Dame summer law program
Attended selective history, politics, law summer program (John Locke Institute)
Aside from this, I am passionate about writing, economics, linguistics/computing, and volunteering. I have a lot of ECs/awards with those but I’m not sure if they’re relevant to include.
Oxford is one of my dream schools! I want to study law there and then go to law school in the US, probably becoming a corporate lawyer. I’m not choosing PPE, Econ, or any similar major because of the strong math expectations, and with a 4 in AP Precalc (and only taking AP Calc AB next year) I don’t want to put myself in that pool.
I think you are correct not to apply for PPE (where a 5 in Calc BC is expected), but the challenge with law is that in the UK it is effectively a professional degree. So if you don’t have the right to work in a country with a UK-based legal system (basically the Commonwealth countries), there will be a lot of skepticism about your application. Oxford would consider it weird to do a degree in law then another 3 years of US law school. That’s hard to overcome and is why US applicants interested in law tend to apply for PPE or related subjects.
The best way to escape from the math requirements might be to apply for history and politics:
Yeah, Course I is the equivalent of an LLB, and is what you would do to become qualified to practice in England or Wales. In addition to it likely not making sense to Oxford for a US citizen to want to take that course before a US JD, US law schools are also unlikely to see that as a good choice.
The good news is for US law schools, virtually anything else that is not similarly pre-professional would be fine. History and Politics, sure, or Modern Languages and Linguistics, or so on.
So I just want to warn you that Oxford will require you to report those, and reportedly it can be an issue to have non-5s even in APs that are not required/recommended/helpful for your chosen course. And depending on the course they could at least make your conditional offer contingent on some of your planned APs (I am not sure if they ever make conditional offers based on all your planned APs, but you’ll have to report all that).
This is just a real mismatch between the US and Oxford admissions systems, but it is what it is. I would not necessarily say you cannot apply, I just think it is worth knowing it is a commonly-identified issue for US applicants.
Although you obviously don’t have to listen to any of us, I agree that getting a law degree at Oxford and then getting a law degree in the US doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense (and would definitely be an unusual path). As @NiceUnparticularMan said, law schools in the US don’t care much what you major in - political science and history are probably most common, but law students come from a huge range of majors and schools.
I would like to remind users that opening multiple accounts is prohibited by the ToS. The OP is welcome to post this query under their original account.