<p>I am a PhD student at Oxford.</p>
<p>The deadline for undergraduate applications is always 15th October for entry the following year. So you have missed the deadline if you wanted to start in October 2005 (and there is only one start date per year). </p>
<p>I totally would recommened you take the French because languages are compulsory in the UK till age 16 and many British students also have A-level French or German. Put yourself on a level playing field.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about being home schooled. I know another student here who was home schooled too.</p>
<p>The posters above are pretty much correct. Lots of APs and they don’t care about ECs. However, there was recently a thread of this board about Rhodes scholars. It seems that for such scholarships (and similar) ECs and commuinty activities are very important. Look up the thread, it has a link to an article about the scholars.</p>