The students who win places at the most competitive universities are those who can think for themselves on the page.

The Approach

Every year, Oxford and Cambridge colleges, learned societies, and leading academic institutions run dozens of essay competitions for sixth form students.

Entering one is among the strongest signals a student can send on a university application—not because of the prize, but because of what the process demands. The same is true of Extended Project Qualifications and independent research projects, which give students the opportunity to pursue a question in depth and produce a substantial, original piece of work.

Writing a serious competition essay, EPQ, or IRP means choosing a question no syllabus has prepared you for, conducting independent research, developing an original argument, and sustaining it in clear, precise prose. These are exactly the skills admissions tutors at the most competitive universities are trying to identify, and they are rarely demonstrated elsewhere in an application.

I work one-to-one with sixth formers through every stage of this process: selecting the right competition and question, thinking through the argument, structuring the research, drafting, and refining the essay to a standard that would hold its own in a university tutorial.

There can only be one winner, but every student who goes through this process seriously comes out of it a stronger thinker and a significantly more compelling candidate. The skills transfer directly into A Level work too—students who learn to think and write at this level produce better essays across all their subjects, and it shows in their grades.