Between them, Oxford and Cambridge admit around 500 students each year to read History or joint honours degrees such as History & Politics. Until quite recently – in fact, up until 2023 – the two universities operated broadly similar admissions systems for students applying to read these subjects; each set a written test and required the submission of one or two pieces of written work before offering final interviews to successful candidates. Then, in 2024, Cambridge dropped its written test, the History Admissions Assessment (HAA), and this year Oxford has done the same with its long-established History Admissions Test (HAT), which had run ever since 2004.
The result of these changes is that candidates who hope to start reading history at these universities next year face a good deal of uncertainty. In particular, it’s still unclear how Oxford colleges plan to select their candidates for interview this year. This article rounds up what is known about the changes that are taking place in the Oxbridge admissions process for history, and offers guidance – based on long experience – for students applying to Oxford and Cambridge this year as to how best to prepare for the revised admissions process.
The History admissions process at Oxford and Cambridge University
The first thing to say about the admissions system at both Oxford and Cambridge is that individual colleges, and in fact individual interview teams, have a very large say in the way the process runs. This mean that, while some things (such as minimum exam requirements) are set at university level, differences exist not only between the two universities but also between each college when it comes to things such as how many pieces of written work are required, whether candidates who make it through to the final stage of the process are offered two 20-minute interviews or one 30-minute interview – and what those interviews consist of.
This article offers broad general advice, but you should always check the admissions pages run by the college that you decide to apply to in search of additional, specific guidance. In particular, each college site should tell you – if not now, then certainly by autumn – whether or not the interviews will involve discussion of a written source that’s sent out to students in advance. This option, always relatively common, is very likely to gain in popularity now the dons no longer have access to the sort of information that the HAA and the HAT used to provide; there’s more on this below.
Why have the HAT and HAA been discontinued in 2025?
The two universities have given different reasons for abandoning their written tests, but it’s important to note that none of these have anything to do with the potential of a source analysis paper to reveal useful things about a candidate. In the case of Cambridge, the university’s central Cambridge Assessment Admissions Testing office announced last year that its decision to ditch the HAA was based on the high cost of creating and distributing “significantly complex” written tests – which, since COVID intervened a few years ago to end the practice of students writing answers by hand in exam halls, have been delivered via bespoke online portals.
Oxford seems to have had similar concerns, but it also experienced significant specific problems with the HAT in recent years. Three years ago, the university set a paper that proved so unexpectedly testing for school students that it had to made hurried adjustments to its mark scheme and pass rates just to ensure it had the right number of candidates for interview. Then, in each of the last two years, Oxford experienced significant problems with the online portal run on its behalf by Pearson VUE. In 2024, the portal crashed for several hours, but only in some locations, producing a disastrous situation in which some candidates sat the test without problems; others did so only after the stress of being locked out of the system half-way through writing their answers, and then having to wait anywhere between 45 minutes and four hours, depending on location, to begin the whole process again from scratch; while a small minority of students were unable to sit the Test at all. That made establishing a level playing field for all candidates effectively impossible – and it’s a problem that Oxford seems to have decided was quite likely to happen again in future if it persisted with the online HAT.
The decisions to drop the HAT and HAA were taken at university level, and I’ve heard plenty of anecdotal evidence from last year’s candidates that not all college admissions tutors are happy to do without such tests. At Cambridge (which operates a more decentralised admissions system than Oxford does), one result is that a small number of colleges have decided to require candidates to take their own written admissions tests, and this year both Peterhouse and Pembroke are asking students applying to their colleges to sit a written source analysis paper in parallel with the interview process.
Should I apply to study History at Oxford or Cambridge University?
The history degrees offered by Oxford and Cambridge have always been extremely similar in most respects. The two universities offer similar sorts of papers, with similar focuses – both expect first year students to begin by studying a British history period paper in their first term, and then a European or world history period paper in their second term. Both bolt historiography courses on top of these requirements – so the single biggest difference between reading history at Oxbridge and at any other university is the intensity of the workload and particularly the reading requirements. Oxbridge terms last for only 8-9 weeks, but in that time students are typically expected to complete ten 2,000 word essays (eight for the main paper and two for the historiography course), each of which usually comes with a reading list of 10-12 books and at least half a dozen academic papers. In the final year, both universities expect students to take a source analysis-intensive gobbets paper and to write their own undergraduate dissertation of about 12,000 words.
Some recent changes have acted to move Oxford and Cambridge further apart in their approach to history, however, and it’s worth pointing those out here for students who are still to choose which of the two Oxbridge universities to apply to.
First, Cambridge reformed its History Tripos three years ago, for the first time in 60 years. The aim was to create a more structured course in which more attention was paid in each year of each student’s course to further improving the skills and experiences developed in the previous one. In contrast, Oxford continues to run the same system that Cambridge used to operate before this reform; students, influenced by their tutors, choose their own pathway through a rich selection of possible papers (there may be a choice of up to two dozen for some parts of the course) without giving special consideration to structuring their learning or developing themselves as students and historians. Reports coming in from Cambridge suggest its students like the changes, and it’s possible to argue this reform gives Cambridge a slight edge over its old rival that it didn’t have before.
A second factor in Cambridge’s favour is that its Tripos offers some papers that are not available in Oxford. Here, the two things that may appeal to candidates are the chance to study ancient Greece and Rome (which at Oxford can only be done by getting accepted on the more competitive Ancient & Modern History joint honours course) and the existence of two papers devoted to the History of Political Thought. A third factor, speaking pragmatically, is that while both universities divide their history courses in two (Oxford into Prelims and Honours School, Cambridge into Part I and Part II), and then award final degrees based solely on results in the second part, Oxford’s Honours School lasts for two years, while Cambridge’s Part II takes only one. The practical effect is that Oxford students experience more stress when preparing for their finals, because they have to sit more papers for them.
This seems to be the main reason that Oxford switched the sitting of one of its finals papers to the last days of Year 2 a couple of years ago. However, since Oxford’s new Year 2 exam comprises a take-home paper that requires students to research and write three essays across a 9-day period, it’s arguable that the university has only added to the stress its history students have to cope with – not lessened it.
The differences between the application processes for History at Oxford and Cambridge
For many candidates hoping to read history at Oxbridge, however, Oxford does enjoy one considerable advantage that more than outweighs the ones that Cambridge boasts. This is because it makes offers to applicants that require them to achieve results of AAA at A-level (or an IB score of 38), while Cambridge requires A*AA or an IB score of at least 41. In every year that I’ve taught Oxbridge entrance, going all the way back to 2010, this has resulted in many able candidates opting to apply for Oxford rather than Cambridge on the basis that betting on themselves to hit A* grade level in order to guarantee a place means taking an unnecessary risk.
With the abandonment of the HAT, however, this critical decision needs to be re-evaluated. When the HAT and HAA existed, Oxford and Cambridge used their written tests in very different ways. Broadly, Cambridge wished (and still wishes) to interview all the students who apply who meet or exceed its minimum conditions with regard to GCSE results and predicted A-level or IB grades. It used (and still uses) its A* requirement as a way of limiting the number of applications it gets to roughly the total that each college can actually interview in the maximum of two weeks available.
Oxford, in contrast, was previously content to receive applications from many more students than it could hope to interview because it used the HAT as a means of weeding out the weakest 40% or so of each year’s applicants. By abolishing the HAT, while choosing not to increase its minimum A-level and IB offers, the university is creating a new problem for itself. I would expect it to receive at least the same number of applicants this year as last as a result of this – if not perhaps rather more, because the whole entrance process for this year looks simpler, more streamlined and less demanding of candidates’ time than it did when HAT preparation was a key part of the process.
This suggests that Oxford is going to have to introduce some new system for weeding out some of its candidates so as to reduce the total to the number it can actually interview. The consequence of this will be that a substantial proportion of those who do apply to the university this year could find themselves rejected without having the chance to prove themselves at interview. Nothing said by any Oxford history don to families asking questions about this problem at the recent open days suggested that they plan to interview a larger number of candidates, and it seems the main filter used by most colleges (perhaps all) is likely to be contextualised GCSE scores across all subjects.
It’s hard to see how Oxford can do otherwise. Colleges do mark the written work that gets submitted, and those marks do form part of each candidate’s overall admission score – but the deadline for submitting written work remains the second week of November, which is too close to interview offers (which go out at the beginning of the final week of the same month) to make it practical to complete that marking process in time. It might be possible to take a closer look at personal statements, which are submitted in mid-October – but all Oxbridge admissions tutors know that some of these are likely to be influenced by interventions from parents and schoolteachers, and this goes against the aim to treat all candidates equally.
It is important to understand the practical impacts of these two admissions processes. One key consequence is that Cambridge receives fewer applications per place, on average, than Oxford does, and so its admissions rate for history is higher – about 35% in 2023 compared to Oxford’s 26.5%. This doesn’t necessarily make applying to Cambridge easier, of course – it’s applications are more self-selecting, in that every one of them has backed themselves to score an A* or equivalent. However, Cambridge’s higher admissions rate does give pause for thought, at least in this experimental year, when it remains unclear how many first-rate candidates may not even be offered interviews by Oxford, potentially as a result of minor blemishes in GCSE scores for completely unrelated subjects. These are issues that candidates and their parents really ought to be putting to their chosen colleges before final decisions are made.
Interview requirements for History at Oxford and Cambridge
This year’s Oxbridge applicants will need to choose a college to apply to and submit a personal statement via UCAS in mid-October and then submit one piece of written work to their college by 10 November. Interview offers are normally made around 25 November, and interviews actually take place in the second week of December, after undergraduates at the universities have completed the Michaelmas terms.
Last year, with the HAA already gone and the HAT still in place, three-quarters of Oxford colleges, and an even higher proportion of their Cambridge equivalents, asked candidates to do a source reading ahead of the interviews – and then spent up to 20 minutes discussing that reading with them. In addition, several of the colleges that chose not to set a pre-reading instead introduced a short passage of from 1-3 paragraphs, or showed candidates a picture source, during the interviews themselves. What this means is that students can’t afford to assume that they will not be tested on their source analysis skills simply because the HAT and the HAA have ceased to exist. Preparation for this aspect of the admissions process is still likely to be important, and some advice in this regard is offered here.
Tutors for Oxbridge History admissions preparation
Please do get in touch with Keystone Tutors if you are looking for a tutor to support your History application for Oxford and Cambridge Universities. We offer Oxbridge mock interviews, super curricular learning and wider university application support. Read more about our Oxbridge History tutors.