Feedback on admissions decisions
Many courses provide information about admissions on their departmental websites. Colleges and departments are not required to provide individual feedback to applicants, but feedback can be requested from the college that considered the application, on or before 15 February in the year after the application was made.
General
All enquiries about admissions decisions are dealt with on an individual basis between applicants (or their school/college with applicants' written consent) and the appropriate Oxford college. This will be the college to which you initially applied, or to which you were subsequently assigned, whether as a result of making an open application or through reallocation.
Please note that an applicant’s parent or guardian (or another third party such as their academic referee) may only request feedback/initiate a complaint if the request/complaint is accompanied by the consent of the applicant that they may act on their behalf. An email to the college from the applicant, copied in to the third party, confirming that they have the right to ask for feedback is normally acceptable as authentication.
Feedback
Colleges are not required to provide feedback to applicants. However, if you wish to receive further information on any aspect of an application, you can make a request, preferably in writing, to the Tutor for Admissions of the relevant college. This would include requests for feedback on a decision not to call you for interview, or for the reasons why your application has been unsuccessful. Although you may be interviewed by more than one college, if called for interview, you would only receive feedback about the outcome of your application from the college to which you initially applied, or to which you were subsequently assigned.
Initial shortlisting for Law, Medicine and Biomedical Sciences is carried out centrally. Requests for feedback about any application that has not been shortlisted should be addressed in the first instance to the Admissions Coordinator of the appropriate programme (or for Law, please contact [email protected]). Requests for feedback after interview should be made to the Tutor for Admissions of the relevant college, with the admissions office included in the communication.
Only general summary feedback relating to course applicant selection may be provided to the author of the school/college reference (the referee) or to the Head or Principal of the school/college without the express permission of the individual applicant. Feedback on individual applicant performance can be provided to referees or other third-parties (such as a parent) only upon obtaining explicit consent from the applicant.
The communication may be from a college tutor or the senior selector concerned, but the Tutor for Admissions (or a person within the college designated by the tutor for the purpose) will consider the communication before it is sent.
Feedback will generally be provided by letter or email within twenty working days of receipt of the request. However, requests for feedback received before 31 December will be treated as having been received on the day colleges and departments reopen after the New Year. Colleges will not normally provide feedback where the request is made after 15 February.
Making a complaint after failing to meet the conditions of an offer
If a candidate does not fulfil the conditions of their offer, a college will take into account all information available to them at the point they receive the candidate’s academic results, and decide if they still wish to confirm the offer. There is no subsequent appeal process on this decision.
Candidates should ensure that details of any extenuating circumstances are provided to the Tutor for Admission at the college where they hold an offer in advance of the receipt of their examination results, ideally with supporting documentation from their academic referee, or relevant medical evidence. Colleges will not reconsider information that has already been considered by an examination board.
