A guide for students · Year 12, and the summer after
Super-curricular activities for Oxford and Cambridge
Super-curricular activities are the things you do to go further in the subject you want to study, beyond what school covers: reading, lectures, online courses, competitions and small projects of your own. For Oxford and Cambridge they matter because the application is almost entirely academic, and the personal statement and interview both give you room to talk about them.
What counts as super-curricular?
Anything that takes your subject further than the syllabus. For a historian that might be reading a book about a period you have not studied, for a physicist working through a problem set from a competition, for a linguist reading a novel in the language, for an economist following an argument in the news back to the data behind it. Free lectures and university taster events, online courses, essay competitions and a small project you set yourself all count.
Extra-curricular activities, such as sport, music or a part-time job, are a different thing. They are worth doing for their own sake, but Oxford and Cambridge choose students for a course, so those activities usually count for much less unless they connect to the subject.
Why do Oxford and Cambridge care about it?
Because they are looking for people who will enjoy several years of small-group teaching in one subject, and the most convincing sign of that is having already gone looking for more of it. It also gives you something real to say: an interviewer may start from something in your application, and a book you have thought hard about is much easier to discuss than a list of things you attended.
Depth beats length. One book you can argue with, or one problem you spent a week on, is worth more than a long list you could only describe. Nobody expects you to have read everything, and an interviewer will usually notice if a list is longer than your understanding of it.
How do you choose what to do?
Start from what interested you in class and follow it. Read the reading lists on the university’s own course pages, which many departments publish, then read around whatever caught your attention, and keep brief notes of what you read and what you thought, since you will want them when you write the statement and again before an interview.
There is no checklist to complete and no activity that is expected of everybody. Nothing here needs to cost money: a library card, free lectures and some curiosity go a long way.
How do you write about it in the personal statement?
The UCAS personal statement for 2026 entry onwards is three answers rather than one essay. Super-curricular work usually belongs in the third, which asks what else you have done to prepare outside of education and why these experiences are useful, and it often explains your answer to the first, why you want to study the subject.
Write about what you learnt and what you think, not just what you did: a sentence on the argument in a book and where you disagreed with it says more than naming the book. The personal statement guide covers the three questions, and Cambridge applicants can add an optional Cambridge-specific statement of up to 1,200 characters in My Cambridge Application.
Where to check
Checked against these on . The rules change from year to year, so the pages above are the ones to trust if anything here disagrees with them. cookie is not connected to the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge.
Common questions
What is the difference between super-curricular and extra-curricular?
Super-curricular activities take your chosen subject further, such as reading, lectures or competitions in it. Extra-curricular activities, such as sport or music, are separate from the subject.
How much super-curricular reading do you need for Oxford or Cambridge?
There is no set amount. A few things you have thought about properly and can discuss are more useful than a long list, both in the statement and at interview.
Do you need to go to a paid summer school?
No. Nothing here needs to cost money: reading, free lectures and online resources are plenty to write and talk about.
Where do super-curricular activities go in the new personal statement?
Usually in the third answer, about what else you have done to prepare outside of education and why it is useful, and they often support the first answer about why you want to study the subject.