Maths at St John's College, Oxford

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]As you go through the journey of learning more and more maths, you learn really that you know it's what underpins everything. So if you want to gratify your interest in such a wide area intellectually, then I feel that math is just the only correct answer in that regard. What I like about St. John's is well the fact that it's you know a massive college but what I feel that St. John's achieves which some of the other bigger colleges fall short in is somehow feeling quite personal and homely at the same time.

[00:00:27]>> What I like about studying at St. John's is that it's a really really nice environment. You have so many nice spaces to study. The library, you have parts for pretty much any need. You have rooms you can talk in and work collaboratively in. You have rooms that are completely silent. Outside of that, there's Kendrew Cafe is a nice space.

[00:00:48]The gardens, especially in summer when you've got the most work cuz you're preparing for exams, it's really nice to be able to go and just sit on the lawn.

[00:00:58]In terms of how maths is taught at St. John's, our tutors in particular are very good and I think the tutorial system really helps you to get the most out of your course >> for someone to really look at your all of your solutions carefully and to make sure that every step of your proof is um rigorous and I think that is a very important part of studying for math. So I'm very very thankful that the tutors are spending a lot of their time helping us with that.

[00:01:28]In terms of the peer relationships between mathematicians, um this is pretty good. We um often do there's a room in the library like a sort of group study room and we often discuss problems there which is quite fun or we sort of just have like a group chat where you can discuss problems or like give hints or like ideas on how you might think about a problem. Everyone's really interested and like I think you can tell passionate about their subject. This is actually something that almost surprised me and that also doesn't seem necessarily the standard even amongst all colleges Oxford is that there is a really really strong community of mathematicians. You're always sort of looking out for the other students and they're always looking out for you. I didn't expect the extent to which the the feeling is more collaborative than competitive. Everyone is just trying to do their best and you are helping each other out because you you genuinely want to. You like each other.

[00:02:19]>> There are lots of sports club. I'm part of the ultimate frisbee and the badminton club.

[00:02:26]>> I'm the social media manager for the badminton team. We have sessions twice a week and it's just a nice way to decompress after maybe a long day of studying, get some sports and exercise in.

[00:02:35]>> In the evening once work is done for the day. There's sort of a wide range of options to socialize within the college itself. The bar is also open or even just you know having sort of a conversation walking through the gardens. I think it's quite a popular option. If I want to go do some exercise, we have squash courts. We have gyms right on site. If I can't be bothered to cook or don't have time to cook, there's Hall or Kendrew Cafe to feed me. And so it means that you can spend a lot of time studying because everything in your life outside of that is made easy.

[00:03:10]>> I think it's really good that everyone can have their own working style.

[00:03:15]There's absolutely no time limit like 9 to5 or something. You can just work whenever you want. So to a wouldbe maths applicant here at John's I'd say well the most important thing is probably to be yourself which is probably a slightly cliched answer but you know everyone has a different approach to the subject a different way of seeing things and I think what the teachers value above all is having that sort of diversity of thought and perception of of the subject. If you want to practice for the interviews I think the main bit of that is just uh getting used to working out loud. I think especially in maths there's there's a tendency to sort of see a question head goes down you start working on it silently but in the interview they really want to see your thought process and they also want to see you respond to their prompt you need to be talking through what you're doing you need to get good at that and you need to sort of be good at almost keeping an open mind and not getting too set in one method and keep looking for problems you can't solve and eventually you'll sort of break that barrier I