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Our application process is intended to assess your academic ability, curiosity, and motivation to thrive in a tutorial-led learning environment. To this end, AI may be used to assist in researching your application, but the ideas and their expression must be yours.
Using AI beyond the permitted uses outlined below may disadvantage you in the assessment of your application. Gaining admission by making inappropriate use of AI tools, might prevent you from making best use of the learning opportunities afforded by the University, which require full intellectual engagement.
Each part of your application (see our Guide for applicants) is designed to help us understand something specific about you:
The following uses of AI in your application are permitted:
Where you use AI to assist in research for an essay or a piece of written work, you should declare how you have used it in a footnote or reference, in the same way as you would refer to a book or article that you have used.
The following uses of AI in your application are not permitted:
AI tools can produce plausible-sounding but false information. Fabricating information in an application – whether using AI or otherwise – is never appropriate.
In admissions tests the rules of the test centre and provider must always be followed.
If AI has generated the ideas and analysis in your written work, or articulated the motivation in your personal statement, it is unlikely that the result will provide the depth of reasoning or personal perspective that will make our assessors consider you a strong candidate.
Oxford admissions interviews are intended to assess your own academic thinking and responses in real time. During the interview itself, candidates must not use AI tools or other forms of external assistance unless explicitly permitted by the University as part of an approved reasonable adjustment.
While you may use AI tools as part of your general preparation for interviews in the same way that you might use other study resources, on the day itself you should not use AI tools while your interview is in progress. An Oxford interview is a discussion and an opportunity for tutors to learn more about your interest in the subject and the way that you think. Interviewers will normally be more interested in how you explain and develop ideas during discussion than in rehearsed or pre-prepared answers. The use of AI during this process, in addition to being not permitted, is also likely to negatively affect the quality of the interaction you are able to have with your interviewers.
AI usage or external assistance in interviews includes, for example:
As part of our monitoring processes we may at any point require you to share your screen(s) or provide a sweep of the room with your camera – such requests may be random and should not be understood as implying suspicion in any particular case.
All shortlisted candidates agree to Oxford's interviewees' code of conduct by participating in our interviews.
AI tools used to assist with a disability are explicitly permitted. This includes voice recognition software, spelling and grammar checkers, and tools that transform transcribed speech into written language for users who face barriers to writing. These are not considered inappropriate AI use.
If academic assessors consider that inappropriate use of AI was made in your application or interview, this may disadvantage assessment of your application. If inappropriate use is confirmed:
If you have further questions on the use of AI in your application, contact the college considering your application.
The University of Oxford and its colleges aim to provide education of excellent quality for able students, whatever their background. In pursuit of this aim, the University is committed to using its best endeavours to ensure that all of its activities are governed by principles of equality of opportunity and that all students are helped to achieve their full academic potential.
