Creative thinking skills

These ideas are ways to develop your creative thinking.

• Get into a creative mindset by trying to find a new route to lectures each day.
• Brainstorm ideas with friends.
• Talk to people who do things you don’t do.
• Attend a lecture on a subject different to your own.
• Explore a possible new hobby by reading or using social media to find introductory videos and ideas, or find a society or group that you can join. This might be the start of a new hobby…

These are all quick ways you can boost your creative thinking, and you could refer to in applications.

• Take up a new sport, learn a new musical instrument, join a choir, take up dancing… Try a new hobby, and see if it sticks!
• Arrange to travel to new places, in new ways.
• Start a themed discussion group with your friends.

• Develop your own website, or offer to build one for a student society. (There’s no need to code it – but you could do this too if you like).
• Approach a charity with a suggestion of how you might volunteer a specific skill.
• Think of a unique fundraising event for a charity.
• Work, travel or volunteer abroad. Our Summer Internship Programme offers lots of opportunities to do this.
• Whether you are a student or research staff member, create your own internship or work-shadowing experience. Our Internship Office provides tips on how to do this.
• Make something new happen in your college, department, or in a society.
• ‘Up-skill’ yourself. Take a course at the Oxford Language Centre, a free computing course at Oxford IT's Digital Skills courses

• Found a new society or research collaboration.
• Turn a creative hobby into a semi-professional activity. Get published, exhibit, or get paid for performance.