Planning and delivery skills

These ideas are ways to start planning effectively, as well as being useful things to do in themselves! You might use these as evidence of planning skills in a written application if you haven’t been involved in larger projects, and you are likely to talk about how you organise yourself at interview.

• Set time aside to plan when starting a major activity.
• Make and use revision timetables.
• Create a timeline and define responsibilities early when starting a collaborative task.
• Research different methods and tools available, and consider which suit you best. For example…
  • Use a diary or calendar and use Outlook's Scheduling Assistant or Doodle polls to coordinate your diary with others.
  • Use “to-do lists” to prioritise and monitor your tasks.
  • Manage your emails using folders, rules and categories/tags, see this Microsoft Office article for ideas.

These are all ways you can start to develop your planning skills, and which do not involve a long-term commitment. You might find these useful as examples in an interview.

• Plan an expedition or your own vacation travel itinerary – such as inter-railing.
• Organise an away-day for a society, or short tour for a sports team to another university.
• Co-organise the support for admissions interviews in your college.
• Make monthly and annual budgets, and stick to them!
• Contingency planning: look ahead and plan from problems which might come up on projects you are involved with (e.g. finding resources for a college event; securing bridging money between research contracts).

• Get involved with any extra-curricular activities while at Oxford – from membership of societies to part-time work. The ability to simultaneously juggle multiple activities and get a good grade is really effective evidence of an ability to plan.
• Volunteer to organise your Common Room’s annual elections.
• Organise props and schedules as a stage manager for a student production, or coordinate aspects of a Freshers Fair.
• Plan fieldwork or a research project using project management tools, such as Trello or Asana.
• Volunteer to organise community projects or activities through OxHub.
• Organise a series of speakers or panel sessions for a society.

• Organise a campaign, ball, conference, or other large event.
• Become the editor of a student publication, such as a newspaper, website or yearbook.
• Plan the budget and set milestones to organise a large research project.
• Develop a plan to learn a new language or build a new skill: see our Self-directed Skills Development briefing.