Skip to content
The Russet Collective Enquire Now

Michaelmas · 2027 entry

Oxbridge admissions tutoring

Personal statement, written work and interview preparation for Oxford, Cambridge and other competitive essay-subject courses. Taught by Leah Burgess, who read French and Spanish at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and went through the process herself.

Enquire Now

Six questions and about a minute. You choose your slot on the next screen.

The fee, plainly

From £160 an hour

£160 an hour is the rate inside a block of ten sessions, which is £1,595 — £159.50 an hour. A block of five is £995, and a single session is £275. All three set out below.

There is no assessment fee, no membership and nothing to pay before a block is agreed.

What an hour contains

  • —A live one-to-one hour with Leah, online
  • —Whatever you send beforehand read and annotated before it — a draft statement, an essay, a submission piece — at no extra charge
  • —Written notes afterwards saying what to do next
  • —In interview season, the hour is mostly your child talking and being pushed on what they said

Hours are used at whatever pace the deadline requires, and a block may be split across both sides of 15 October. A block bought in September commonly goes on the three questions and a submission piece; one bought in November goes entirely on interviews.

2027 entry

The dates you came here to check.

Taken from Oxford, Cambridge, UCAS and UAT-UK, and nowhere else. Where a date has not been published, we say so rather than estimate it.

  • 12–16 October 2026 UAT-UK admissions tests
  • 15 October 2026, 18:00 UCAS deadline for Oxford and Cambridge
  • 22 October 2026, 18:00 My Cambridge Application deadline
  • 10 November 2026 Oxford written work reaches the college
  • 16 November 2026 UAT-UK results released
  • Mid-November to early December 2026 Oxford shortlisting; interview invitations sent
  • December 2026 Oxford interviews, held online
  • 1–18 December 2026 Cambridge interviews
  • 12 January 2027 Oxford decisions released via UCAS
  • 13 January 2027, 18:00 UCAS equal consideration deadline

2027 entry. Checked against Oxford, Cambridge, UCAS, JCQ and UAT-UK on 13 September 2026. The full calendar, with what each phase involves.

Two phases, two different jobs

Writing until October. Talking until Christmas.

Phase one · up to 15 October

Written work and the personal statement

Submission pieces where the course asks for them, and the personal statement written against the three questions that replaced the old free-text statement. They are three separate answers, marked as three, and treating them as one essay cut into pieces is the commonest way to waste the second one.

Written work is not a portfolio of your best essays. It is evidence of how your child thinks on paper, and a marked school essay with a teacher’s comments on it is often a better submission than a polished one. Oxford wants it at the college, with its cover sheet, by 10 November.

The 15 October UCAS deadline is 18:00 and there are no extensions. Cambridge then wants its own separate form eight days later, which is missed every year by people who thought the 15th was the end of it.

Phase two · mid-October to Christmas

Interview and subject preparation

An Oxford or Cambridge interview is a tutorial with a stranger. Your child makes a claim, the interviewer pushes on it, and what is being watched is what happens next — whether they defend it, refine it, or abandon it because somebody frowned.

So the preparation is not a list of likely questions. It is practice at thinking out loud under pressure in front of somebody who has read the same book, which is exactly what happens in a tutorial every week of the year here. Rehearsed answers are the thing that gets found out: an interviewer’s second question has nowhere to go.

Invitations go out from the middle of November, with little notice. Oxford interviews are held online in December; Cambridge runs from 1 to 18 December, online or in person depending on the course and the college.

Fees

Bought against 15 October, not by the term.

An admissions year has two halves and they want different things. Before 15 October the work is written — the three questions that replaced the personal statement, and the submission pieces the course asks for. After it the work is spoken, and it is practice at being pushed on what you have just said. A block can be spent entirely on one half or split across both.

A single session

£275

One hour

One hour on the thing that is stuck. Commonly a statement that has been rewritten four times and is worse than the first draft.

A block of five

£995

£199 an hour

Enough to take one phase properly — the three questions and a submission piece before 15 October, or a full run of interview practice after it.

The best value, and the commonest

A block of ten

£1,595

£159.50 an hour

Both phases, bought once. The application written and submitted, then interview preparation from the invitation to the day itself.

An hour is an hour whichever side of 15 October it falls, and a block may be split across both phases — some of it on the statement and the written work before the deadline, the rest on interview preparation after it. Hours are used at whatever pace the deadlines require. Payable in full once a block is agreed, and never before.

Booked before 15 October, a block starts on the application and carries through to the interview. Booked after it, every hour goes on interview preparation, and invitations arrive from the middle of November with little notice — which is the argument for holding hours rather than buying them in the week you need them.

Which subjects

Anything that is argued for.

Humanities, modern languages, English and the social sciences: history, law, PPE, philosophy, politics, geography, archaeology and anthropology, human sciences, classics, theology, HSPS. Maths and the sciences are the only exclusions, and that is a real exclusion rather than a preference.

This scope is deliberately wider than the school-age teaching, and the two should not be confused. At school level the subjects are English, Spanish and French only. Admissions coaching covers any essay-based or social-science course, because building an argument and defending it under questioning is the same skill whatever the faculty.

What is not offered

  • —Admissions test coaching. TARA and the LNAT are reasoning tests, and that is a different skill from essay coaching. We do not sell preparation for them, and you should be sceptical of anyone selling you preparation for a test Oxford has already scrapped.
  • —Writing it for them. The statement has to be your child’s, in their words. What Leah does is tell them which paragraph is doing no work.
  • —A promise of a place. Nobody can offer one, and an offer rate quoted at you is a number about other people’s children.
  • —Any affiliation. The Russet Collective is not connected with, or endorsed by, Oxford, Cambridge or any other university. Leah is a graduate of one of them, which is a fact about her and not about us.

Start with a conversation.

Six questions, about a minute, and you pick your time out of Leah’s own diary on the next screen. Nothing is payable before a block of hours is agreed, and nothing is sold on the call.

Enquire Now

Or read the full calendar, with what typically goes wrong in each phase.

Our expertise

  • AQA
  • Pearson Edexcel
  • Eduqas
  • OCR
  • Cambridge IGCSE
  • AQA
  • Pearson Edexcel
  • Eduqas
  • OCR
  • Cambridge IGCSE

AQA, Pearson Edexcel, Eduqas, OCR and Cambridge Assessment International Education are the owners of their respective names and marks. They are shown here to say which specifications are taught. The Russet Collective is not affiliated with, approved by or endorsed by any awarding body.