Clik here to view.
As Oxford's record on ethnic minorities is criticised, black students describe their experiences at the university
There has only been one moment in his three years at Oxford when Stephen Bush felt uncomfortable about race. That was in a tutorial about the US president Thomas Jefferson, who believed black people were inferior to white.
Bush, who is reading history at Balliol college, said: "Every time one of the students quoted from his letter they would look at me really nervously, but I just found it funny. Some people here come from some quite rural places and have to get in the car to buy some milk, let alone see a black person."
Oxford's record on diversity is under the spotlight this week after the prime minister described his alma mater's admissions figures as "disgraceful". But for black applicants to Britain's oldest university, the barriers can be as much about class as race – a failure by state schools to prepare pupils for interview, or a damaging lack of confidence compared with private school candidates.
One Oxford applicant, a woman of black African origin who got three As at A-level, described feeling painfully "out of my comfort zone" during the interview. "I didn't mind the bit that was academically rigorous but after [we discussed] Shakespeare the female tutor leaned over and said, 'Really love, wouldn't you be happier somewhere like Liverpool doing community studies?' To do that when you feel vulnerable … I'll never forget that. But I never complained about it – I just went to Liverpool and did politics and English."
Now a community worker, she still mentions the episode to young people she works with. "I say it's not enough to get the grades. You have to get over people's preconceptions of you when you walk through the doors."
Bush, who is mixed-race, blames lack of ambition in the state system for the lower success rate of black applicants. His school did little to prepare him, he said. "People like me are told, 'You're really clever, good luck, don't get nervous,' and there are other people [from private schools] knowing what the questions will be. It wouldn't be that hard for the state sector to get better – my school didn't ask me anything afterwards.
"My school was positive, but not that helpful. They didn't organise an open day and there was no practice interview. The fact is many state schools fail their pupils and the majority of BME groups go to state schools and are failed."
The most selective universities say attainment at school is the biggest barrier to greater diversity. The proportion of black students getting the top grades required for Oxbridge was 9.6% in 2007, compared with 23% for white students. In 2009, 29,000 white students got three As at A-level, excluding general studies, compared with 452 black students. There may also be cultural reasons why black candidates are less likely to get in. Oxford says 44% apply for its three most over-subscribed subjects – 29% seek to do medicine, for example, compared with 7% of white applicants.
Abi Oyinkan Johnson, 23, who graduated from Oxford in 2009, said: "We do tend to apply for the more oversubscribed subjects. It's really rare to meet a black person who does a subject like English. Black students tend to go straight into jobs after university, so I think we do go for the harder subjects because we go into it with a career plan.
"From my friends and family members it's very, very rare to find a black student doing an arts degree because culturally it's seen as a waste of time."
Johnson, who studied law at St Peter's college, said she never felt discriminated against during the interview process. "If anything I felt encouraged once I took the step to apply. I felt I belonged there. I think if you have got what it takes to get into Oxford then you will get in regardless of skin colour."
But not everyone finds it so easy to adapt to the prevailing culture at Oxford. Hanna Thomas, who is of mixed Japanese and British heritage, describes the university as "a replica of any privileged atmosphere in the UK which is generally dominated by white males".
Thomas, 27, who studied classics, said: "It's hard to develop yourself when you're on the back foot about your identity and defensive the whole time you're there. [I was] switching from a girls' school to supervisions with very confident white private school boys who would talk for a full hour straight without letting you get a word in edgeways. It took me two years to realise they were talking nonsense and I was cleverer."
Imran Khan, 25, who studied biology at Christ Church, said his Kenyan Asian parents were initially opposed to him applying because they did not want him to be far from home. "I'm an only child and there is often a stronger emphasis on family in Asian communities – there is more of an expectation that you will live closer to your parents.
"The first time I saw the university was when I went up to interview. It was really intimidating, and when you get there it feels like everyone knows the system apart from you."
For Khan, the feeling was as much cultural as racial. "The second night I was there they had this five-course dinner with strange robes and cutlery – it was all completely new to me. Because of my background I didn't drink, and when they are going around offering wine on the first night it does make you think, 'How am I going to react to this?'"
For black students from more diverse parts of the country, Oxford's whiteness can be a shock. Bush said: "I went to a very diverse college in London, but I soon realised the rest of the country isn't like that. When you're one amongst thousands of white people in your year it does feel a bit strange."
In Bush's first year the university's Conservative Association was involved in a race row when electoral candidates were allegedly asked to tell racist jokes at a hustings. "One of them responded, 'What do you say if you see a TV move about in the dark? Drop it nigger.' After that joke was made, people in the student paper kept calling up to see if I was OK. I did think that joke was offensive. But there is a difference between exclusively white privileged people coming together and telling jokes, and making a joke amongst friends."
Bush is dismissive of Cameron's intervention. "This is the man who is getting rid of EMA, without which I wouldn't have gone to sixth form.
"What really matters is that over the 18 years building up to that [admissions] interview, some people have been in classes of 10 or 11, and some in classes of 26 to 28. Oxford is working quite hard at filtering that out, but it's been given a massively bad hand by the government and most of the state system."
Number crunching
The statistic is an arresting one. In 2009, just one "black Caribbean" candidate from the UK – out of 35 who applied – was accepted for study at Oxford.
Reported in the Guardian last year, along with FOI data highlighting the white and upper-middle-class profile of both Oxford and Cambridge, the number provoked a fresh storm when it was quoted by the prime minister on Monday. But David Cameron's claim that "only one black person" was admitted that year was instantly rebutted by the university as "inaccurate and highly misleading".
As No 10 accepted, the PM should have been more precise. In fact, there were 27 black students in that year's intake, including 23 black African students and three from other backgrounds. Still, these students accounted for a tiny proportion of Oxford's 2,653 new undergraduates.
In the same year six "black Caribbean" students were admitted to Cambridge out of 28 black students.
Significantly, the success rate of black applicants is lower than for whites. Oxford blames oversubscription of the three most popular subjects – economics and management, medicine and maths. But the Labour MP David Lammy's freedom of information requests also suggest there are sharp disparities between colleges. At Keble College the success rates for white and black applicants are near equal, at 31% and 30%. The comparable rates for Merton College are 33% for white applicants and 13% for black.
College by college
Jesus
Founded in 1571, and with alumni including Harold Wilson and Lawrence of Arabia, there's no obvious reason why Jesus – a medium-sized college in the city centre – should have a lower rate of successful black applicants than any other college. Its admissions from non-selective state schools are above average, as are the number of students it takes from the lowest socio-economic groups.
While 38% of Jesus undergraduates are privately educated, compared with 44% university-wide, only 8% of black applicants were offered places between 1999 and 2009 – one black UK student every two years. A point worth noting is that Jesus takes a below average number of students in medicine – 12 in 2009, compared with an average of around 17. Medicine is two-and-a-half times more popular among black students, 23% of whom applied for it in 2009 and the success rate for medical applicants is lower than most other subjects, at just 16%. It's a factor, but not an explanation.
Worcester
From 1999 to 2009, black applicants to Worcester College from the UK have been awarded four places, the lowest number among any of the university's 28 undergraduate colleges. This cannot be explained by its size: with around 380 undergraduates, it is one of the largest colleges, tucked away from the crowded city centre in 26 leafy acres.
Statistically it is one of the hardest colleges to get into, but black applicants from the UK are around two-and-a-half times less likely to be successful than their white counterparts. From 1999 to 2009, the success rate for black applicants was 10%, the second lowest in the entire university. The success rate for white applicants was 27%. In 2009, the college made just one offer of a place to a black UK student. In 2008, it made none.
That said, its record on equality and social mobility is strong. Since 2006 the college has taken 25% of its students from state comprehensives, 1% higher than the average.
Christ Church
Known to its students as 'The House', Christ Church has produced 13 British prime ministers – as many as every other Oxford college put together, and two less than the whole of Cambridge University. It is one of Oxford's largest and most prestigious colleges, with an undergraduate population of around 400 students, yet in both 2007 and 2008 it made no offers whatsoever to black applicants from the UK, and in 2009 just two.
In contrast to Jesus and Worcester, Christ Church's record on social mobility is consistently unimpressive. It is one of three Oxford colleges to take the majority of its undergraduates from private schools: in the last five years, 51% of its students were educated in the independent sector. Less than one in three came from non-selective state schools. The only two colleges to admit more privately educated students are Trinity and David Cameron's alma mater Brasenose, the college with the worst record of all for taking students from the lowest socio-economic groups.In total, just six black UK students were admitted to Christ Church from 1999 to 2009, compared with 25 at similarly sized Keble College.