Oxford does not accept the Gaokao, and Cambridge has no Physics course. Which interview you are preparing for depends on that, and it is settled before December.
Get the Dynamics and Fields pack — £180Of the ten pages ranking for this search in September 2026, six explain the physics interview and never mention the Gaokao; three cover applying from China and carry no physics. Three still name an Oxford admissions test retired for 2027 entry. None answers the question that decides your autumn: whether you have an Oxford Physics interview to prepare for at all.
For a great many Chinese applicants the answer is no, and the reason has nothing to do with how good a physicist you are. Oxford’s international qualifications table lists the Gaokao, and the Senior High School Diploma alongside it, as not accepted. Cambridge takes the opposite view at most of its Colleges — but Cambridge has no Physics degree to interview you for. So the phrase “Oxbridge Physics” covers two different objects, and which of them is available to you is fixed by the qualification you are sitting, months before anyone schedules a call.
This page takes the three routes a Chinese applicant uses and keeps them apart: the Gaokao, international A-levels at a school in China, and the IB. Everything here is for 2027 entry, checked at source in September 2026 against Oxford’s Department of Physics, the UAT-UK test specification, Cambridge’s course and College pages and China’s own Ministry of Education curriculum standards. Your invitation, when it comes, is the document that governs your own case.
No, and Oxford is unusually blunt about what that status means. Its international qualifications table gives China two rows, the Senior High School Diploma and the Gaokao, and marks both Not accepted. Oxford then defines the term: where a qualification’s status is listed as not accepted, it does not meet the equivalent standard and cannot be used to meet the standard offer for entry onto an Oxford undergraduate degree, and an applicant holding one will need to undertake further study if they wish to apply.
That is an eligibility rule, not a judgement about difficulty, and it applies to every Oxford degree, Physics included. It also lands before any of the things this sort of page usually discusses. There is no point rehearsing what an Oxford physics tutor asks, or which week in December they ask it, if the application cannot be made on the certificate you will hold.
Cambridge is different, and it says so in its own words: the Gaokao is considered suitable preparation for Cambridge by most Colleges, with the caveat that College requirements differ. They differ a great deal. Cambridge publishes three lists. Thirteen Colleges will make any Gaokao-based offer conditional on a rank within the top 0.1% of those taking the Gaokao in your province. Eight ask instead for at least 90% in each of three relevant core subjects, or overall performance in the top 1% to 3% of the cohort. Eight do not regard Gaokao alone as suitable preparation for Cambridge at all, and name A-levels, the IB or five or more Advanced Placement tests at score 5 as what they want instead.
Twenty-one Colleges therefore accept the Gaokao in some form. But Hughes Hall and Wolfson sit on the first list and are two of the three Colleges Cambridge reserves for students aged 21 or over, so a seventeen or eighteen-year-old has 19 Colleges open to them, not 21. That is our arithmetic on Cambridge’s published lists rather than a figure Cambridge prints. If you are choosing a College this month, 19 is the number to plan against. The wider picture — which of those Colleges will ask you to fly to Cambridge, and which interview online — is on our guide to Oxbridge interviews for Chinese applicants.
At Oxford, Physics is a named degree with its own department, its own admissions machinery and a compulsory test. Physics and Philosophy is a second, separate course that runs on the same test and the same December window and adds philosophy interviews on top. Both are closed to a Gaokao-only applicant, and both open the moment you are on a qualification Oxford accepts.
At Cambridge there is no Physics course to apply to. Physicists are admitted through Natural Sciences, and when you apply you tell Cambridge whether you are interested in the Biological or the Physical stream. Cambridge is explicit that this matters at interview: your choice of application stream, and the courses that you are currently studying, will affect the types of questions that are asked. It adds, for the Physical stream, that it is best to apply for Physical Sciences if you have studied Physics and Maths A levels, because your interview will be on subjects that you have already studied.
Read those two sentences next to Oxford’s and the shape of the whole problem appears. They are not saying the same thing. They are saying opposite things, and the difference is the single most useful fact on this page.
| Your qualification | Oxford Physics | Cambridge Natural Sciences (Physical) | ESAT modules you sit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gaokao | Not accepted — no Oxford application on this qualification | 21 Colleges accept it in some form; 19 of those admit school leavers | Mathematics 1 plus any two of Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics 2 |
| International A-level | Open, if Oxford accepts your board — check its international qualifications list | All Colleges; none of the Gaokao lists applies to you | Oxford fixes all three: Mathematics 1, Mathematics 2 and Physics. Cambridge leaves the two optional ones to you |
| IB | Open, if Oxford accepts your qualification | Higher Level Mathematics is expected to be Analysis and Approaches | As above, by university |
Sources: Oxford’s international qualifications table and its Department of Physics admissions pages; Cambridge’s international entry requirements, Natural Sciences course page and choosing-a-College page; the UAT-UK ESAT specification. The 19 is our count on Cambridge’s own three lists, not a figure Cambridge prints.
Practise the physics your syllabus stopped short of.
Dynamics and Fields is our Physics pack, at £180: ten of our own practice questions in the style of the interview, written by specialist tutors, each with prompts and a worked answer — escape velocity, geosynchronous orbit, the null point between Earth and Moon, an alpha particle’s closest approach and a bungee jump. Physics is one of the nine subjects with a free sample, which is a separate download you can read first.
Get the Dynamics and Fields pack — £180Oxford’s Department of Physics answers it in one sentence on its interviews page. Its admissions interviews are purely academic in nature and, while there is no formal syllabus, knowledge of the entrance test syllabus material will be assumed. It adds that you are likely to spend the great majority of your time talking about physics or mathematics rather than any wider interests you mentioned in your personal statement.
For an applicant educated outside the UK, that sentence is worth more than any list of past questions. It names the floor. The entrance test is the Engineering and Science Admissions Test, and its content specification is a published document anyone can download. Whatever your school taught, the conversation starts from that document.
Cambridge starts somewhere else entirely. Its Natural Sciences interview is built on what you have already studied, and its application form asks school leavers to list the topics they have covered precisely so that interviewers can work from them. The floor there is not a specification you can download; it is a list you write yourself.
The practical consequence for a Chinese applicant is sharp, and it runs the opposite way to most people’s intuition. The university whose qualification rules are more generous to you is also the one that will adapt its questions to your syllabus. The university that will not adapt is the one you cannot apply to on the Gaokao anyway. So on Route 1 there is nothing to choose between them and your job is to describe your own course accurately. On Route 2 you genuinely have a decision, and it is this: at Oxford you must meet a fixed published standard, and at Cambridge you must describe your own.
The ESAT is the same test at both universities, but the two courses use it differently, and that difference is the concrete October form of everything above.
Oxford’s Department of Physics states that everyone who applies to study Physics or Physics and Philosophy at Oxford, without exception, must take the ESAT, and that all applicants are required to take the Mathematics I, Mathematics II and Physics modules. Three modules, fixed, no choice. Cambridge Natural Sciences also requires the ESAT, but on the test’s default pattern: Mathematics 1 and two further modules chosen from Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics 2.
The module that separates them is Mathematics 2, and it is not a formality. The ESAT specification says Mathematics 2 assumes the Mathematics 1 topics plus a second set: differentiation, including second-order derivatives and the derivative as a rate of change; integration, including an understanding of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus and its significance; and solving differential equations of the form dy/dx = f(x). Mathematics 1, by contrast, stops well short of calculus.
Under China’s current national curriculum, integration is not examined at all — definite integrals sit in an elective topic the Ministry places outside the Gaokao’s scope. So the asymmetry has a precise consequence: a Gaokao applicant to Cambridge Natural Sciences can sit Mathematics 1, Physics and Chemistry and never meet Mathematics 2, while choosing Oxford Physics removes that option entirely. We are not going to re-derive the Chinese maths syllabus here; our page on the Oxbridge maths interview from China sets out exactly what the Gaokao does and does not examine, with the Ministry’s own wording.
Two more details of the test shape the interview that follows. Each module is 27 multiple-choice questions in 40 minutes, so the whole thing is two hours for a physics applicant. And calculators may not be used. The ESAT never sees your working; the interview is almost entirely working.
Oxford’s Department of Physics publishes its whole procedure, which is rarer than it sounds and useful if you are planning from abroad.
Applications run at typically 8 to 10 per place, and the department shortlists down to around 2.5 interviewed candidates per place, around 500 in total, because that is the maximum number of interviews it can provide. The primary shortlisting criterion is the ESAT score, read in the light of contextual data. Your October result, in other words, is what decides whether December happens.
If you are shortlisted, you get three interviews, not one. Your first college provides two interview marks, normally from two separate interviews each marked out of 10. Every shortlisted candidate is then assigned a second college chosen at random, which provides a third interview after the first college’s are finished. Physics and Philosophy candidates get philosophy interviews in addition to those. All interviews are virtual.
Afterwards the scores are combined with the ESAT result into one total, and candidates are sorted into three bands: band A is approximately the top 100, band B approximately the next 200, and band C everyone below. And because the department coordinates the decision centrally, candidates can receive an offer from any college, including colleges which did not interview them. If you are trying to read signals into which college called you, that is the sentence to remember: the second college was random, and the offer may come from a third. What each mark means, and how many accepted applicants had one weak interview, is set out on our page on what happens after the ESAT for Oxford Physics.
Oxford Physics gives every shortlisted candidate three interviews and marks each out of 10, and what they mark is how you reason. The Dynamics and Fields pack — £180 — is ten of our own practice questions in the style of the interview, never real or recalled ones, each with prompts and a worked answer so you can check your route against a tutor’s.
Get the Dynamics and Fields pack — £180Oxford’s published timetable puts Physics interviews at two colleges between Wednesday 9 December and Tuesday 15 December 2026. Cambridge runs its main interview period from 7 to 18 December 2026 for every course.
Oxford states that where times are given in its timetable, they are given as UK time (GMT). It publishes nothing about candidates’ time zones anywhere in its interview pages. Doing the conversion yourself: with the UK on GMT and China on UTC+8, a 09:00 UK slot is 17:00 in Beijing, and a 17:00 UK slot is 01:00 the next morning. That arithmetic is ours, not a published table. If you are in western China, note that the time-zone database records Xinjiang time at UTC+6 as officially recognized, while Beijing time is what planes, trains and schools run on — so say which you mean if anyone asks.
One Oxford college publishes a guarantee on this. Corpus Christi’s undergraduate interview policy states that overseas candidates will have their interviews scheduled no earlier than 7:30am and no later than 10pm in their home time zone. That is one college’s published policy from its MT24 document, not University policy, and a site-wide search of ox.ac.uk surfaced no other college publishing anything comparable.
Cambridge does collect the information. Its application form asks where you plan to be during the first three weeks of December and what country and time zone you will be in, telling applicants in China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia to select UTC +8, so that it can try to schedule online interviews at an appropriate time for applicants and interviewers. This is not new: the question dates from the September 2024 edition of the form, for 2025 entry.
Two practical points. Oxford undertakes to give at least 24 hours’ notice of any additional interview, so the days you can safely plan around are fewer than the published window suggests. And on connectivity, Microsoft’s own guidance for Teams users in China is the relevant published statement: it says users in China can take the improved network path for real-time media simply by connecting to the public internet service in China with a landline or mobile connection. That is Microsoft’s guidance to its own users, not advice from either university. Cambridge names no interview platform anywhere in its published pages, so treat any confident claim about which software a Cambridge College uses as unsourced.
Both universities publish competition figures, and they are worth reading carefully because they are not the same measurement and must not be compared with one another.
Oxford’s Department of Physics reports applicants per place for Physics, running at typically 8 to 10. Oxford also publishes, for Physics, a three-year average to 2025 of 31% of applicants interviewed and an intake of 173. Cambridge publishes a different quantity for a different unit: for Natural Sciences as a whole, the 2025 cycle shows 5 applications per place and 576 accepted. One is a departmental figure for a single subject, the other a course-wide figure covering every science stream at Cambridge, and they count applications and applicants differently. Dividing one by the other would produce a number that means nothing.
On country figures, Cambridge’s 2025-cycle statistics show 2,900 applications from China, 360 offers and 284 acceptances, a success rate of 9.8%. Oxford publishes only a three-year aggregate by country across all courses: 6,025 applications from China over 2023 to 2025, with 559 admitted. Oxford publishes no per-country rate for any individual course, so there is no Oxford Physics figure for Chinese applicants, and we will not manufacture one by dividing.
Start by not revising something you already know. Gaokao physics teaches simple harmonic motion. China’s physics curriculum standard requires students to recognise its characteristics through experiment and describe it with a formula and a graph, and teaches the pendulum, forced oscillation and resonance alongside it. Advice written for other curricula sometimes tells Chinese applicants to learn oscillations from scratch, and it is wrong. The topics your course genuinely does not reach are listed, with the Ministry’s own wording for each, on our Cambridge Natural Sciences page for applicants from China, and there is no reason to set them out twice.
The thing worth saying here instead is about timing, because it is the one most often got wrong. The Gaokao is sat in early June — Beijing’s examinations authority put the 2026 papers on 7 and 8 June with the graded subject exams on 9 and 10 June — so a December interviewee is mid-way through their final year with the qualifying exam still six months away. On Beijing’s official course timetable the advanced physics modules run through Year 2 and Year 3, and the education commission expressly forbids schools from rushing the timetable or finishing courses early. Other provinces set their own schedules.
So the honest answer to “will I have covered it by December?” is: some of it, and your school knows which. But the calculus is a different case. Integration is not scheduled to arrive later in the year, because it is not in the examined course at any point. A Gaokao student who wants it before a December interview has to go and get it.
There is one more difference worth preparing for, and it is about format rather than content. The Ministry’s own maths standard instructs Gaokao setters to gradually reduce the number of multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank items and moderately increase the thinking load, and its physics standard defends non-multiple-choice questions on the grounds that they show the student’s working and reflect analytical ability more deeply. Both documents are arguing for more of what an interview does. Until that shift is complete, a large share of your training is aimed at producing one correct answer quickly. An Oxbridge interview has no options and no answer box: the route is the answer, and it is spoken aloud. That is a skill you can practise, and it is the one most worth practising.
Whichever route you are on, the interview turns on a problem you have not seen. The Dynamics and Fields pack — £180 — is ten of our own practice questions in the style of the interview, written by specialist tutors, each with prompts and a worked answer: gravitational fields and orbital mechanics, from escape velocity to the null point between Earth and Moon. Physics is one of the nine subjects with a free sample, a separate download you can read first.
Get the Dynamics and Fields pack — £180Then the admissions half of this page changes completely and the content half mostly goes away.
Cambridge accepts international A levels offered by Cambridge International, Oxford AQA or Pearson Edexcel, as they are comparable to UK AS and A levels. None of the Gaokao College lists applies to you. And if Oxford accepts your qualification, Oxford Physics and Physics and Philosophy become real options, with everything above about the ESAT and the December window applying in full.
These are separate specifications, though, not the UK ones under another name — Pearson’s International A Level specification states in its own pages that these qualifications are not accredited or regulated by any UK regulatory body. On the physics, that distinction turns out not to cost you anything on the most widely named board. Cambridge International Physics 9702, for examination in 2025 to 2027, teaches stationary waves; stress, strain and the Young modulus; the moment of a force; gravitational potential for a point mass, as φ = −GM/r; and the time constant τ = RC for a capacitor discharging through a resistor. Those five are precisely where a Gaokao physics course stops. On this route there is no physics gap to close.
Two cautions. Pearson Edexcel International A Level and OxfordAQA physics specifications were not checked for this page, so read your own specification rather than assuming it matches; and which boards Chinese international schools use is not published anywhere we could find, so nobody can tell you what “most” students in your position sit. Check which board and which route you are on.
If you take the IB, the one thing Cambridge states directly is about mathematics: for Natural Sciences (Physical), applicants taking Higher Level Mathematics are expected to take Analysis and Approaches, and Cambridge asks anyone whose school does not offer it to contact their shortlisted Colleges for advice. We have not compared the IB physics syllabus topic by topic, so we make no claim about gaps there.
If you are on the Gaokao. Treat Oxford as closed and spend the time on Cambridge. Work out which of the 19 school-leaver Colleges accepting the Gaokao fits your provincial rank, and check whether it interviews overseas applicants online or in person before you choose it. Register for the ESAT and pick your two optional modules against what you have actually studied. Then learn to integrate: it is not in your examined syllabus at any point, so it will not arrive later in the year. And describe your own course accurately when Cambridge asks what you have studied, because that is what your interview will be built on.
If you are on international A-levels. Check Oxford’s international qualifications list for your own board, because that is what opens or closes Oxford Physics. If it opens, remember you have no ESAT module choice: Mathematics 1, Mathematics 2 and Physics. Read the ESAT physics content specification, since it is the floor Oxford says the interview assumes. Then practise on unfamiliar problems out loud, because on this route your content is already in place and the interview is testing something else.
If you are on the IB. Make sure your Higher Level Mathematics is Analysis and Approaches if you are aiming at Natural Sciences (Physical), and talk to your Colleges early if your school does not offer it.
All three routes share one thing. Oxford’s own selection wording for Physics is that tutors look for the ability to apply basic principles to unfamiliar situations, and no syllabus, in any country, examines that. It is the part you have to rehearse.
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No. Oxford’s international qualifications table lists both the Chinese Senior High School Diploma and the Gaokao as not accepted, and Oxford defines that status plainly: a not-accepted qualification cannot be used to meet the standard offer for entry onto an Oxford undergraduate degree, and an applicant holding one would need to undertake further study before applying. So for a Gaokao-only student there is no Oxford Physics interview to prepare for. The Oxbridge physics interview that is open to you is Cambridge’s, and at Cambridge it sits inside Natural Sciences.
No. Cambridge admits physicists through Natural Sciences, and you tell Cambridge when you apply whether you are interested in the Biological or the Physical stream. Cambridge says that choice, and the courses that you are currently studying, will affect the types of questions that are asked at interview. So the two halves of an Oxbridge physics application are not the same object: at Oxford it is a named degree with a fixed admissions test, and at Cambridge it is a stream inside a broader course.
Three, and you cannot choose them. Oxford’s Department of Physics says that everyone who applies to study Physics or Physics and Philosophy at Oxford, without exception, must take the ESAT, and that all applicants are required to take the Mathematics I, Mathematics II and Physics modules. Cambridge Natural Sciences also requires the ESAT, but on the default pattern: Mathematics 1 plus two further modules chosen from Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics 2. Each module is 27 multiple-choice questions in 40 minutes, and calculators may not be used.
Cambridge says the Gaokao is considered suitable preparation for Cambridge by most Colleges, and publishes three lists. Thirteen Colleges make any Gaokao-based offer conditional on a rank within the top 0.1% of those taking the Gaokao in the applicant’s province. Eight ask instead for at least 90% in each of three relevant core subjects, or overall performance in the top 1% to 3% of the cohort. Eight do not regard Gaokao alone as suitable preparation for Cambridge. That is 21 Colleges in the first two groups, but Hughes Hall and Wolfson are among the three Colleges Cambridge reserves for students aged 21 or over, so by our count 19 are open to a school leaver.
Oxford’s published timetable says interviews at two colleges will take place between Wednesday 9 December and Tuesday 15 December, and Oxford states that where times are given in that timetable they are given as UK time (GMT). China is UTC+8, so a 09:00 UK slot is 17:00 in Beijing and a 17:00 UK slot is 01:00 the following morning; that conversion is ours, not a published Oxford table. Oxford also undertakes to give at least 24 hours’ notice of any additional interviews, so the window you can plan around is narrower than the dates suggest.
Yes, and this is worth knowing before you waste an evening. China’s physics curriculum standard requires students to recognise the characteristics of simple harmonic motion through experiment and to describe it with a formula and a graph, and it teaches the pendulum and forced oscillation and resonance alongside it. Advice written for another curriculum sometimes tells Chinese applicants to learn oscillations from scratch; that advice has the wrong syllabus in mind. The topics a Gaokao physics course genuinely does not reach are set out on our Cambridge Natural Sciences page for applicants from China.
Not on the Cambridge International syllabus. Physics 9702, for examination in 2025 to 2027, teaches stationary waves, stress, strain and the Young modulus, the moment of a force, gravitational potential for a point mass as a function of 1/r, and the time constant for a capacitor discharging through a resistor. Those are exactly the points where a Gaokao physics course stops. Pearson Edexcel International A Level and OxfordAQA physics specifications were not checked for this page, so read your own specification rather than assuming. On this route your work is admissions and the calendar, not catching up on content.
No. Cambridge tells applicants to beware of commercial tutoring services, says they are not endorsed by the University, and states that they do not have access to any exclusive information. That includes us. Nobody outside the Colleges has the real questions. What our packs are is our own practice questions in the style of the interview, each with prompts and a worked answer, so that the first unfamiliar problem you reason through out loud is not the one that decides your application.
Dynamics and Fields is the Physics-badged pack, at £180. Its ten questions work through gravitational fields and orbital mechanics: escape velocity, geosynchronous orbit, the null point between Earth and Moon, an alpha particle’s closest approach and a bungee jump. Physics is one of the nine subjects with a free sample, which is a separate download you can read before deciding. Derivations is useful to a physicist too, because it derives momentum conservation, the double-slit and SHM equations and Snell’s law, but it carries the Maths badge rather than the Physics one and has no free sample.
Our catalogue is 30 packs across 17 subjects at £180 each, written by specialist tutors: our own practice questions in the style of the interview, not inside knowledge. Cambridge says outside services do not have access to any exclusive information, and that includes us. Start with Dynamics and Fields, the Physics pack, or read the free physics sample first.
Browse all 30 packs and the free samplesThe arrangements every Chinese applicant shares — the College format table, the clock and the country statistics — are on our Oxbridge interviews from China page, and the ones every overseas applicant shares are in Oxbridge interviews from overseas. For the subject itself, our Oxford Physics interview guide covers what happens in the room. Applicants on other systems can compare the United States and Hong Kong versions of this page, each built on its own curriculum.