For a university with such a strong sense of place, this past year has been a highly unusual one in Oxford, where streets so often teeming with students have largely been silent for long stretches of time. The students who remained, and those studying from home, have displayed exemplary resilience and commitment to their education. Students and staff alike have taken enormous pride in the work of our academics in developing vaccines and therapeutics as well as enhancing our understanding of COVID-19. It is no surprise then that our admissions numbers continue to rise as prospective students see the many contributions Oxford makes to society both nationally and globally.

While the pandemic has, in many ways, changed the way we operate, it has not weakened our commitment to diversifying the make-up of our student body. In this, our fourth 

annual Admissions Report, we provide details of the success rate of British undergraduate applications by educational, regional, racial and socio-economic background as well as by subject and college. The highlights are as follows: over the past five years the proportion of students from state schools rose from 58% to 68.6%. The proportion identifying as Black and Minority Ethnic rose from 15.82% to 23.6%. The proportion from socio-economically disadvantaged areas rose from 8.2% to 15.9%. The proportion from areas of low progression to higher education rose from 11.4% to 15.6%. The proportion declaring a disability rose from 7.2% to 10.4%. The proportion of women rose from 48.6% to 54.2%. This reflects real progress and is a testament to the dedication of our Admissions Teams, the support of school teachers and, of course, the many talents of able and ambitious young people.

We welcomed our first cohort of students under the new Opportunity Oxford Programme in the autumn and responded rapidly to the pandemic by putting our access and outreach activity online, creating Virtual Open Days and developing digital versions of our signature programmes like UNIQ. In December this year we conducted our admissions interviews remotely for the first time.