SUCCESS FOR CORA IN OXBRIDGE ESSAY COMPETITION
13 May 2022 | Jill Lundberg | Posted in: Academic, Sixth Form
Congratulations to Cora Aked, in Year 12, who is runner-up in the Brasenose College video essay competition with her ‘What is a number?’ entry. This is an amazing achievement and we are thrilled to find out more from Cora about her prize-winning submission which you can watch here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYfz6MoSvb4
Cora said: “We had a group of Oxbridge students and outreach staff visit college from St. Catherine’s and Brasenose Colleges to talk to Year 12 students, and they promoted this competition whilst they were there. I had already heard about it briefly through Ms Johnson, and decided that it was something that I would really like to get involved in, particularly because the topic for my talk was completely up to me. This made it, in some ways, harder to decide what I should base my essay on, as there were absolutely no limits!
“However, my general interest in Maths led me to discuss the very simple-sounding question of ‘what is a number?’, which actually has very complex roots and arguments when you take the time to explore it further. This area, therefore, has a lot of fascinating ground to cover, so it was extremely difficult to condense it all down into just 12 minutes! However, I felt that this competition gave me the chance to explore Mathematics outside of the classroom, and discover where and how it is applied in everyday life, and not just out of a textbook.
“I’m currently studying Maths, Further Maths, Biology and Chemistry at A-level, and I am hoping to study either Maths or Natural Sciences at university, so that I can apply my love of maths to the real world and use it to, hopefully, make a difference someday.”
Dr Joe Organ, Schools and Publications Officer at Brasenose College, University of Oxford, said: “Congratulations – it was such an original and ambitious essay, and made us think about numbers in completely new ways. Thanks so much for putting it together.”
Ms Johnson, Assistant Headteacher, added: “We are thrilled to hear of Cora’s success. She was clearly inspired by the visitors from the Oxford and Cambridge colleges and took the initiative to enter the competition. Drawing on her love of Maths and her innate abilities, she has shown huge potential for undergraduate study and this result is a clear indicator of a very promising academic future. We are really proud of what she has achieved.”