Reading my personal statement | MAT Livestream Bonus

You asked for this! At the end of MAT livestream 004, the audience voted for James to read out his actual UCAS personal statement. Here it is.
We've started a maths problem-solving livestream with a particular focus on Mathematics Admissions Test problems. We're live at www.maths.ox.ac.uk/r/mat every Thursday 3pm-5pm.

[@OxfordMathematicsPlus]

As an unexpected bonus now that this has been up for a year and got some views, the audience retention stats can show me exactly the point at which people get bored of my personal statement. Thanks TH-cam! ^James

[@jesuslovesyou1]

Great

[@jesuslovesyou1]

Thanks for the video

[@PixelSergey]

Normalise getting your personal statement reviewed by TH-cam statistics :D

[@gamer-nh9ub]

Just out of interest at what point did people lose interest? haha

[@jack9500]

this personal statement is really funny

[@ashnakamura2411]

Dr James, you come across as super humble and super cool. The students you get to teach are super lucky!

[@navbhatthal]

biggest cap of all time

[@chrissears8575]

Well done James for sharing this. Half of the challenges in life are because we don’t even ‘attempt’ a try and seeing where your attempts have got you in life is inspirational. Good for you that you followed your mathematical dreams and that you are now teaching at Oxford! All the best.

[@strokedout6298]

Aw hell na I thought I was keen on maths but I’m not proving stuff or doing anything out of syllabus

[@TWENTYSEVENSTORIES]

'There are levels to this' as they say in sport!

[@simrannahar8262]

Very intense indeed

[@sogolbahremand688]

James really loves math

[@andrewhowe5282]

My goodness, that's a painfully honest assessment of your personal statement :)
Nowadays you won't be surprised that those odd dice had been anticipated, though it's impressive that you discovered this independently.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicherman_dice has a proof and hints at generalizations.

[@OxfordMathematicsPlus]

Yes- I think I was aware by the end of year 13 that the dice had also been described by Martin Gardner. But for a short while, I believed that they were mine. ^James

[@jgsh8062]

A JUGGLING CLUB 😭😭

[@handycap7625]

We're asked to make our PS interesting since admissions teams read hundreds of them. Would you say this one was on the more interesting side?

[@OxfordMathematicsPlus]

No, not really (the writing style is a bit mad, and that's not something I would encourage). Oxford doesn't need your personal statement to be "interesting" or to "stand out"; you can just use it to tell us facts about what you've done and how you're preparing for maths at university. ^James

[@philipchristodoulou5253]

Hahahahah i feel just like you did when you wrote your personal statement

[@weeborghini4016]

wait, u are exactly on ur 30's???u look so young, like mid 20(like just finished ur phd)