What are professors looking for in an application to Oxbridge?

Everyone thinks that Oxbridge professors want to see that you’re the smartest person in the world, with top A level grades and five years of work experience, and it helps if you also play Olympic-level doubles tennis in your spare time and last summer, while volunteering in a small developing country, you happened to singlehandedly end world poverty. That isn’t exactly what they’re looking for. It’s true that Oxbridge look out for bright, hardworking individuals (as evidenced by the preference for really high grades). But apart from that, the number one thing they look for is commitment. The workload there is tough and demanding; they want someone who isn’t going to drop out. So if you can demonstrate that you are prepared to work hard, that you are the type of person who doesn’t stop when it gets tricky, that you have a real passion for your subject that will drive you to keep going and a type of intellectual curiosity that will make you follow things through to the end just to get an answer to your questions, and that you aren’t afraid to get things wrong in the process - you might just be the type of person they’re looking for.