About

I'm Flora. I'm a qualified biology teacher, and Brightfield is me — not an agency, and nobody else on the other end of the email.

I teach biology for a living, I tutor it privately, and I help students apply for it at Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial.

• MSci Natural Sciences, University of Cambridge
• PGCE, University of Oxford
• Qualified teacher, seven years in secondary science
• Ten years tutoring GCSE and A-level biology, over 1,000 hours taught
• Oxbridge applicants supported at three schools
• Applied from a state school, and went through all of this myself

How I teach it

Be a person, not a performance. Most applicants are coached to sound impressive and to arrive with prepared answers. It rarely works, and it makes anxious students more anxious.

An Oxbridge science interview is a conversation about something you have never seen before, with people deciding whether they would enjoy teaching you every week for three years. They want to hear you think, including the part where you get stuck.

In my own interview I was asked what the difference is between a whale and a human. I froze, panicked, and said that whales are bigger. I laughed about it afterwards. I still got in.

I tell students that because the person in that room was me having a bad moment, not a polished performance, and it didn't cost me the place.

The ESAT is a different test and needs different preparation. It's twenty-seven multiple choice questions in forty minutes, sat on your own with no calculator and no follow-up questions. Being good at one doesn't make you good at the other, so I teach them separately.

Why it exists

I applied from a state school without knowing how any of it worked. I didn't know which courses existed, what the admissions test involved, or what the interview was for. Nearly all of that is public information, but you have to know it exists before you can go and look for it.

At schools that send students to Oxbridge every year, this is ordinary staffroom knowledge and it gets passed on. At schools that don't, it often isn't there to pass on. That is the gap I'm trying to close, so the guides here are free and the prices are on the site instead of behind an enquiry form.

What I cover

ESAT Maths 1, Biology and Chemistry. Personal statements. Interview preparation. Course and college choice, and what to read.

Not the Physics or Maths 2 modules, which engineering and physics applicants sit. Not medicine, and not other subjects. If that's what you need, I'll say so.