What extracurriculars can I do for my physics application?

Physics is one of the most academically-weighted UCAS applications you can make. Admissions tutors at Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and UCL are primarily looking for evidence that you can think like a physicist, which is why the ESAT and interview performance dominate everything else. Extracurriculars matter, but they matter as evidence of curiosity.

The strongest physics personal statements tend to describe one or two things the applicant actually did, in enough technical detail that the reader believes they understood it. A list of five programmes is less valuable than one project where you can explain what you built, what went wrong, and what you learned.

With that framing, here's what's worth your time.

Formal programmes worth applying to

1. UKESF Insight into Electronics (free Arduino kit)

The UK Electronics Skills Foundation's Insight into Electronics programme is one of the best-value opportunities on this list: free, open to any UK student aged 14–18, and gives you something concrete to talk about at interview.

Sign up via this form and if selected they post you a free Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino. You then work through self-paced modules on microcontrollers, sensors, and programming: building things like an accelerometer-based spirit level. The kit is yours to keep, so you can go beyond the modules: build a photogate, a data logger for a pendulum experiment, an ultrasonic distance meter. A project you designed yourself ("I built X to measure Y and found the largest error came from Z") is exactly what tutors want to hear about.

2. British Physics Olympiad (BPhO)

If you're serious about physics at a top university, the BPhO is close to non-negotiable. Run out of Oxford Physics, used by admissions tutors as a genuinely calibrated signal of physics ability beyond A-level.

Entry points at every level:

• Senior Physics Challenge: Year 12, 1 hour, sat September–March
• Physics Challenge (A2): Year 13, 1 hour, sat September–December
• BPhO Round 1: Year 13 (or strong Y12s), the main event, sat in November

Your school registers you, so speak to your physics teacher early in the year. Even a Bronze on Round 1 is meaningful; Gold is a strong Oxbridge signal. Past papers with worked solutions are free on the BPhO site.

Preparation tip: don't try to solve BPhO problems using A-level techniques alone. Work through Isaac Physics problem sets first, these have the same academic community and same problem-solving style.

3. Nuffield Research Placements

The Nuffield Research Placement scheme puts Year 12 students into 2–3 week research projects at UK universities, research institutes, or STEM companies over the summer holiday. You work alongside a supervising academic, produce a report and poster, and, importantly, leave with something specific to write about.

Placements cover astronomy, astrophysics, physics, engineering, and computing among many other areas. Some run at the Francis Crick Institute and various university physics departments.

Two things to know:

• Eligibility is targeted. You must be Year 12 at a UK state school, with priority for students on free school meals, from low-income households (typically <£30k), first in family to university, or in local authority care.
• Applications open late autumn of Year 12 and close early spring. Check the Nuffield Foundation page for exact dates.

Completing one makes you eligible for a Gold CREST Award and Big Bang Competition entry.

4. Isaac Physics, Mentoring Scheme and Summer Residential

Beyond the free problem-solving site, Isaac Science runs two things worth applying to:

• Isaac Physics Mentoring Scheme: a free 16-month tutoring programme from January of Year 12 to April of Year 13, aimed at state-school students facing barriers to STEM. Applications close 31st October. One of the best-kept secrets in UK physics prep.
• Isaac Physics Summer Residential: a 4-day event in Cambridge in July for Year 12s, invitation-based on your Isaac Physics site performance. Regularly attempting Level 5–6 questions by early Y12 puts you in contention. Closes 1st April.

5. Smallpeice Trust Residential courses

The Smallpeice Trust runs 3–5 day residential engineering courses at UK universities. Rotating options include Girls into Physics, Astrophysics, Aerospace Engineering, and Nanotechnology.

Not free by default, but fully-funded places are available for students who need them; apply when you book. Courses launch late autumn, fill quickly.

University events open to anyone

This is the highest-value / lowest-effort category on the list. Free, mostly no formal application, and they give you specific things to bring up at interview.

Oxford Y12 Physics Masterclass: A day-long online event held twice a year (March and June). Includes an admissions guide, a lecture on cutting-edge research, and interactive problem-solving workshops with current Oxford Physics students. Prioritised for state-school students but recordings are open to all. Register directly on the Oxford Physics events page.

Cambridge Physics Centre Sixth Form Lectures: Live evening lectures at the Cavendish Laboratory. Isaac Physics problem-solving session at 5pm, lecture at 6pm, home by 7pm. No booking needed, just turn up. If you can't get to Cambridge, full recordings are on YouTube.

Warwick Physics Journal Club: Guided reading of real physics papers for sixth formers. Comes with structured questions so you're not just staring at abstracts.

Oxford Physics public lectures: Including the annual Halley Lecture in astronomy/geophysics. Podcasts and recordings available.

University of York Sixth Form programme: Six-week online physics programme with live webinars, plus on-campus research days with lab tours.

Your nearest university's outreach page. Every Russell Group physics department runs something: taster mornings, evening lectures, weekend workshops. Check the outreach pages for Bristol, Manchester, Imperial, Nottingham, Sheffield, Birmingham, KCL, UCL, Southampton. Go to whatever's local.

Why these matter: at interview, "I went to a lecture on decoherence at the Cavendish and afterwards I couldn't work out why the ancilla measurement mattered..." is far more compelling than "I watched some YouTube videos on quantum mechanics."

Volunteering that strengthens a physics application

Physics-adjacent volunteer experience is perhaps not as easy to find as medicine-related volunteering, but these forms work particularly well:

Tutoring maths or physics

Tutoring GCSE students in maths and physics is one of the best things you can do for a science application:

• It forces you to understand fundamentals properly; nothing exposes gaps like trying to explain them
• It's evidence of communication skill, which Oxbridge tutors explicitly test at interview
• The social impact is real and honest

Options:

• Action Tutoring: Volunteer with disadvantaged pupils, 1–3 students at a time. Main scheme is 18+, but their student volunteer strand is aimed at university students so it's a good bridge for the year after your application.
• RefuNet: Online tutoring for refugees, mostly English but they welcome subject-specific tutors. 18+ with DBS check.
• Refugee Education UK: Mentoring young refugees through the UK education system. Full training provided, no expertise needed. 18+.
• Your own school or a local secondary: the easiest under-18 route. Most schools will happily connect a strong Y12/Y13 to a Y10/11 struggling with GCSE physics or maths. Homework clubs at local libraries and community centres work too.

Write about it honestly. "I tutored a Year 10 through GCSE electricity and realised I'd never properly understood potential difference until I had to explain it four different ways" is a paragraph a tutor will actually read.

Hospital Medical Physics / Clinical Engineering

Genuinely under-known. NHS Trusts have Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering departments responsible for MRI scanners, radiotherapy machines, ultrasound, radiation dosimetry, and every medical device in the building. It's applied physics in a working environment; closer to "what a physicist does day-to-day" than almost anything else you can access at 17.

Options:

• Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust: 5-day placement shadowing across nuclear medicine, radiation physics, radiation engineering, computer sciences, and radiotherapy physics. Under-18s have limited radiation exposure but can shadow everywhere else.
• Mid Cheshire Hospitals - "Aspire to be a Healthcare Scientist" programme covering medical physics and clinical engineering, open UK-wide to Y11–13. Virtual first, then face-to-face if you complete the online elements. Application windows in January and August/September.
• Gloucestershire Hospitals: Periodic Medical Physics Taster Days. Email [email protected] to ask when the next one is.
• Oxford University Hospitals Medical Physics - Their formal work experience programme is for undergraduates, but the Clinical Engineering department accepts Y12+ applicants separately.
• UHBW Bristol Medical Physics and Bioengineering - Trust-run work experience.

Practical route: pick the 3–5 nearest NHS Trusts to you, find their Medical Physics or Clinical Engineering department page, and email the department contact in September asking if they run Y12/Y13 taster or shadow programmes. Even a "no" reply establishes that you took initiative; and half the time you'll get pointed to something useful. This is also a strong path if you're thinking about the NHS Scientist Training Programme as a route into medical physics.

Writing about physics

Writing forces you to understand physics more deeply - and gives admissions tutors something to actually read.

Young Scientists Journal - UK-based, peer-reviewed, student-run, for authors aged 12–20. Founded at The King's School, Canterbury in 2006. Free to submit, rolling submissions. Three formats:

• Original research articles (if you've done a Nuffield placement or independent project)
• Review articles (a survey of a topic, accessible starting point)
• Blog / magazine articles (600–1500 words on a topic you care about)

The review or blog route is realistic for most Y12/Y13 students without lab access.

Physics Review magazine: Published four times a year by Hodder Education for A-level physics students. Your school library likely subscribes. Style is technical-but-accessible; they publish student contributions.

Your school's science newsletter: Or start one. Almost a cheat code for a physics application:

• Costs nothing
• You control the content
• Editing a publication is a leadership signal without you having to claim leadership
• You can write about whatever you actually find interesting: a book you read, a paper on arXiv, an experiment you did

A Substack, personal blog, or LinkedIn works too. What matters is that when a tutor googles your name in November, they find something.

One warning: don't write about physics you don't properly understand. Vague articles on "the mysteries of quantum mechanics" that recycle popular-science tropes are worse than nothing. Pick a specific thing -Cherenkov radiation, the physics of a pendulum clock, why superconductors expel magnetic fields, Bell's inequality - and go deep on that one thing.

How to write about all this in your personal statement

Don't list all of it. Pick one, maybe two things and go deep. A tutor would rather read:

"Working through Isaac Physics mechanics problems, I got stuck on a rolling-cylinder-on-incline question. It took me three attempts to realise I was double-counting the moment of inertia, which..."

than:

"I have completed the UKESF course, entered the BPhO, tutored GCSE maths, attended a Cambridge lecture, and used Isaac Physics regularly."

The former shows a physicist thinking, whereas the latter shows someone who read a UCAS advice article.

The best applications also connect their extras: the Arduino project led to the question in the Cavendish lecture which the tutor answered with a maths trick they later saw on Isaac Physics. This is what makes a personal statement flow.