All candidates applying for Classical Archaeology and Ancient History will need to take the AHCAAT (Ancient History and Classical Archaeology Admissions Test). The test will run in its pilot phase for the first two years having started in 2024. This means that while it will be used for additional information on a candidate's application, no one applying in the 2024 or 2025 admissions round will not be shortlisted for interview or not selected for a place at Oxford based on the results of the test.
What is the AHCAAT?
The new AHCAAT will aim to test two skills crucial for CAAH students: the ability to engage with and criticise academic argument and the ability to describe and analyse material evidence from the ancient world.
It will have two questions. In the first, you will be given a short passage from an academic publication of the kind you will be likely to be asked to read in your first two terms in Oxford, and will be asked to evaluate the coherence of the argument, whether the author supplies sufficient evidence for their claims and in what ways their argument can be criticised. In the second, you will be asked to look at an image of an artefact from the ancient world (statue, relief, vase etc.), for which some contextual information will be supplied, and asked to describe it in detail and reflect on the ways in which it can be used for writing history.
Answers need to be in a short essay format. Both questions are weighted equally (50 marks for each). You will have 90 minutes for the entire test, and we suggest spending about 15 minutes reading and looking and about 30 minutes writing on each question.
