Matt Williams is an Access Fellow at Jesus College. You may recognise him from your Instagram reels or YouTube suggestions. His work with Oxford’s outreach has gained hundreds of thousands of views – helping students across the world in understanding the Oxford application process. Matt’s content is insightful, detailed and covers a wide ground of questions and aspects of what can be a very difficult application process. In person, he is extremely warm and always open for a friendly chat. Cherwell spoke to him to find out more specifically about his work in access and how his successful social media and internet presence first came about.
Cherwell: First, I wanted to ask you: could you describe Oxford in three words?
Williams: Oh! I always ask people this but have never thought about it myself. So, I think it is friendly, which I’ve always found slightly surprising. It can be a bit scary, however, so that’s my second word, and just exciting! So friendly, scary and exciting. Few juxtapositions there, but in the best possible way.
Cherwell: Okay! Could you introduce yourself to our readers, what do you teach and how long have you been at Oxford, and when did you first get involved with outreach?
Williams: So, I came to Oxford in 2006 for my Master’s and DPhil. I teach politics, specifically British Politics and Comparative Government. I got involved in access when I was doing my DPhil at Wadham College – Wadham has always been really interested in access, and as a grad student, I was able to work with visiting schools and just really enjoyed it. I noticed that it was that side of sort of helping people get into university that I was beginning to find as interesting as my academic work. And so I was lucky that this post at Jesus College came up, which literally combined the two, so it couldn’t have been a better fit! I was very lucky, and I’ve been at Jesus for nine years now.
Cherwell: Well, my next question was going to be how you came to be the face of Oxford outreach. I assume there was already some outreach presence on social media, like YouTube for instance. But how did you start posting videos on Jesus’s channel, and when did they start going viral?
Williams: So, the Jesus College YouTube account predated me, but there wasn’t a huge amount of content being uploaded. What changed was the pandemic. We had organized lots of access events where schools were going to come visit us or we were going over to them, and that suddenly had to stop. Specifically, we had to shift our Welsh Jesus College Summer School fully online. I knew that some people wouldn’t be able to make all the sessions, so I just recorded them and posted them to YouTube, thinking it would just be an easy way to distribute those videos, but I didn’t think anyone else would be interested. One particular video on Personal Statements ended up getting hundreds of thousands of views, which I was really shocked by. But then I thought – okay, well, there’s obviously demand for this sort of stuff. It’s clearly quite an efficient way of helping people who might not otherwise be able to access the same information. So, I sort of doubled down on that then. But I wouldn’t say I was the face of Oxford at all – and that wasn’t my ambition either! All I really care about is making Oxford representative of Britain, so that we take the best students. So it’s not about me getting my face out there – I promise (said whilst humbly smiling.)
Cherwell: You mentioned that one specific video did really well – would you say there’s been a lot of growth between then and now?
Williams: Yeah, and in particular in the last year, because we recently hired an amazing digital access officer called Iman Ali – she’s only been working here for just over a year. She put us onto TikTok and Instagram so this past year we’ve had 10 million views across all platforms, which is much more than we’ve had historically. So, yes, there’s been quite a lot of growth.
Cherwell: Of course, the content you produce can help anybody who needs some extra support, or is a bit curious, but how would you say you’ve measured the tangible impact that your work has had on students who may not have had opportunities previously to have this kind of support, for instance, at school?
Williams: That’s the million dollar question in access – how do we actually prove impact and then have an evidence-based approach to policy? It’s markedly difficult! With any intervention we have, whether it’s our summer schools or working with individual schools on a sustained basis, it’s very hard to prove causation and conclude that, because we did something, someone ended up in some destination. And it’s just as hard, if not even harder, with something like YouTube, because the audience is slightly self-selecting their content: the algorithm has identified them as already adjacent to that sort of stuff, or they’ll have sought our content out deliberately. So to say that we somehow changed their perspective is very difficult. The best we can do is not quantitative analysis, but to more qualitatively say that there have been people who’ve told us it’s made a difference to them. And that’s good to know!
Cherwell: Yes, absolutely… Speaking of challenges in access work, are there any other kinds of challenges that we, as viewers, might not notice?
Williams: We don’t know what is going to have the greatest impact necessarily. So it’s again, just based on – for want of a better word – guesswork. Applications are fairly seasonal, so we try to have more interview content before interviews, for example. But otherwise, there are other bits of content we’re not sure about. One thing I really like to lean into is the psychology around applying. I applied to Cambridge when I was a teenager and didn’t get in. And I think it’s useful to share that just so that people understand that it doesn’t matter. If you try to stretch yourself and you don’t “succeed”, no one ought to think any less of you and you should take a lot out of that experience. I think there’s quite a lot of painful emotions that some, not all, people have around applying to universities like Oxford, and it can put them off applying in the first place. It’s why being vulnerable and open is important and, I don’t see many other Oxford or Cambridge YouTube channels doing something similar to that. In terms of difficulties you may not see, I’m half blind so I can’t see the camera I’m looking at, which means that I’m often not looking at it! I’ve got a pronounced squint, so my eyes are going in all sorts of directions, (which commenters will point out in pretty much every video). Those are some technical challenges. But again, that’s where having Iman has really helped me – in the past, it was literally just me turning on a camera and vaguely looking in its direction.
Cherwell: You did sort of touch on this, but I suppose you do have quite unique content in all the different things that you talk about: some of the interview questions that you explore, you might not find elsewhere. How is it that you come up with these ideas?
Williams: So I want to centre everything around the concept of vulnerability. That’s my guiding content creation concept. I think that the university can be scary and it needs to, in a sort of almost anamorphic sense, open itself up and be more vulnerable: be more willing to accept that it’s not perfect. And show that the individuals within it are also, slightly, a collection of broken toys in the sense that we are all occasionally capable of imposter syndrome, self-doubt and low self-esteem. I think before I came to Oxford, I thought that this was a place where everyone had their proverbial together and they were just sort of strutting around where they knew everything. But I think that the content always needs to sort of foreground that idea that it’s okay, we can all be scared. And that it’s hard! Writing a Personal Statement is difficult, and you do have to be personal about it, but if you’re struggling with it, that’s not because there’s anything deficient in you as a person. And it’s been nice to really notice how much more of the university thinks in a similar way to that. It is not full of people who are completely self-assured. There is much more vulnerability out there. In the SCR and amongst the fellowship, it is absolutely the same. I think arrogance is perhaps the word that I’m used to associate with Oxford but it’s just not really there.
Cherwell: And do you get a lot of content requests from individuals as well?
Williams: Yes, a fair amount. And, usually, it’s very niche. Incredibly niche. Sometimes, it’ll be about something that I just wouldn’t really feel qualified to talk about. Nor would I necessarily know the person who could help me talk about it. So it might be about a particular scholarship that’s only for a very small number of people, or about the module in the Music course that you do in third year! I think I’ve got to weigh up how I can respond to those without perhaps alienating the rest of the audience. I think it’s good to do stuff that is not just for everybody and that can be really specific, but there’s a balancing act with all of these things. I suppose it’s worth noting that we’re not just going for clicks and views and likes, so if we have a video that’s only viewed a few times, but it has a massive impact on those people that do view it, then great! I suppose it is nice to get lots of views for videos that we think should have broader publicability just because then it gives us some sense of it being useful. But yeah, we’re not sort of slavishly working the algorithm, if you like.
Cherwell: That’s good to know. And, on a more personal level, how does it feel having people come up to you and thanking you for your work?
Williams: It’s very flattering and I get sort of slightly bashful about it because I don’t think it’s anything to do with me. I might have provided some information and I might have nudged, but that’s it. I’ve not made them the committed, hardworking, intelligent person that they are. So it’s very flattering and very nice. I do really like it, but I also get sort of slightly blushing and not really sure what to say or do.
Cherwell: Since you are at Jesus College, Oxford’s Welsh College, I’m interested to know what are the specific Welsh outreach initiatives you manage?
Williams: So we have responsibility for the whole of Wales in our outreach, but also the London boroughs of Lambeth and Wandsworth – just like all colleges we have different bits of the countries we focus on. We have a big summer school that we run with the Seren Network, which is the Welsh government initiative. We also have an online summer school for anyone in Seren throughout the whole of Wales. More generally, we have school groups coming to us from Wales quite regularly and we go to Wales to visit schools. We host webinars for Welsh schools but do much of the same stuff for London schools as well. So there’s not just Welsh outreach, although, yes, it is predominantly for Wales. There’s lots of initiatives that people can get involved with which start at primary level and finish with mature students. So it’s not just year 12s and 13s, it’s a bit wider than that. But there’s a lot going on!
Cherwell: I’d like to end by asking you: if you had to give some final words of advice to people applying, what would it be?
Williams: I would say try and have as much fun as possible! There’s enough scary stuff going on in year 13 that, if you try and just enjoy the ride a bit more, you might even do better. I think people see the whole thing as a test of their value and something where failure cannot be tolerated. It just becomes a chore that is deeply unpleasant! I think, if they can try and see it as an opportunity to develop their skills through the process, they’re going to have greater passion for their subjects. If they get more into the details and the weeds, they’ll come out a bit stronger. If they see it that way, then regardless of whether they get in or not they should feel good about it. And also just even having the guts to go for it is worthy of praise. Just basically having fun and being nice to yourself!
Cherwell: And what about for pupils who are already here?
Williams: Well, it’s kind of similar. I think the word that tends to be used most regularly in Oxford is ‘work’. And I mean, I’ve made this point several times, but I find that word problematic because work is typically alienating for the person working, because they’re working for someone else’s benefit. It feels like you’re doing it to stop your tutor from annoying you, or to make sure that you don’t have a principal’s collection: it’s very other-regarding. Whereas if we thought about it as studying, learning, growing, or something maybe a bit more cheesy, it’s more about you and what you could take out of it. And I think a few more students could do with just stepping back and like really reflecting on what it is they’re doing, because I guarantee by the time you’re my age when you’re in your 40s, you will look back at your education as the most incredible time of your life because you developed so many opportunities, skills and experiences that will be transformative.
