In the UK’s stratified higher education system competition for places at highly selective institutions is a matter of public interest and policy focus; the University of Oxford is particularly heavily scrutinised due to its relatively privileged intake and its complex, ambiguous admissions processes. This study explores how admissions decisions are conceptualised in the context of the introduction of the Astrophoria Foundation Year’s (AFY), an innovative widening participation initiative. The AFY offers disadvantaged applicants a one year bridging course, leading to admission to a cognate undergraduate degree if completed with sufficient attainment.

Because the AFY requires lower grades from its potential applicants than the cognate course to which they might gain entry, its introduction surfaces tensions and complexities in constructions of how disadvantage and academic merit relate to fairness in Oxford’s admissions. The study deploys a case study approach incorporating semi-structured interviews with staff and student stakeholders, participant observations and document analysis. It explores these tensions, considering how conceptualisations of mainstream undergraduate admissions and teaching, admissions and teaching in the AFY, and the negotiated spaces between them, can inform our understanding of how interpretations of merit and fairness are conceptualised and enacted at the University of Oxford.