Technically, no. The majority of courses do ask for mostly A's and A*'s, but you don't technically need all your grades to be A*'s. Largely, it depends what subject you want to read. Some subjects are more popular and sought after than others. Competition is stiff, which means that many students who are offered a place at Oxbridge do have at least 10 GCSE's, all at A*. I have two friends who started Oxford and Cambridge last year. They both gained 11 GCSEs at A* and 6 A levels at grade A. One went there to study Medicine, the other to study Chemistry. They both had lots of other attributes too. They were both prominent members of our school community, taking lead roles in the Orchestra, Debating Society and just about every other extra curricular activity you can imagine. I literally don't know how they found enough hours in the day to do it all. Because institutions like Oxbridge get so many applications, many of which are from students with outstanding academic records, they need seome way to distinguish between the students. It's the extra curricular activities that help to do this. The admissions tutors like to see that you have a life outside studying that you can balance with work. My advice would be to look at the criteria for the courses you want to do, but keep in mind that the chances are, many of the students applying to the course will go above and beyond the minimum requirements specified for entry. Check out the university websites Cambridge: http://www.cam.ac.uk/ Oxford: http://www.ox.ac.uk/

Certainly at A-level. There are very few who don't have all A's at a level. With GCSEs there is a little more leniency, with a B or two allowed, especially if applying from a state school and in subjects quite different from the one being applied for. The common myth though is that you need a stupid number of A-levels. This is not true, all they expect is 3 A's at A-level and an A at AS-level. The important thing is to take 'proper' courses, it is infinitely better to apply with 3 A's in subjects like English, Maths, the Sciences, History, Geography... rather than applying with 5 A's in subjects like media studies, photography, critical thinking, communicating science... Remember that at the end of the day there is no shame in being rejected, there are more candidates that are up to standard than there are places!