My first post in The Student Room (TSR) was a worried question in the Cambridge forum, giving my relatively unimpressive grades and asking whether or not I stood a chance of getting into Oxbridge. Nine months, hundreds of posts and one change of heart later, I received an offer from Oxford to read English.

Founded in 2001, thestudentroom.co.uk has become the largest student forum in the world. With more than 200,000 registered users and about 13 million individual posts, its size is what keeps it alive: individual discussion forums are provided for every UK university. While higher education is the site's primary focus, it also caters for GCSE, A-level and international baccalaureate and international students. There is also a careers and employment forum for graduates who just cannot bear to leave the site behind.

The primary function of TSR's Oxbridge section is, perhaps unsurprisingly, to dispel myths. These range from worries over grades (admissions tutors are far less interested in your A stars than you may think) to full-blown socio-economic conspiracy theories: one user argued that the sole point of the Oxbridge interview is to determine an applicant's class, thus allowing tutors to reject working class students. These fantasies are generally dealt with quickly and efficiently; the experienced students who haunt the forums seem to enjoy calming and reassuring the annual hordes of frantic applicants.

I was daunted simply by the Oxbridge process itself - two universities, with more than 50 colleges to choose from, special application forms, admissions tests, and, most frightening of all, interviews.

TSR fills the gap between university prospectus propaganda and the often spurious and outdated advice of teachers and parents. If you want to find out about a given course, nothing beats talking to somebody who actually studies it. Like any large community, TSR has its own distinctive personalities, some of whom revel in snide put-downs and academic boasts but the dominant attitude is helpfulness.

Perhaps the most useful and well-organised feature of the site is its personal statement section. When tackled with little experience and no knowledge of what admissions tutors are actually looking for, these statements often end up either dull or cringe-makingly misguided.

Many applicants still seem to have the idea, perhaps reinforced by pushy parents or misinformed schools, that extra-curricular activities are of vital importance, leading to largely pointless lists of Duke of Edinburgh awards and victories in obscure regional karate championships.

TSR's “PS helper forum”, where applicants can post their first drafts, differs from the rest of the site in that its posts are visible only to accredited “PS helpers”. This layer of secrecy effectively prevents plagiarism by other applicants while simultaneously opening each statement up to critique by different student volunteers.

Given that TSR is, for the most part, organised by students for students, it is perhaps not surprising that petty squabbles and puerile humour surface all too frequently, but at its best, the site is a valuable resource. It provides some much-needed immediacy in the midst of a process that is often confusing, alienating and stressful.Its advice is refreshingly clear and spin-free - truly a room with a clue.

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