Top Unis - am I missing something?

Lots for students - so many societies. The absence of nightclubs means that there's more focus on other forms of entertainment. Plenty of music, drama, sports etc.

Also learning to/playing golf is a bargain for students...

The vast majority of students who go to St Andrews have a great time - reflected in its high ranking in the student satisfaction surveys.

I didn't go to a RG university, so the "tiny handful of unis" comment doesn't apply to me. Lancaster is just an example of the extreme end of campus-focussed universities. All Unis have nicknames, thank goodness I didn't use QMU as an example of a campus-focussed university or that would really have got the pearls clutched.

If she did want to pop home then she could either:

1. get the bus - horrifying I know but national express & megabus are things!
2. book in advance

the only students I knew who went home during term time where those that lived there! Uni is also full of international students who don’t even go back every term.

A campus vs non campus matters less than the teaching, the opportunities and the vibe. If she wants oxbridge vibe (I.e. to study her socks off) then Durham or LSE will provide a group of people who also want to study their socks off but also people who don’t.

Oxbridge students I knew used to wake up at 9am on Saturday to play a board game for 45mins over breakfast and then go study until lunch. Some augmented this by rowing from 6am first. Sure there were end of term blow outs but there was more studying. Fear of looking stupid in front of a Don is a great motivator.

What's there to do in Saint Andrews? Like I've visited, I much prefer Edinburgh

I know St Andrews might seem 'too far' but for a course involving International Relations it probably is one of 'the places to go'. While it is not technically a campus university it has all the benefits of one.

I went to St Andrews from East Anglia a while ago, when it was a 9-10 hour door-to-door trip. It's a lot easier/ quicker now, and you can fly from Dundee airport to Heathrow for c. £100 each way (if that makes a difference).

Your sneering post and snobbery speak volumes. It’s not the uni of the M6 and Warwick is a campus uni stuck in the outskirts of Coventry with a campus not half as good as Lancaster and rated the same on the complete list. Warwick seemed to escape your sneering but then I guess it’s one of the MN chosen unis. 🙄 Honestly this obsession with a tiny handful of unis is ridiculous.

It's just a matter of the type of university experience you want.

What a ridiculous post. Lancaster uni campus is amazing! It’s number 10 on the complete list and my son picked it over all the others above it. Oxbridge not being in the running. We were blown away with the accommodation and facilities when we visited. It’s set in parkland with eco pods to study in, pick your own and even has its alone Asian supermarket and cafes/ restaurant, bars linked to houses and has a lovely feel, has good business links, is well respected and has some fantastic courses plenty with a year abroad or in industry.You can get to Manchester and the lakes from it. Warwick was a definite no no after visiting and Bath/Exeter/ Bristol just turned him cold( full of yah, yah ex private students). Wasn’t keen on the London unis when we started looking at accommodation…

So you need to do loads of visits( it’s horses for courses)and let her choose for herself.

Apologies if I’ve missed other references, but London does have one potential huge advantage - if the career you’re aiming for is London-centric, it gives an opportunity to take advantage of having London based accommodation (which is usually year-round) to take up holiday jobs/internships, volunteer work etc.

My daughter chose UCL for other reasons, but going there enabled her to take on an paid internship for 3 months in the summer before her final year, which eventually led to a full-time job offer on graduation. As she had to pay for her student accommodation over the summer anyway, this was only possible because she studied in London.

a degree in politics sounds like this may well be a consideration.

@downwindofyou

Sociology BA - some places need more but they are Bsc which she is adamant she doesn't want.

LadyGabriella has form for giving incorrect and very outdated "advice" on these threads. I would take anything she says with a very large vat of salt.

What course? Everything my dd wants to do requires AAB minimum anywhere half decent and more like AAA

My HT in the 90s said that if you went toOxford by meeting an offer of EE, they would make sure you left again pretty quickly. He was an Oxford grad and people at my school did the Oxbridge entrance every year, so I imagine he knew what he was talking about.

Well pushing is one way of looking at it. Another is that it suits people who are super-enthusiastic about their subject, keen to learn, and enjoy the challenge of working hard. It particularly appeals to people who enjoy the close contact of the tutorial system.

Anyone who’s been at a super-selective, state or private, will be used to the workload and expectations.

From what OP has said her DD is clearly bright and hardworking. DD herself seems at once enthused by the prospect of Cambridge, while unsure if she might prefer a more relaxed pace.

As I suggested previously - a year out may clarify that for her as well as gaining some maturity and independence from her family.

If she's wondering why she pushed herself for A levels/GCSE then she should definitely think about if she really wants to go to Oxbridge - it's nothing but pushing (well depending on the subject). She should think what she wants from life and uni experience. Bristol, Exeter, Southampton are great unis and bring a better work life balance.

Hi again OP,

I think for Politics (based on what you've said) she should apply to Bath and UCL or LSE.

It doesn't matter that Bath isn't RG - it's significantly higher in the league tables than most RGs for many subjects. It's campus/ based and near to a historical town. And most Bath courses offer placement years or study abroad years which will be a definite benefit for her, They may well offer at lower grades than she is predicted (also they lower the offer again if she has A star or A EPQ) but this doesn't matter. It's still a top 10 (top 5 even) uni. Even Oxford and LSE offer at A,A,A for many social sciences / humanities (although realistically everybody offered will have higher, it's just to not exclude people off who have attended very poorly performing schools for contextual purposes).

LSE and UCL are both globally renowned in a way other U.K. unis are not. In the top 10 global unis, you see UCL and Imperial appear alongside Oxford and Cambs, Harvard, MIT, ETH Zurich etc. I'm not sure why LSE is never in there (maybe size)?

If it helps, UCL (like Bath) offer placement years / overseas study years. This is something she will not get at Cambridge.

LSE do not offer study abroad / placement years. Also worth remembering that LSE is a predominantly postgrad institution and about 70% of students are from overseas. But, unless things have changed in the last few years - at LSE they can choose their accommodation, whereas at UCL you get something allocated. So, if she were to live in the larger LSE-only accommodation block on the Southbank (sorry I can't remember its name - Bankside? - it's right behind the Tate Modern), she would definitely meet friends there and have lovely walk over the pedestrian bridge into uni. And LSE is basically in Covent Garden - could be worse! Every uni has its pros and cons.

I suspect the dc may have done language A level in a language from her heritage a year early? So is only doing 3 A levels yr 13. Some universities only consider A levels sat at same time.
Has she looked at clubs and societies? Some may offer more options or more events that would appeal.

OP at the risk of repeating what others have said I just wanted to make a few points.

Stop getting hung up on the 4A stars - I'm not aware of any English university which sets 4 A levels as an entry requirement. Most will say XXX or 160 points from 3 A levels or equivalent.

If your daughter has done 4 A levels purely in pursuit of a uni place then she has been poorly advised. If she has done 4 A levels for her own satisfaction and love of learning then she should be very proud of that, wherever she ends up. Finding out what actually motivated her to do 4 A levels might help you unpick some of this.

I'm not sure whether your daughter is face-saving about Cambridge or whether she is genuinely worried about coping/fitting in. It reminds me of my friends son who having revived three rejections for medicine started saying that actually bio-medical science was probably what he really wanted to do anyway...until of course that final uni came up trumps and he of course went off to do medicine.

FWIW both my niece and my best friend loved their time at Cambridge - both have an almost tunnel vision approach to everything and I can see that for them, it was an ideal environment (although my niece found the social side a little tame, coming from a large city).

I agree, it's not your decision to make and had I tried to make such a decision for my eldest they would have kicked against it. That said, you can guide. You can give them questions to think about.

My eldest knew the area he wanted to work in and not all universities offer the degree. Like your daughter he didn't want to go too far so rejected Exeter, and anywhere in Scotland out of hand plus a few others. Rejected London for cost. He looked up the employment statistics for graduates from the remaining universities, and weighed up the placements. He wanted to go to a big city. Little by little he whittled it down to a natural shortlist - and guess what? He ended up applying to a mix of redbrick and former polys. And I'm going to really shock you now...the five he applied for had exactly the same entry requirements (which is a risk in itself because he effectively didn't have a back up but he ended up getting rejected by four anyway because it was an insanely competitive course he wanted to do).

Long way of saying, your daughter may be feeling many things, but having autonomy over her choices and knowing the choices she made were logical and were choices she was happy with will be good for her. She's in a good position. She's got an offer from a good uni in the bag and she's more than likely going to achieve the offer. She can't do anything else about Cambridge at this stage. She might get an offer, she might not. I tend to think if she gets an offer you'll see whether this "inferiority complex" is real or was to save face. If she gets an offer and still has these reservations, then listen to her and be very careful with what you project on to her. She's a young adult, she's the one who'll be studying there, she's the one who'll be paying for it etc. Your role is to help her weigh things up while being crystal clear you will support her choices.

I haven't read everything, so apologies if I'm duplicating things. A few thoughts:

If you are concerned about the educational experience, I would place more weight on things like cohort size, number and type of contacts hours, degree structure (including number of options), and the reported experiences of current students.

Entry tariff might provide some indication of the capabilities of the cohort, which may have direct and indirect effects on your daughter's learning experience. I wonder if that is part of what you're getting at in your concern about whether she'll end up at a 'top' uni? If so, I think I get your point, although as noted above, I'd look at the entirety of the educational provision, and at all the other things she wants to get from uni (a nice campus, vibrant campus life, good options for accommodation, etc).

I would definitely not choose a course with a high tariff as some sort of signal that your daughter is smart or 'good enough' to be there. Her A levels and brightness will speak for themselves.

Finally, students at Oxford and Cambridge have a great time, but the tutorial system (and in particular the requirement to submit written work for each tutorial) means that students need to be self-motivated and have consistent work patterns. If your daughter really feels like she wants to take her foot off the accelerator at university, then Oxbridge is probably not a good choice. But there's lots of great stuff to do, and the bonds the students develop are amazing - including that the College environment means they have friends in numerous other courses, not just their own.

She sounds like quite a young 17.

I think York would suit her if she can cope with that distance.

EE offers were still being made in the late 90s.

in the early 1990’s the standard Oxbridge offer was AAB but EE offers were still made if the candidate really stood out.

In 1982 that’s what they did. Anyone who was offered a place just had to get two EEs, I.e. two A levels in order to qualify for funding. Oxford and Cambridge cared about their own entrance exams and didn’t think A levels were indicative of anything much.

Oxford and Cambridge have no interest in extra curricular activities that make you rounded, they are completely open they only want 'swots"

If by 'swots' you mean bright students with a real engagement with their subject then yes. Of course the reality is that there are plenty of well-rounded students there just that's not their selection criterion.
(It's a long time since I've heard the word 'swot'. I don't think it's due a comeback.)

True - even if she gets a Cambridge offer she doesn't need to accept it. My dd didn't do so till after she'd been to the offer holders event, after giving further long and careful thought about the pros and cons vs her other favourite (southampton).