DGD wants to study Languages

Premature posting. I agree she needs strong Italian.

Thanks, @TizerorFizz

The DGD should visit both!

@poetryandwine Personally I would look at Bristol before Lancaster. As I noted earlier, Italian isn’t a real strength at Lancaster. York and Bristol are better bets because students need the breadth of a bigger department and options.

Hi, OP -

I am late to your lovely thread but wanted to add my two cents. Your DGD sounds amazing and I particularly want to commend her initiative. I know it is early days but it sounds like she is showing the qualities that will make her a very desirable applicant.

If Oxbridge interests her at all, I hope she will apply. No commitment is required and even if she gets an offer she isn’t obliged to take it up. I think Oxford is a livelier and more diverse place than Cambridge but she should make up her own mind. Yes, they are both full of lovely, shy geeky undergraduates!

I always like to see pupils and students planning two steps ahead, so I will note that it isn’t terribly uncommon to find that your first choice of uni wasn’t the best. This can happen absolutely anywhere. If it does, transferring may be the correct decision and in that case what makes it easy is (a) having been reasonably successful at the first institution and (b) requesting a move to a programme of equal or lesser prestige. Moving from Oxbridge as a reasonably successful student is generally very easy; moving to it is nearly impossible. (In England, the student loan system generally accommodates one move or repeated year)

Many state schools in less socioeconomically privileged areas have an Oxbridge College partner. This doesn’t mean pupils should particularly apply to that College, but that the College provides various forms of help and guidance to prospective applicants. It is worth finding out whether DGD’s school has a partner. Also many Colleges have outreach materials on SM. I am familiar with the stuff from Caius College Cambridge, which is quite good and can be found under the hashtag #caiusschools (or very similar). Much of it is broadly applicable to all of Oxbridge and beyond.

I second the enthusiasm for Lancaster, worth a visit! Also Durham and possibly York, depending on its programmes. A uni organised along collegiate lines may feel more manageable to a shy student.

I would encourage DGD to join the online forum The Student Room where she can pose all sorts of questions directly to undergraduates in specific degree programmes.

She also sounds a good candidate for the Sutton Trust, which aims to widen university participation, particularly at the higher levels. In addition to their online materials they offer summer programmes which may be of interest to her.

Very best wishes to DGD

Literature should be a backbone of a good MFL degree. All universities should have breadth in modules but some MFL courses are more geared towards business.

Ab initio will be harder but French and Italian go very well together. Spanish is taught in many schools but Italian is not so msny study Italian ab initio. People who put the work in will be perfectly ok.

At Lancaster, Italian is a minor subject and might not have the breadth of modules found at other universities or links abroad. Italian, as a full major subject is not available everywhere but to find breadth, it needs to be a major subject.

Oxford is not lit heavy. There are plenty of options in years 3 and 4 that are not literature-based. The first year includes cinema and feminist texts.

Just to reassure your DGD re Oxbridge. I do some ad hoc work with a Cambridge college who have a 70pc state school UK admission rate and have a wide variety of backgrounds etc. I have met a bunch of the students and they are honestly very normal kids, not anything like that movie Saltburn! This college will contextualise all applications so for example if she's achieving these grades in an underachieving state school, this will be viewed very favourably as they will see it's a lot more than the average.
I know for a fact MFL is undersubscribed and they are desperate for good quality applicants. So do encourage her to go to open days and speak to the students and make a decision based on that.

I did French and Spanish degree, I had A level French and GCSE Spanish. The Spanish was tough because other students had A level and we had a year to get from GCSE to A level plus 1 year of degree they’d done to reach the same level.

Your GD sounds amazing. If she’s open to looking at universities in the North I would highly recommend looking at Lancaster.
It’s a collegiate based campus university, very safe. High in the league tables.
Both our daughters would have been Oxbridge candidates but neither wanted to apply. One went to Durham and one to Lancaster.
If she’s shy Lancaster has lots of societies where she can make friends (I’m sure others do too) There’s PotterSoc and WhoSoc for example and a choir. Sports facilities gym and pool on site.
Lancaster itself is lovely and near the coast and Lake District.
When we visited we got the “ this is the one” feeling. Our daughter loved it and went on to work there.

I’m not 100% sure DD would have enjoyed the intensity of Oxford had she gone. She was not that disappointed after A levels! As a gregarious person with many friends and interests, having time to pursues those meant a lot to her. She didn’t need her nose to the MFL grindstone all the time and there’s really no discernible difference between grads from Durham/Oxbridge/Bristol etc as they tend to be traditional courses. No jobs are off limits if you are good enough.

If you can, have her visit a few university open days and speak to their language departments. She will gain an understanding of what the courses offer and how different a similarly named course can be at different universities.

In the end, the cost of tuition is the same everywhere. She should apply to the best she can acheive given predicted grades and the courses that most appeal to her.

Remember to include a course that she really likes but has a slightly lower entry requirement as an 'insurance' choice.

Languages are a great choice. And if she is interested in Italian, don't try to push her towards Mandarin or Arabic. She has to be motivated by a fascination with the language and culture and life in a place - any of these can lead to a solid career path. There's no point studying Mandarin if you are not a person who would welcome the chance to live and work in China. I'd love it! Others wouldn't.

PS You're dgd sounds amazing!

Your dad sounds amazing!

Another one here suggesting she gives Oxbridge a look. The application process is rigorous so a good test of whether you enjoy it or not. Not everyone does, and that's fine. She still has 4 others choices to put down.

DS was fortunate enough to get in and loved every minute. He did raise an eyebrow at how hard he was working compared to his friends at non Oxbridge Unis. It was v intense - but so is he! On one plus side,v the accommodation was muuuuch cheaper than we have been paying at Uni for our other son. Shorter terms and college subsidies made it very manageable.

DH and I are both language grads from Durham. He started off triple languages with French, German and then Russian ab initio and dropped the Russian for final year. He's in project management. I did combined arts linguistics, Spanish and Russian. Few years later went back to uni and now in health care.

There is a pretty wide variety amongst friends from uni. Speech and language therapy, law, publishing, banking (did maths and a language).

Not many people do straight up 100% "I use my degree" type jobs such as teaching or interpreting but a language degree can offer a lot of transferable skills.

@Mindymomo MFLs suit outgoing confident people. They are 20/21 by the time they go abroad. It’s a bit limiting if a linguist won’t travel. Even at A level.

My DD did get a place at Oxford A but dropped a grade on her 3rd A level so didn’t go. There’s a need to have a broader “education” at Oxbridge interviews. They do not follow the A level curriculum. It’s about how you engage with the interviewers, how you respond to the unexpected, and to some extent, how you think on your feet. DD had to translate a poem she hadn’t seen. (Other candidates said they had!) Then they asked her questions on it. It was about WW1 and she hadn’t studied that either. However she had seen tv programmes and knew something about the horrors of it and the sentiments expressed in the poem. Shame about her A level results but it’s made no difference whatsoever to her career where she thinks on her feet all the time!

On the diplomatic service, it is very hard to break into (Diplo Fast Stream is 2-4 places). The only plus is you don’t need a language degree, just an ability to pick up languages. So if OP’s DGD decides on something different but still wants to pursue, it’s still an option!

@GrannyMay as your DGD doesn’t know what she wants to do, perhaps a joint degree such as a language and international relations would be good? Two languages may be too much. Also avoid the lit heavy Oxford (not sure of Cambs). UCL is a great target.

It might be easier to get in from a low performing state school. I think there are plenty of state school kids these days and hopefully she'd find them. There are also schemes to help the adjustment, you will find more on the Oxbridge board on here. Once you have a degree from there, most employers in all sectors will look twice at you.

UCL will be very very expensive to live, especially once out of halls - but also lots of fun. It sounds like she's really looking at the courses so go for one she loves. Many jobs just want a degree so it doesn't matter but with that level of love for language, I think she could try and get a job in France or Italy for a few years.

My son is similar, he loves Spanish and is just naturally talented at languages. He wants to take A level but it's looking difficult at his current school and he doesn't want to leave. I would encourage him to go to Spain or South America for a few years afterwards and make the most of it.

My DS did 2 languages French and German at A level, which he loved but went along with his other subject at University. His close friend applied for Cambridge and did do well enough to get in, but failed the interview where she had to talk about art for 5 minutes in French and she didn’t have enough knowledge. She went to Southampton to do French and Spanish, where she really well, she did her one year in Spain, this was one of the reasons my DS didn’t go for languages at Uni as he always said he wanted to stay home.

Also I meant to add: if Russian is not a passion, don’t do it. My DD wasn’t bothered about Russia and loves everything Italian. Spending time travelling in Italy was a joy. The same won’t be happening in Russia so the learning experience is more of a slog. Enjoying what you are studying matters too.

Also business grads are two a penny. Unless you target universities like Bath and others offering management degrees that are very competitive, I agree, business doesn’t get you any further forward. It can actually narrow down options. Certainly marketing does.

Don't discount Oxbridge but also don't push her towards it if it's not really what she wants. It's very different to other universities and doesn't suit everyone (speaking as someone who went to Oxford from a state comprehensive and hated it).

Re UCL - bear in mind the cost of going to uni I'm London! Also it might not be as great socially as a campus university.

Wishing her lots of luck!

@Someone2025 What sort of subject would you suggest tho to pair with (say) French? IMHO taking (say) French and business or French and marketing is not going to get you anywhere further, career wise; much better to stick to your passion. A degree in two MFLs will extend her skills and be an excellent start. Unless your degree is very vocational (med, vet, engineering) or maybe science based it is really just a basis for lots of careers. She’s unlikely to find a job that requires MFL but the subjects will still be useful in so many ways.

I studied Russian at Birmingham. I chose Birmingham because the course was less heavy on literature but covered a lot of social science / history / economics as you might expect given the history of the Soviet Union.

I worked in Russia for a few years after uni and then joined the civil service (in a role that didn't use my Russian but I didn't mind that so much by then). In my peer group, there are those who joined the big 4 consultancies, other parts of the civil service (such as diplomatic service), teaching, armed forces (intelligence), law conversion. Probably some others that I've lost track of since we've all gone our separate ways. MFL degrees open up so many other skills in terms of critical analysis, presenting, retaining information, ability to see things from different viewpoints etc. I don't think they need to lead to a specific job but instead can open up lots of possibilities.

@GrannyMay My DD actually has a degree in French and Italian from Bristol. When she starts looking she will find fewer Italian degrees. Therefore look at the best for Italian!

Oxbridge is of course first class but Durham is excellent and Bristol is one of the best for Italian. Lots of students take Italian with no Italian A level or GCSE. DD actually had Italian A level but once dc have had their semester in Italy they all catch up. She had French A level
too.

Yes, I do think some courses offer more literature modules but there’s a huge advantage in doing these. For many grads, they are not seeing MFL as a vocational course. It’s a degree to open many doors. DD converted to law and is a barrister. Being good at analysing the written word is a very useful skill. Along with logic and a good memory. Plus anyone learning MFLs has a skill many don’t have!

My DD really enjoyed Italian. Preferred it to French and still does. The other advantage of places like Bristol is that they have direct links with a number of Italian universities. You don’t have to find your own placement with a firm or at a university which can be stressful. DD went to a university in Switzerland for her French semester and that was a brilliant experience.

The best universities have excellent careers advice and she should get as much info as possible about jobs.

I really would not worry about who else is at the university. Having confidence will come! No one thinks anyone else isn’t worthy of their place. DD wasn’t sold on UCL. London didn’t interest her at that time but now lives and works there.

I see your point re flexibility, but I would still argue that a good languages degree provides that. It's not just being able to speak/ translate the language, it's being able to analyse different kinds of information, being able to read and understand anything from philosophy to feminist theory to newspapers to comics, being able to write well in various styles, and more. There's reasonable concern about AI damaging career prospects for non-literary translators, but that's far, far, from the only job prospect for a languages grad.