Oxbridge applications - requirements other than the academic

Oh ok lljkk. But what you said originally was that 'family background puts you in the potential leadership category'. I thought you meant Harvard and Yale had a touching faith in the power of genes.

If they want a donation, as well, no chance. None at all. Not even a cent. In fact we'd need a full scholarship for DS2 which really means financial help flowing the opposite way.

Back to the drawing board then....

Sorry Squashpie! Mooting is like a mock trial.

more like family name coupled with Large donations that ensures an undergrad place, in some cases, Yellowstone. It used to be that if a parent had been to an Ivy League uni that they had a slight advantage at getting their DC into the same institution, but I don't know how much that works, nowadays. Said to be how GW Bush got into Yale, anyway.

lljk any crumb of comfort is welcome given the missing revision!

My lot have never done music which is sad but the lessons were beyond our means. They love music but can't perform. DS2 is very sporty but that's all apart from being clever but (currently, temporarily, foolishly) slack.

I actually meant his only chance would be to try trading on the family name. What a lousy reason that would be to get into Harvard or Yale. I can't believe that would seriously cut ice and if it did, shame on them.

adamschic I agree: even if a student does have the chance to pull strings and get a big name work placement, it might be diplomatic to avoid drawing attention to it in the PS.

A good Red Brick uni admission (medicine) that we looked at (not Oxbridge) said that they look for potential in an applicant. OK the academic requirements need to be met first and foremost but it a state school kid from a disadvantaged background who hasn't got the grade 7 in music, hasn't completed the world challenge and had work shadowing experience via daddy's colleagues but has managed to do voluntary work off their own bat would be favoured. So throwing money at things might actually be a disadvantage when places are tight.

lib - yes of course. But it isn't a good idea to not put much effort in, given that people do read them, including tutors AND if you fail to get in, you will need a good one to get in at back-up universities.

People like Lindsay Lohan end up at Yale & Harvard. Not exactly brainy, but prominent achievers in other ways.

I am not reading your irony very well, Yellowstone! If your DS does a mean rendition of Wonderwall on his guitar that won't cut it. If was Grade 8 on violin by 10yo & performing solos at large concerts with ensemble orchestras, has put out his own albums, gets chattered about in the relevant media, then he'd be Harvale material, even if his academic grades are only respectable not stellar.

I think it depends to some extent on the subject you're applying for. In my subjects , which included philosophy, they seemed to like people who could argue the hind leg off a donkey, any way round, both verbally and on paper.

Trotting up Kilimanjaro or helping in a Kenyan orphanage or having your gold DofE weren't course requirements.

lljkk That's surprising. But good. At least DS2 now has somewhere to go. He quite fancies Harvard. Do your criteria apply there too? (it'll reassure him that his no revision plan for next month's exams may not hurt, as I've hinted it could).

I don't think Oxford and Cambridge are looking for "one trick ponies" but they have both made absolutely explicit the fact that academic achievement and potential trumps everything else. This means that although they get students who are super bright and many have extra-curricular talents, this is a kind of by-product, almost; they don't actually encourage an able child who is applying to do a variety of extra-curricular things as they are so adamant that they will not generally help an application.

An independent school head mistress said in a newspaper interview earlier this year that such an attitude is a bit discouraging and extra-curricular activites and real-life work (ie in a shop or cafe, not just work experience) are vital life skills. She felt this was not a great recommendation to put to young people. This seems like common sense to me.

Ivy League on the other hand want to see a very rounded CV with a variety of real achievements. I wouldn't have said that you can be less clever to get into a real Ivy League uni than into Oxbridge (as opposed to a very good US one). It seems to me that you have to have it all to go to the top tier in the USA, but you might know different lljkk! the system there seems more sensible to me in that you may apply to a number of top tier unis, rather than the Oxford/Cambridge choice afforded young people here.

What a lot of really useful advice there is on here!

You can get into Ivy League without being very clever.
Ivy League explicitly wants future leaders in their fields. Any field but criminality considered. I don't know if you could get in with a 2.0 GPA (have to be pretty thick), but a 3.0 GPA (B average) and an amazing talent or preferably, several amazing talents, would do fine. GPA of 4.0 (max possible and not that uncommon) would still require some terrific extra-curric bits on the resume. Things like your family background puts you in the potential leadership category, though.

Thanks. I think that perhaps if 2011 wasn't the last year before the fee increase -and so a bulge year in terms of applications, then he may have been willing to take a punt on it. But I think all students this year have had to be extra cautious in their choices so as not to be left without any offers.

At the end of the day, it may not have been the most appropriate for him, even if he had an offer. He is quite independent minded, and was lucky to get 5 offers, he turned down a possibly more prestigious offer, and has accepted an offer from Southampton as he prefers the Uni - all he needs now are the grades

and :( at your DS's experience.

Our interviews were tough - they were designed to be I suppose - and the feedback was probably quite critical but all constructive. I guess the difference was in my case the prep was organised by the school who have a vested interest in getting us in, whereas the local indie may have been trying to put other students off to reduce the competition.

Such a shame it put everyone off applying when that kind of preparation is, IMO, the key to success.

frak i thought your comments were very interesting.
My DS is in Y13 at the local comp. He was on the "oxbridge" stream at school, but basically all that meant was they were taken to one of the Oxbridge fairs that are on across the country, and was taken to an indie school one morning for one mock interview. The interview was a horrible experience for him and the others from his school that went. The teachers doing the interviews were very critical of them, and the students they met at the school were rather unpleasant towards them.

On return to school he was told oh well, you'll just have to ask your parents to do some mock interviews with you at home - in aerospace engineering ffs!!

Unsurprisingly, the experience put them all off, and no one from his school applied. Given your comments about the level of preparation that your school put into the process, I think it's actually surprising that as many students from comprehensives get in as they do

'I do think PS are important. Even if the individual tutors haven't read them, somebody will have.'

• Laweasel, except in a v. few subjects, college tutors make the decisions about admissions - there isn't anyone else, though obviously we work to the guidelines laid out by faculties. All PSs will get read, but they are virtually insignificant in decision-making. And entirely irrelevant when it comes to who gets interviewed.

Agree with everything Bumpsadaisie has just said. The 50% success rate at SPGS is down primarily to the calibre of pupils entering the school coupled with the fabulous education they then get.

Clearly interviewing tutors do differentiate, which makes obvious sense. One tutor told a current first year that he could tell straightaway he was from a comp because his interview skills were so dire.

I think the biggest difference between an indie school pupil with a tradition of sending people to Oxbridge behind them and a state school pupil is in all the preparation.

Even with comparable grades I had at least 3 prep interviews, my personal statement was given a thorough going over and our classes seemed better preparation for university in that we were being acclimatised to debate and research whereas 1 state school friend failed to get an interview and although another did but I think she was so unprepared, pressured and generally flummoxed that she fluffed it - and I would have said both were cleverer and more into their subjects than I was.

Indie schools give you confidence, along with an excellent education. The excellent education Oxbridge can 'compensate' for but the confidence you can't just acquire. If it's normal for half your year to go to Oxbridge, and 47 from my school went from my year, then the whole thing is a lot less scary than if 1 person goes every 5 years....

Lemony

Oxbridge do actually interview everyone with the right predicted grades - if you have the A* at GCSE and are predicted the right sort of A levels, you will almost certainly get an interview - Cambridge interview over 80% which in 2009 amounted to around 13,000 interviews for around 3400 places.

Lemonysnickett

The days of being able to get into Oxbridge if you were not particularly clever but from the "right" school are long gone.

The fact is that many children from the top most academically selective public schools are bloody clever and talented and hard working. I speak as a someone who was a state school girl at Cambridge and met loads of them for the the first time there.

You have to be bright to be accepted into e.g. St Paul's in the first place. Then you have 5 years of top level education with lots of other very bright and engaged children, with lots expected of you. You are pushed to bring out your best. No wonder that in Oxbridge interviews they are impressive - and based on real merit too.

The question of the unfairness of some people being able to afford such an education for their children is a separate one. But that doesn't detract from the achievements of the kids from the top academic schools, who often spend their entire school lives working very hard and making a lot of effort.

I do know that Oxbridge interviewers will make allowances and not necessarily expect the same level of eloquence and confidence from a state school child as from a child from St Pauls.

The connection thing does make some difference. If you are at St Pauls you will probably have friends from a year or two above who are at the college you are thinking of applying to that you can chat to. The school will commit resources to Oxbridge training. Very different to the state school pupil who applies to a college selected on a wing and a prayer and just hopes for the best. But at the end of the day even the St Pauls child needs to be able to do well in the exams and the interview (and will have more expected of them due to their education).

mummytime sorry, didn't mean to be sharp. I don't think what you meant was clear though, because the implication seemed to me to be that you believe Oxford and Cambridge are looking for undergraduates who are one trick academic ponies and that's not what so many of them are. I'm constantly amazed at the level of achievement in things that many do outside their subject, both the successful applicants from school and undergraduates already there.

That having been said, I can think of many examples of students there or with offers who are just very bright, with a clear bent for their subject, who've never sat a music exam nor played for the county (let alone country), who haven't incarcerated themselves in a lab for a summer and who are 'normal' in every respect. Very good grades however.

Ivy League I know little about, beyond the liberal arts broad spectrum thing. But surely you don't get into Harvard or Yale without also being incredibly smart?

I got in and didn't go. They didn't really care about all the shiny extra-curricular stuff I'd done beyond wanting to know how I balanced it. I was asked, how I was going to revise for my A-levels with the Easter National Youth camp. My musical acheivements were easily 'explained' by the fact I was taking music A-level otherwise they might have asked about that, they asked me why I gave up competitive gymnastics (injury, not a lack of dedication), MUN wasn't really commented on but it was good debating experience and I think helped me when they were asking tough questions in the interview.

But tbh I don't think they distinguish by looking at extra-curricular achievements, in fact I don't think all-rounders do that well at Oxbridge. I definitely felt that I wasn't obsessive enough about my subject for them and wouldn't have the time to do other things so I turned it down.

A good personal statement is the key to getting into other universities without needing to go for an interview

They get very few applications from state school compared to private.

That's why stats like that exist.

I do think PS are important. Even if the individual tutors haven't read them, somebody will have. But not to say oh "look what a wonderful well rounded person I am" but to convince them your love and knowledge of that subject goes beyond your grades. You can do that with reference to lovely well rounded things you have done but that is the way round to it. It is all about the subject over and above anything else.

The people with A* who fail to get an interview have not done this, as I understood it.

......also ..how much does the school you went to affect your chances...eg St Pauls's 50 % oxbridge..is this through connections or Oxbridge making their job easier..if you got int St Pauls then you must be clever etc etc.(wrong assumption in my view).

great to get an interview...but so may children excel academically these days lots of A*s etc..so surely to get an interview in the first place they must take account of something else?