Would a person need to be officially GnT to consider Oxford?

Saying that some students are turned away despite As is not relevant though, yellowstone. For years and years, the papers have been running shocked stories about candidates who get the best possible grades and don't get in to Oxbridge. Every year Oxbridge puts out statements explaining that they don't judge candidates purely on A Level grades and consequently may prefer to take a candidate they think has more potential or is a better fit with their system, than one who excelled at A level.

I think you're confusing stories about candidates with very high grades being rejected, with the typical grades of candidates who are accepted. They're not the same.

BoffinMun the grades you cite, only requiring two grade As at AS and no mention of A*'s at A2, is completely out of touch.

Cambridge requires not just A's in all AS modules but it likes over 90%. As for being let in with AAB because of a 'blip' : students are being turned away despite A*'s on the grounds of missing their STEP.

Encouraging students to apply is one this, dumbing down the requirements to this extent is another.

Riven, he can get all the advice he needs direct from Oxford/Cambridge and if he mentioned Asperger's on the form that will be taken into account (sometimes it seems as though half the university has Asperger's, so he will be in good company, I think).

I rather doubt my advice is out of date seeing as I am an admissions interviewer at Cambridge

Rivenwithoutabingle if your son is interested take a look at the Cambridge shadowing scheme www.applytocambridge.com/shadowing/ and the Sutton Trust summer school www.suttontrust.com/summer-schools/ and then he can hopefully pick up information himself about the application procedure, dates and so on. Of course you can also get help here

OP take your daughter to an open day but encourage her to look at other universities too.

I thought quark was a kind of fromage frais?

Agree with Yellowstone - I have several friends with science/maths orientated sons (yes all boys) at, or who have been at both Oxford and Cambridge who are, to varying degrees, a bit challenged by the complexities of social interaction! Some of their reported responses to questions asked at interview left their Mums a bit horrified but they won places. And have been happy and successful while there.

Having HE'd and helped a child into Cambridge, you must have a good idea, Riven, of the procedure. Whichever he goes to it is likely, given his field, that he will meet and make slightly different friends to someone doing your daughter's course and, it's to be hoped, won't find the same hiccups. Good luck to him.

I also genuinely believe that tutors try very hard to adjust to the interviewee kalidasa. That helps. Give him a quark and he'll probably fly!

Gelatinous I see .... However remember only AS level modules are finished by the time ucas forms go in ie only the easy bit !! The more taxing modules ( only know maths and sciences) are yet to come!

Sorry - don't mean to imply that Aspergers is just like being shy or awkward of course! Just that interviews really are about the academic subject, not social skills.

Pretty much Riven

Modern Foreign Language

Yellowstone - I was thinking that too but trying to think of a tactful way of putting it! More seriously - loads of applicants are very shy or awkward in interviews. As long as he can engage with the material he'll have an opportunity to show what he can do.

Riven I imagine the Physics tutors are well able to connect with a DS like yours!

Interesting point gelatinous. I have actually been involved at interviews in both places in the last five years (Cambridge slightly more recently than Oxford) and I admit I'd forgotten that we didn't necessarily get module breakdowns at Oxford. On the other hand, the subjects I was involved in interviewing for at Oxford (two and also a joint degree linking them) both set their own tests and my impression was that that took some of the weight off GCSEs as well. As gelatinous implies you give a score to each of several aspects of the application and then these are put together at the end.

The written work is also important of course. Not always in the way applicants assume - colleagues in MFL, for instance, tell me that they insist on marked language work because very often this reveals imperfect grammatical knowledge on the part of the teacher (rather depressing!) which gives them additional contextual information. (Not meant to be a snipe at MFL teachers btw, most of whom are excellent I'm sure - just that it was particularly MFL colleagues who mentioned this.)

There is a difference between Oxford and Cambridge admissions in that Cambridge look at A level module results in detail - they ask to see UMS for every module taken and give people a score based on the average UMS of their top 3 (or 3 most relevent) subjects. This is as Kalidasa describes and therefore they can weight GCSE results much lower when deciding who to admit. Oxford on the other hand do not see the module scores for A level (unless they have been put on the UCAS form, but this is optional), so they weight GCSE results more highly (but still contextualised) and so you are more likely to need very high GCSE results to get a place at Oxford than at Cambridge.

CaptainNancy, mummytime explicitly said eight year old, about her own eight year old. I didn't read anything wrong. I'm talking generally about 8 year old's, not mummytime's DD in particular. Generally it would be very, very surprising indeed for an 8yr old to decide of their own volition that Oxford was the right place for them, let alone the only place. How would they know?

amosquito I expect most child psychologists would agree. It's not objectionable in the least to warn of the dangers of setting children up for a fall. It's most unfair on a child. Aiming high is fine, but that's a separate point.

NotanOtter - I really think he'll find it a bit less horrendous this year then. And perhaps the social nastiness will ease a bit too when they're all under slightly less pressure.

In defence of the tutor talking at the school - those events are hard to judge and actually really nerve-wracking, especially at smaller/less well-informed schools, because you're really aware of how influential you can be and it's hard to get it right.

Well it's certainly true that the majority of successful applicants will now have grades in that range, but I would be very surprised if any tutors are actually using that to weed out candidates. There is also perhaps a difference between subjects that set their own admissions test and those that don't - for those that do, that is now one of the main ways of sifting applicants initially. But when I do outreach talks at schools I definitely tailor what I say to the school I'm talking to and perhaps that was partly the case here?

Kali I agree re your entrance criteria - sounds much more fair and balanced

Kalidasa yes it is !! Thanks for that maybe I can breathe easier this year!

Is this Natural Sciences NotanOtter? If so you can take heart (a bit) as the first year is notoriously appalling and it does ease up a little.

The social stuff you report is depressing though. I think you're right that things vary a lot college to college and even between year groups in that respect.

Kalidasa 7* was offered up by an Oxford tutor talking to sixth formers at a local school