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

accepted = expected in the second line! no guarantee of acceptance I'm afraid . . .

Yes Yellowstone bog standard RG for me...

I am not a good example but dp did v v academic difficult to get in pressurised course and there's no comparison with ds at Cambridge. A lot depends on college choice .

When school first mooted Oxbridge with DS I was very reticent ( probably yr 9/10) you don't want your child to 'fall at the first hurdle' and a lot do

I have been involved with Oxbridge admissions very recently (though not this year) and I don't think 7*s at GCSE is necessary at all. If you are coming from a top-rank school then yes, that is the sort of level that is likely to be accepted; but when I was interviewing we certainly admitted people with substantially lower GCSE grades after looking carefully at the overall application (including e.g. the ranking of the school). You get info about the sort of school it is and how well it does.

I was also always well aware that GCSEs are for the most part boring and not very challenging for the brightest. Those being well taught and carefully directed will no doubt do very well anyway but plenty of the very brightest teenagers are good-but-not-oustanding at GCSE because - justifiably in my opinion - they are putting a good proportion of their energy elsewhere.

I think it's actually easier for Oxbridge to be a bit more flexible about this stuff because they interview/set their own tests. If someone has mostly As and a few Bs at GCSE but a very strong reference, comes in the top 20, say, in the entrance test you have set (deliberately to be unlike school work) and does very well in interview then certainly I would take them over a candidate trailing A*s behind them at every turn who came in the bottom quarter of the test and was not particularly impressive at interview. I realise it's tough for parents because school marks are all they really have to go on; but it's only one piece of the picture for those running these admissions procedures.

One other thing I always did was look at module break downs - there's a difference between a solid A that includes an A* level mark in the hardest part of the A level and one that conceals a middling B in that paper, for instance.

Well I don't think I'm G & T by any stretch of the imagination, and I got in....

I didn't do brilliantly at 16 - was above average for my academically selective school, but no more than that at 16. But I was always near the top for 2 subjects and this is what skewed it for me - at A level by being able to concentrate on a very narrow range of subjects I played to my strengths and seemed more academic then in terms of results than at 16. I think that probably happens with a fair number of children - not necessarily brilliant academic all-rounders but very strong in their chosen subjects?

It's Y8 not 8yo!

and OP's child is 15 in any case.

How objectionable Yellowstone. Who are you to decide what is unhealthy in an 8 year old?

I doubt it Indigo.

But even if it's correct and they're that precocious as well as smart to boot they'll most likely wilt under induced or self-induced pressure by interview time.

Very unhealthy at the age of eight.

Yellowstone - an 8 year can believe that Oxford is the best uni in the world, and therefore decide that's where they want to go.

An 8 year can know that David Cameron got a PPE from Oxford, that it's the most common degree for politicians, and therefore decide that's where they want to go.

Not all 8 year olds are the same!

Of course they may change their mind later. But they can still have their heart set on it at 8 without it coming from their parents.

It's difficult to see what's objectionable about the flagging system. It highlights the fact that certain applicants come from deprived areas, it doesn't give them a place.

ibizagirl some parents of students who don't get in come up with all sorts of fanciful reasons as to why that was the case.

mummytime organised visits for younger students are part of Oxford's outreach work. These are not visits aimed at middle class kids, they're targeted. No-one, even in the Sixth Form, should 'decide' that that's where they're going. How does an 8 year old 'fix' on that idea? Possibly if they live in the city itself, otherwise it can only be parent led - in which case the parent is doing the child a very great disservice if they then fail to get in.

ibizagirl - your daughter sounds great. No university is going to care at all that she's not sporty. A lot of lecturers are not very sporty either!

Oxford and Cambridge bend over backwards to take kids from less privileged backgrounds. Maybe not all admissions tutors, but certainly plenty from some of the richest colleges.

OP your daughter should look into it, and if possible go for a visit, they do lots of visits even for pre GCSE students. BTW my 8 year old has deided she is going to Oxford. In my experience it is quite normal for kids to fix on a Uni at quite a young age, they may change their mind later when they look more carefully at course (my older 2 fixed on Imperial and a US college).

I honestly thought that it didn't matter where you live either. Obviously our friends child just didn't get in or maybe didn't try for Oxbridge i don't know. She was adament he was refused on basis of where he lived. No it's not a really bad council estate. We are just on the edge of an old one but literally houses next to us are large modern and not council. I am not bothered where my dd goes as long as she is happy. Can't see her going to somewhere too snobby. She is such a quiet and well behaved girl and hardly talks at school and just gets on with her work but has many friends. In primary school she was ridiculed about being nerdy and that was by some of the mums! Now she is in year 8 she has had her predictions and they are saying A's and A's but i suppose its on the day and its not for a few years yeat, although she has already got an A in maths in year 7. This is her favourite subject along with history, english, science, french and german. To be honest its anything except for p.e as she is not sports minded at all. Always thought this could put universities off as she wouldn't be an all-rounder. x x

^'The postcode that an applicant gives as their home address, assessed using ACORN information. ACORN is a system that associates specific geodemographic profiles to individual UK postcodes; it is widely recognised and used by both the public and private sectors to assist in the effective targeting of policies, services and communications. Where a candidate?s postcode falls into ACORN groups four or five (Moderate Means and Hard Pressed) the application will be flagged. More information about ACORN can be found at www.caci.co.uk/acorn-classification.aspx.^

^An additional postcode factor will be used in the flagging for the coming admissions round. The postcode from an applicant?s home address is matched against the POLAR2 data set. This classification places regions into Quintiles based on the rate of young participation in Higher Education. Applicants from the lowest two quintiles will be flagged. More information about POLAR2 can be found atwww.hefce.ac.uk/widen/polar/polar2/'^ - University of Oxford

Hmmmm . . . . .

I see we are staging the Olympics here in London next summer. Just wondering if the IOC would consider giving athletes from deprived countries (Usain Bolt - Jamaica?) - where training facilities are inferior to that of affluent Western countries - a 10-metre head start in the 100 metres final?

I take it you mean your RG university wasn't Oxford or Cambridge Notan Otter? As opposed to the difference in experience being a matter of time?

I think time may have accentuated the difference.

Certainly as a parent I'd find the idea of a pre-GCSE DD deciding that Oxford was where she was going really pretty concerning.

wearymumof6 (i am one of those too!!) Very similar experience here with ds1 who has just started yr two at cambridge. He was always a high flying teenager but also a 'worker' willing to put in the hours...good job. Despite being in the top few in a v academic school he has found the work and expectation thrust upon him - relentless. He has chugged through his first year and is now hoping to be a bit chirpier now he has picked his options in year two.

He comes from a northern town and now has a humungous chip on his shoulder about this - he says there is an awful lot of joshig and japing about the north...state school educated...working in a crappy job to pay your way...

He has made great friends and is not unhappy but it has opened our eyes as parents- think long and hard about what your dd wants from university - DS experience is very very far from DP and mines experience at a Russell group university late 80/90s

7 A minimum gcse - at least one A predicted at A level and rest As

BoffinMum unfortunately your advice is a little out of date for Cambridge, grade-wise.

Fortunately for the OP's DD she's keen on Oxford, where getting up times (at least for arts students) are far more slack (noon on a regular basis appears to be fine).

If you want to get into Cambridge you should be looking at 10 or more GCSEs, in traditionally academic subjects, with at least 5-8 As depending on where you have been to school, and whether you are applying via the special access scheme, plus something like 2 AS levels with As, and 3 A Levels with AAA predicted.

If you've been offered a provisional place, you'll most likely still be allowed to come if you get AAB due to some sort of minor problem in one module or something, and once I saw an ABB entrant let in who did fine when there.

You should be used to having academic debates with intelligent peers - if you're at a school where there aren't too many other people around operating at your intellectual level, it would make sense to start investigating summer schools and so on.

You also need to be quite self-starting and resilient, the type of person who is happy to get up at 8 to get to the Faculty library when it opens, and spend all day reading hard books because you are dying to know more about the subject. It's also important to be able to find a hobby or two otherwise you would probably go nuts.

A really good guide to what is expected is gained from looking at the reading lists, set essays, past papers and so on, many of which are on the website. The book "How to get a first" is a great thing to read as well, if you want to get inside the university mindset.

It's not rocket surgery, as one of my colleagues frequently says.

i noticed on the Cambridge webite, that they say they are not all that interested in GCSE performance , because post 16 education is so utterly different.

Mammonite is right - we really don't care about the extra-curricular stuff. Partly because it is perfectly obvious that the great majority of extra-curricular achievements, however commendable, are more or less the product of considerable privilege (time, money and emotional energy in the family to support highly committed art/music/sport/fundraising/whatever); but mostly because what Oxbridge admissions tutors are looking for are a) candidates who have first-class potential; and b) candidates who are probably good 2:1 students (the assumption is that all those accepted ought to be capable of a 2:1 with reasonable diligence) and plainly lively, interesting and teachable. Specifically - teachable in the particular Oxbridge system (more important for humanities with little contact time and a major emphasis upon supervisions/tutorials, which don't suit everyone).

Almost without exception, candidates in these brackets have an impressive range of other interests or achievements of some sort, because highly intelligent and well motivated teenagers largely do. But I can never remember deciding for or against a candidate for any reason even slightly connected to extra curricular stuff. I wish parents and school teachers would take this on board!

Fwiw, I was an undergraduate at Oxford and had a pretty miserable time. I'm not really sure I would have been happier elsewhere necessarily, but I certainly wasn't very happy there, despite being extremely well taught and finding the work by and large both fulfilling and fairly straightforward. I was much much happier as a graduate student, first in the States and then at Cambridge. I now teach at a good London university and on the whole I think the students are happier and healthier than we were as undergraduates.

There is a section on "The Student Room" website where Oxbridge applicants detail their GCSE results, their predicted A Level results and what offer they received from colleges.

It is frightening! Most have at least 10 As at GCSE, and are predicted 4 A at A Level. One person even posted in the notes section an explanation of why they'd only achieved an "A" for one of their GCSEs...

It's not really relevant for most MNetters to detail their own experience of applying to Oxbridge, because times are different now. Back in my day there was the old EE offer, which, correct me if I'm wrong, does not appear to exist now. It's a good thing that more people feel able to apply, but on the minus side that means that fewer people get interviewed and weeded out at application stage, maybe on exam results alone.

You should go for it if she gets good enough grades - its early days yet. After her GCSEs you'll have a better idea - on average, successful applicants have 8 A* GCSEs or higher (info via my kids schools where if you dont have that number, you get advised against)

they are looking for more than that though and if she's got it, then where she's from is irrelevant ( and I say this with 2 kids who both did have all the right grades and CVs but didnt get offers - there's something more/different from just the exam history)

impostor syndrome is also rife at oxford, so you need to take claims that "I went there but I'm normal" with a pinch of salt (except from me of course ). The vast majority will have an academic profile well inside the top 10% of people nationally (ie:GnT), but I agree with those saying that GnT is largely irrelevant and they are looking for other qualities.

hi, i'm new on here but just wanted to jump in here! My dd always did well at school - 10 A stars at gcse then 4 A at A level. She got a place at cambridge after much pressure from the school and college - live in really remote wales and nobody from this area had got a place for about 5 yrs. She hated every minute of it and left after first year - nearly every person on her course know everyone else and had all been to same schools etc, she was like a fish out of water. Sure being so remote had lots to do with it - it was all such a shock to her system. She now studying in uni closer to home and happy.
Hope your daughter makes it if she got her heart set on it - the interview is nearly as important as great grades