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Original poster

Super IB scores vs avg Oxbridge offers - Why?

33 replies

IBDworthit · 11/12/2021 06:23

I have been looking at a few schools and some of them seem to have stellar academics in the superlatives (40+ IBD scores) yet Oxbridge offers are left behind.

Pls have a look at two schools, both independents with a wide range of extracurriculars:

Whitgrift School
Avg IBD score 41.6 points!! (the typical offer score for Oxford medicine is 39 according to their website), yet
Oxbridge offers for 5.8% of leavers (or 23% of those applied)

compare this with another IBD school:

Sevenoaks School
Avg IBD score 41.3
Oxbridge offers for 14.7% of leavers (or 29% of those applied)

So less apply from Whitgrift, but the acceptance rate is also lagging by six percentage points, which is not a negligible difference (six pct pts is what separates Eton no.3 and Sixth Form College Farnb no.30 for example).

Think we can safely conclude that the watershed is not in the academics: it is extremely difficult to reach 40+ in IB. Yet it appears that more than half of the students in these schools manage to pull it off somehow, no doubt at the cost of great anxiety. But that is another topic.

Does anyone have any views or insights why Sevenoaks pupils are more into Oxbridge than those from Whitgrift?

OP posts:
Namenic · 11/12/2021 07:47

I wonder whether the oxbridge colleges care about the subjects that are not ‘relevant’ to a degree - I think this may vary between colleges and also subjects. Many oxbridge colleges also do additional aptitude tests eg BMAT (medicine), Step (maths).

If someone gets v high results for maths, further maths and step but does poorly in their other subjects, some colleges would maybe take that person in comparison to someone who did well in all their subjects but did badly in step/interview.

Incognito22333 · 11/12/2021 07:45

Also just looking at the 2 schools OP, Sevenoaks has a Sixth Form of 470 pupils so around 235 taking the IB every year and just the IB every year. School vastly experienced with IB and a world wide leader for it.
Whitgift seems to only have around 24 taking IB? So it probably is some of the bravest and brightest in the year doing it but small cohort/different effect on class sizes.
If you want your child to do IB I would choose Sevenoaks.

ViceLikeBlip · 11/12/2021 07:29

Because there just exist too many kids with the very top grades. It sounds about right to me that for every successful oxbridge applicant there will be about 4 or 5 unsuccessful applicants with the exact same academic qualifications.

Incognito22333 · 11/12/2021 07:24

I don’t think all top students who are strong “free” thinkers actually want to apply to Oxbridge anymore…. Especially the international ones look further afield eg top US universities.
Many of the top students at these schools and Eton etc actually now think Oxbridge is biased against them because of the schools they attend so they are just not even bothering to apply anymore. I have heard this from quite a few students directly. Most are very bright, well off, international- leaving the U.K. again.

Original poster
IBDworthit · 11/12/2021 07:04

Thanks for the responses, yoy variations will probably make sense. Not medicine oriented at this stage (too early!) the avg offer IB 39 for OxMed was just a figure I knew from the top of my head.

Can we safely conclude then that there is no particular difference in perception between these schools from Oxbridge's perspective? (IB vs A-levels is a different topic of course)

OP posts:
Igmum · 11/12/2021 06:50

Agree with Scary on the sample size. I'd also look beyond Medicine and interrogate that data a little. Which subjects? Which colleges? This does matter. Remember too that Oxbridge is ridiculously oversubscribed with very well qualified applicants. They also still conduct interviews. Plenty of other variables to factor in here before you start drawing conclusions about each school

AnotherNewt · 11/12/2021 06:42

I always think it's wrong to look at Oxbridge as the measure of success when it is medicine. They are not always the most highly regarded (not going to open the can of worms of the rivalries between London hospitals!)

Whitgift pupils live within commuting distance of several major prestigious London medical schools and that might be a factor in where pupils choose to apply.

Scarydinosaurs · 11/12/2021 06:30

The problem with those stats is the cohort size. You’re talking about a single year and small numbers so you’re not going to drawn useful conclusions for them. How much do they vary over a five year period? How many applied?

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