Oxbridge advice please

faustina - there are so many options to get involved in art, photography and drama across Cambridge that it isn't so critical to pick a college that is known for this IYSWIM. so he shouldn't worry that his choice of college dictates what he can do on an extra-curricular basis.

i hear what people say about some of the less well-known colleges, but these can often be smaller than the well-known ones. the one thing to be careful of with these, is that if you don't find like-minded people in your year group then you can be a bit stuffed as there are fewer people to hang out with. i ended up at Trinity, which is the biggest and some would think the poshest/snobbiest, but because there were so many undergrads, it was very easy to find like-minded individuals. My DH was at Sidney Sussex which I would also recommend looking at - great location, good student accom, not so many of the public school stereotype students and at least in the 90s had a really warm, friendly atmosphere.

finally, find out whether philosophy teaching is largely organised through college (in which case he needs to apply to a college that has a good reputation in the subject) or through the department (in which case he can just go for a college he likes the look of). I did geography where supervisions were organised through the dept so it meant it didn't matter that i was at a college that didn't really have a reputation in my subject because i had access to the same supervisors as all other students as you signed up through the dept. however my english student friends had all their supervisions organised by college fellows so needed to be in a college with several good english fellows.

Personal statement will be critical, and should really show a passion for the subjects applied for. How your spare time, reading, hobbies etc are used to further this.

Can he get time shadowing your local MP for Politics? (ours offers this to local interested comp. school pupils, as DD discovered when she considered the PPE)

Will he continue all 4 subjects to full A2 level? Not essential but they sometimes ask what the "spare" time will be filled with.

Totally agree with looking at the smaller colleges. DD was pooled from Jesus and ended up at New Hall, where most are from the pool!

DO make sure he really knows the course. DD had her heart set on Oxford, until she read the whole syllabus and then switched to Cambridge.

Good luck

Steamedtreacle makes some very good points there.

It can be extremely pressured at Oxbridge (which is why the Counselling Service has to set up so many support groups for this sort of thing) so there is a lot to be said for sniffing out the friendly people where you can find them. Also there are a lot of central funds that can be applied for, for vacation travel and so on, so picking a college on the basis of maybe getting a small book grant at some point in the future is a bit pointless really. Plus all UGs on the full level of funding get Newton Trust top up funding anyway, in the region of £1000.

Once they have got through the interview stage successfully, more people get let in with grades lower than AAA than you might think. I think we are all aware that chasing As at AL is not the be-all and end-all, but that we have to work within the system we have, to some extent. You would be surprised how few current staff members have strings of As at AL - it's no guaranteed predictor of top flight academic success later on, we find, certainly at postgraduate level (bearing in mind though that grading systems changed after 1988 and many of us have school-based qualifications that pre-date that).

I went to one of the lesser-known Oxford colleges and would agree with TotalChaos about the advantages - certainly my college had much less of a hothouse atmosphere than some of the older and more traditional colleges. It was also a hell of a lot less cliquey with a real mixture of people which I found reassuring - a friend of mine from sixth form went to one of the oldest and most well-known colleges where everyone was posh and bitchy, she had a terrible time.

I agree that the poorer colleges are likely to be a bit less obliging when it comes to book loans etc, but they can be better when it comes to accommodation - because our college was newer it had a lot more room for accommodation meaning that we could stay in halls for the whole three years. We also had kitchens - this is something you might assume that all colleges have but quite a lot don't have kitchens at all, meaning you have to eat in halls every night and this gets added onto your battels (rent etc) for the term which can make them considerably more expensive.

One hint for interviews - you will be interviewed by the tutors for your subject. They are looking for pupils that they will enjoy teaching - pupils who are engaged with the subject, interesting people, and above all enthusiastic, about both the subject and the workload. You need to be able to think on your feet and be able to hold your own in a debate. They don't want to spend the next three years teaching someone without any original thoughts or personality.

Lastly, grades are important, but if they like you they may well make you a low offer. Several of my friends were offered places if they only received three B's at A-level. I didn't get the grades I needed at A-level but they rung me up the morning results came out and offered me a place doing a slightly different course, which I took.

Sorry, bit of a long and rambling post but hopefully some of it will be helpful

90% + in modules is fab! The UCAS statement must be spot on, lots of kids apply with top grades to Oxbridge and the UCAS statement and references are the differentiators. Hopefully your DS may get some tips at the summer school.

I would have another chat with the school - it will help with their sixth form retention if they get someone into a top uni. If they can be bothered to put themselves out and spend some time 'crafting' a reference why should pupils stay with them for A levels. The role of the Head of Sixth is meant to include guidance and support for the bunnies and yours needs to get off his arse pdq!! I am in a bog-standard and already my tutees have open/visit days booked, we have spent the year working on enrichment, and after the visits we will tweak the statements. The subject teachers will complete academic references after May half term. It is not a perfect process by any means but for any student that is heading for a Russell group uni it is essential to be ready with an early application.

If it has been that long then I expect people are aware of it as a 'proper' college now.

It changed over to become a standard college in 2000, and is keen to recruit good students from non-Education subjects.

It's also flogged the nursing course, to ARU I think.

Do people even know that it exists now (and are you a member of Homerton by any chance?), when I started Homerton was 'that teacher-training college'.

That's what I thought. Good students bowling up to Homerton having put it as their definite first choice, and being enthusiastic about what it has to offer, would be in a stronger position that if they had applied to somewhere like King's and subsequently needed to be spotted in the pool.

It's funny about Homerton, BoeuffinMum - as an undergrad Girton and Homerton were both classed as 'far away' but Girton is 3 miles up a hill, whereas Homerton is about a mile and a half flat, and the South side of Cambridge is the nicer side. I know which I would go for.

The OP's DS wants to go to Oxford anyway, but could be useful for other people with teenagers reading this thread.

Homerton College, Cambridge is a hidden secret, as they have loads of very good en suite hotel-style accommodation on campus, a mixture of romantic Victorian and modern buildings, and they are only a mile or so from the centre. Library is good, it's quite near the station, and it's supposed to be the friendliest college in Cambridge. Bar is quite nice as well.

Preferably avoid King's if you are going down this route, as it's massively oversubscribed. You get the same lectures if you sign up for another college anyway, and sometimes even the supervisors are shared.

less well known Cambridge colleges - Robinson, Churchill, Selwyn.

less well known Oxford colleges - St. Annes, St. Hildas (only recently starting taking men!), St. Catherine's, St. Hughs, Mansfield

In terms of competition from friends at the same school; that will depend if friends are applying for the same subject. If they aren't then shouldn't be a problem.

The disadvantage of going to a less well known college can be they offer less in way of college owned accommodation and book grants as they are less well off. The advantage of going to a less well known college IME of my subject (which was law) is there was less academic pressure - the law tutors at other colleges could be terribly driven to get results from their students - so students say who got 2:2 instead of 2:1 in their first year exams could be put under a vast amount of pressure to improve.

I have been trying to steer two of my school bunnies towards Oxbridge and Imperial. We have already been working on the UCAS statement and the applications will be ready to fly as soon as the bell sounds for UCAS in September. Visits booked etc

Bear in mind that applicants will need an A in all of the A level modules not just the overall final grade. Not sure if mine will get the A* that Cambridge are now specifying.

Good luck

Has anyone posted this link yet, I couldn't see it on a quick skim of the topic

Everything you need to know about PPE at Oxford University - it has 3000 posts so you will need to do a bit of skimming!

This is from the Student Room forum, which has a busy and comprehensive Oxbridge subsection. We found this very useful in our run-up to applications (my daughter is currently at Oxford, not PPE though).

Have you not heard from Eton summer school yet? Dd1 and her friends heard last week and only one got a place. If you haven't heard that may be a good sign - perhaps those who have got in are contacted later. Fingers crossed for you.

I would 2nd Boeuffin Mum's advice to pick an unknown college unless there is some desperate reason otherwise - especially if you have some great reason why you think that college is fantastic and the only place in the world you would want to go (nothing like a bit of flattery).

Mind you, do your homework first, or you may end up like me 2 miles out of town doing a lot of cycling having had a romantic notion of Girton as a milestone in women's history and not knowing the first thing otherwise about Cambridge or its geography

Have you heard of Villiers Park?

"is it completely cruel of me to prefer ds to go to these things, if possible, with two friends also interested in the same course?"

As you know, Oxbridge are totally oversubscribed and they have to find ways of simplifying their selection task. One easy way to do this is to look closely at the one or two best child(ren) from each school, as idenified by the glowing reference ... 'best student we have had for years' blah blah blah.
I'm afraid that his friends are his worst competition. Make sure that they all apply to different Colleges!

BTW - it occurred to me after the last post I did... Being interested (without prior background in a subject) is good enough if you've read background/are up to date on the news etc and can answer intelligent general questions about the subject. Eg. for economics (last december) a popular question was about why the Bank of England had lowered interest rates (what would be the intended benefit? what could the problems be? who would be at a disadvantage as a result of this? and so on). Students are also usually asked to interpret a graph/chart of some kind.

Most importantly, prospective students need to be able to show that they can reason about a subject (and about the information/reading that they might be given). It is common for people to not answer the question, or to give the answer the they think the tutor wants.

I think your son should get in touch rather than you (if possible).

Good luck

I think you should get your son to phone/email the university/individual college, then you won't be seen as Pushy Mother. I can't understand why the school isn't being helpful. What's the matter with them?

I think it would be quite out of date now from what the reviews say. Things have changed a lot.

What about this book?I don't know anything about it but someone else might be able to say whether it really is useful.