For instance you've said several times that you wouldn't expect a comprehensive school kid to have grade 8 violin or voluntary work in Outer Mongolia. You're sort of implying there that:
a) you'd expect to see that in a private schools kid
b) that you actually check the school's status when you trawl through applications
c) that these things help
d) everyone reads the PS
e) most offers are made centrally - ie not by an academic!
I didn't meant I'd expect to see it in a student that went to private school. What I meant is that some students get the opportunities to do things that other students don't (playing the violin being an example). I also see students list completely irrelevant things like this in their personal statements all the time so it's a good example. If you're not doing a music degree, it's irrelevant but schools very often tell students to just put down everything extra-curricular that they do.
Our applications are dealt with in departments not centrally (so are assessed by academics) and I read every single personal statement. In departments which are very competitive, the personal statement can really count as staff are deciding between a swathe of students who all meet and exceed the very high grade boundaries.
I also don't know any admissions tutors who see whether applicants have gone to state or private school, or check what POLAR postcode they live in, or check their BME - NONE of that should EVER be looked at
We're given that information when applications come to us. POLAR3 and 4 students are flagged to us.
POLAR3 and 4 is based on the number of 18 year olds going to university in that postcode, divided by the number of child benefit recipients. It is NOT a measure of deprivation, it is at best a proxy, and a poor one at that. In London there are hardly any quintile 1 POLAR postcodes, but there are large swathes of poverty
Thanks for that. I was told this at some point. I agree it's not a measure of deprivation but it's the closest we have to capturing the contexts students come from
OP - I notice you (like me) say university - does uni make you wince?
Yep. I've even seen students call it "uni" on their personal statement. Ugh. My mum always asks me if I've had "a good day at uni" like I'm an 18 year old exchange student finding my way around a new fucking campus.
Agree with you, @titchy - I have been Admissions at Oxbridge, RG and finally post-92, and it's all slightly different, even without the different systems
Yep, different everywhere. I've tried to be clear that when I'm talking about specifics, I'm talking about my institution and my department.
I've left quite recently, but something that I found distasteful at my RG institution was the active anti-private education stance, always done with a chuckle and the tacit nudge nudge wink wink that privately educated candidates were obviously dim and spoon-fed. Quite disappointing to discover that supposedly intelligent individuals subscribed so openly to lazy stereotypes and groupthink, but at least the rosy-tinted spectacles came off quickly
I haven't experienced this at all. The university I work at is dominated by privately-educated students (both in terms of numbers and culturally). It's not that privately-educated students are spoonfed, but rather they're educated and coached in a very different way. They are encouraged and nurtured to be self-assured, self-confident, and to value their own opinions (even if what they are saying is nonsense). This is absolutely brilliant and makes for some fantastic class discussions but those students who haven't benefited from that educational background don't have the same self-assurance and can get left behind and feel intimidated.
There is also an issue that some privately-educated students (not all but some) can be very unreflexive and not recognise the huge amounts of privilege that they've had. For example, we had a debate in class this year about tuition fees and one student commented that he didn't see the issue because £9,000 a year is a lot less than "most" schools. He was genuinely stunned when I pointed out that a £30,000 per year school fee was more than triple my family's household income growing up. He wasn't being malicious, just ignorant. At the other end of the scale there is active malice, like when Durham students had a social event based on Thatcher and the miners here. Completely inappropriate and hugely offensive.
I strongly believe universities should only admit privately-educated kids to reflect the proportion that are privately-educated in the population more widely (about 8%). That way, there might not be terribly much advantage to privately-educating and maybe these kids would enter in to the normal school system and drag standards up