Why does Oxbridge do this? Do you know any Students like this?

[janeeire244]

Why are there so many students at Oxbridge who study competitive degrees like law with relatively low A-level grades such as anything below 3A*s but also including AAA or even AAB? Most of these people applied with inflated predicted grades but are let in when they get lower grades than they were predicted either because they still met the really low entry requirements (shockingly Oxford Law is at AAA) or if they miss it and get AAB, they are reprieved?

I don’t even think it’s fair to say that they shone at some other stage of the application process because I know of some students who got relatively low admissions test scores or mediocre GCSEs and got in as well.

This is all the while they reject people with much high admissions test scores or much better grades.

That being said I’ve never heard of anyone who did poorly on the interviews get an offer (poorly by Oxbridge standards not just them thinking they did badly).

Do you know anyone at Oxbridge studying a degree (especially a competitive one like law) with an average admissions test score or below average; or less than 3A*s at A-level?

True enough, but Cambridge isn't the only one that doesn't need to do that. Oddly, I doubt that the OP would be so furious about being rejected by UCL, or Durham, or Surrey after missing the grades.

Just to annoy OP further, though, I do know a lad who missed his Oxford offer in the Covid year of CAG grades, having taken his foot off the pedal too thoroughly to have any school evidence of his genius (he was more of a last-minute crammer). His college took him anyway. But that was a very unusual set of circumstances.

Time to resit and move on.

Occasionally I have had a client (I am a lawyer) who is completely obsessed with an issue - eg wanting to sue personally Government ministers and that kind of thing and gently I have to suggest they don't proceed as it is not in their interests. All of us at times can get fixated on an issue. My own life in some senses has been full of failures. I was asked to write about my career a few years ago and I decided to write about the failures because so many people make their career look like a straight line on a graph only of success but under the surface all kinds of things go wrong for people. As my mother said - life isn't fair.

My school under predicted by grades by a long way (in the old days) and I didn't get offers from Durham and Bristol but I went to Manchester having got the best A levels in the school , put myself in for 3 x 3 hour entrance scholarship exams, got the scholarship, was top of 1st year so got another law scholarship and in the last year was almost top and got 2 more law prizes. I probably would not have got that elsewhere. In other words things tend to work out fine.

My siblings went to Oxbridge (my sister the first from our school ever to get in - I didn't even try) but it really is no big deal for me. I haven't spent the last year resentful over that. I think Oxbridge would have suited me better as I spent most of my universities years doing things like choral singing in churches etc for which Oxbridge (I probably would have won a choral scholarship) would have been lovely but I still did loads of music at Manchester. Sometimes you just have to let things go. None of my 4 lawyer children tried Oxbridge and have al done fine - 3 went to Bristol (the twins qualifying as solicitors last year).

On Oxbridge entrance as I said above it is not just about taking the exactly highest grade people - if they wanted that they would be able to get the exact grades so if John's A star was 95% and Jane's was 93% they would take John. Instead they go by a range of tests.

it is very similar with applications for London law firms which is an incredibly competitive process due to market forces - high pay = many applicants. The high grades are just the starting point. By the way those of my children's cousins who did go to and/or are currently there DID get A stars in almost all cases.

Have you also researched the number with highest grades & test scores that did not get in? (Data available in Whatdotheyknow)

If they denied the contextual offers (offers lower than AAA), and denied applicants with acceptable “reason/circumstance” for lower grade, there would Still not be enough places for all the AAA and above who were rejected. It’s simple math. Grades alone don’t make the Oxbridge offer.

Many Oxbridge rejects go to American Uni to recover … have you considered this option?

Oh God, don't put more ideas in OP's head. They'll be back in 2 years with a slew of posts wanging on about Harvard despite only applying to Purdue.

Surely the whole point of Oxbridge is their extremely high standards? Those standards make it hard to get in, and your chance of rejection very high.

If, according to you, Oxford takes in students with lower grades than Cambridge, wouldn't that, according to you, make it a worse university, so why do you want them to admit your self proclaimed top tier self?

Google “best uni in the world”

result is Always Oxford

May that’s why they offer to best people … not best grades.

Yes, but this kid is sore because s/he had an offer and missed the grades (not clear by how much). I can very much see why that would sting.

Really is time to move on with life though.

I mean, some of us would say so anyway...

😜

I'm not disagreeing with the stats, just reflecting the OP's attitude.

Although I do disagree really as I went to Cambridge which is clearly really the best 🤣

At the risk of prolonging this longstanding thread I think there are some subtle differences in admissions between Oxford and Cambridge that you may be missing @janeeire244 .
All Oxford offers are standard and are well published. Most humanities standard offer is AAA. Most STEM is A A A. Nearly all Oxford subjects have an admissions test and Oxford will use this to determine who they will interview. If you are interested google Alan Rushbridger who wrote a great article on how Oxford arrive at decisions. Oxford interview far less proportionately that Cambridge (around 30% of applicants) and all candidates get the same offer. I have never heard of any candidate getting in having not achieved their offer grades. By the time you get to interview stage at Oxford your chances of an offer are down to 1 in 3.

Cambridge by contrast interview many more proportionately (up to 80% in some subjects) and don't make 'standard' offers - so 1 candidate may be made an offer of 2 x A* 2 x A whilst another candidate's offer may be slightly different. Again - I do not believe any candidates get in having not achieved their offer.

Some subjects are particularly brutal - e.g. Maths where Cambridge notoriously over offer and then do a 'cull' from STEP scores. So lots of kids who achieve their offer of 4 A* for Maths end up being rejected on results day because of their STEP grade.

Can only speak for Oxford but there are no contextual offers made. They use contextual data to weight various factors of potential disadvantage.

Best of luck op

OP, you didn’t get your LNAT score in an application exam, as far as I can tell from your confusing posts, so how could anyone have taken that into account?

Bit of anecdata here regarding Oxford admissions.

My DS was one out of 4 cousins who applied to Oxford over a range of courses last year.

Out of the 4 one was offered a place post interview and is now at Oxford. All 4 were interviewed.

The 3 who were not admitted have 7 A *s at Level and 4 As at A Level between them.

2 of the 3 who were not admitted got better A Level results than the 1 who was admitted.

All 4 are happy at their chosen universities. The 3 who were not admitted to Oxford bear no resentment to the one who was.

And another tale about disadvantage and missed grades. My son has a friend from college who was accepted to Oxford with a 3 grade A offer, she has refugee status. She achieved an A and 2 B' at A Level which was a great surprise as she was genuinely on track for 3 A*s . Oxford asked for her to have her 2 B grades remarked and indicated that if one was raised to an A they would accept her. On remark the grades remained the same and she was redirected to another fantastic university where she is happy.

OP my son is autistic and can have fixed views and it seems that you have very fixed views too. I would urge you to move on from this. It's not healthy for you to obsess like you are.

And yet you are wrong, because Oxford is the best 😃

That’s uncalled for and not true. My friends daughter missed one of her subjects by one grade but still got a place at Cambridge last year to study Architecture, based on her portfolio.

I get the impression the OP missed more than one grade.

I was responding to the poster that said that Cambridge never admit students who don’t achieve their offer, not the OP.

Their response was factually incorrect.

Op, there are better universities out there and in twenty years time, you'll look back at these fretful times as a complete waste of your youth!

Fully agree!

Actually, it isn’t factually incorrect, as it won’t be Cambridge that lets a candidate in with lower grades, it will be their offering college which decides whether to accept them, fish from the summer pool instead, or just let them go without looking for an alternative.

All of which is irrelevant in any event, given that the OP missed their grades by such a long way, there was no way they were going to be let in by Cambridge, and there was no way Oxford would ever let them in, because they didn’t apply there. And there is no point trying to be accurate for the OP, because they are a stuck record, never deviating from their ridiculous obsession, regardless of sympathy, accuracy or insult. They simply continue to make multiple posts about the same bugbear.

A more productive way of dealing with the hurt of rejection - albeit they have no good reason to feel more hurt than anyone else applying to any other university who fails to make the grade and doesn’t get their place (a hugely common occurrence, after all) - would be to go elsewhere and do brilliantly, rather than advertise on the internet that they are willing to lie and cheat to get in (applying while already at a different university), and think they know better than the universities they are applying to who merits their places there.

Not if you are a misunderstood genius like the OP. Why they were rejected when talentless plodders with bad A-level grades, like AAA or even AAB were let in, is a mystery. 🤷

It is also hard to tell whether it’s the student posting or their mother, or just a fantasist who never applied to Cambridge in the first place, because they seem somewhat uncertain about their real identity themselves.

What a nit picky response!

What is Cambridge except the sum of it’s colleges then?

and, this is the 31st thread on the subject they have started in the last 2 months.

Not sure why people are still giving her oxygen.