To push DD to apply to Cambridge?

[AllieinWonderland]

So I'm relatively new to posting on mumsnet, but have been a long time lurker, so if I mix up the lingo a bit then apologies!
DSS1 got 9As 3As at GCSE, 4 high As at AS level, and is on track to exceed his AAA offer for Oxford.
Oldest DD achieved 13A*s 2As and a B at GCSE (the B in music - she had a panic attack in the exam and it was on a tape so she was unable to get the time back) and is looking on track for 5 high As at AS level in French, English lit, history, physics, and art. She is seemingly good at almost everything (triathlons at county level and has previously played and trained younger children in cricket and basketball, plays the cello, the xylophone, and the clarinet, won a local photography competition, always gets lead roles in an amateur dramatics group and solos in choir) yet has always struggled severely with self esteem, and focuses on the things she is bad at: sees her B in music as the end of her chance of going to good universities, can't bake or cook to save her life despite much encouragement and teaching, is awful at tidying (she is happy to do it but ends up gradually making more of a mess and gets flustered. Again, I've tried forms of 'teaching' and noting has worked). These latter two issues have led her to thinking she needs to stay at home for university and she is driving me mad by saying she'll go to the local university, which is really not a very good one at all, and the only others she'll consider are those with offers of "BBC" or below.
She has finally settled on studying English literature, and I took charge and booked her on open days at Warwick, Edinburgh, Cambridge, and Durham, and her school took the 'Oxbridge' candidates to Oxford for a trip. She hated Durham, didn't like Edinburgh, thought Oxford and Warwick were okay, but loved Cambridge.
In spite of this she is refusing to consider applying, says it's a waste of an application.
I don't want to push her, but I do want her to apply because she clearly loved it and is more than capable. All of her teachers have been saying it since before I can remember, and she reads almost constantly.
Aibu to try and change her mind?
Sorry for the lack of coherence here, my mind a bit of a mess!

I haven't rtft (sorry) but what struck me is that with her range of interests and subjects she should at least think about the US universities for a liberal arts degree? I have picked up that she may not be ready to move away from home yet but it would be worth thinking about for after a gap year.

Also have you thought of finding a careers/uni advisor outside school? They will have a very different view of the world...including non uk universities. A v good friend does this and she raves about the quality of teaching/pastoral care at the smaller undergrad only us colleges!

She also isn't 'top' in her school and I don't think she would enjoy being 'top'. In year 8 she missed a large chunk of school so in year 9 was put in the 'bottom' set for maths (still all got As and Bs but not the "whizzes" of the top set) and hated every minute of it - felt very pressured to be the best as she was the cleverest in the class.

I think she enjoys being one of the brighter students, but by no means the brightest (numerous girls have better grades and credentials, and she doesn't see this as a competition - she always calls one of her friends a "total genius").

She was looking at American universities for a while Petra but again didn't believe she could get into the ones she liked the look of, and felt it would be a waste if money and too much of a change for one of the less academic universities. Also there would be a lot of extra application to do as apparently each university asks for different things, and she'd have to take an American style of assessment and it just seemed to be an awful lot of unnecessary jumping through hoops. She would have had to take a maths test!

Op - I think it's lovely that you're interested and care enough to book open days, etc. I wish my parents had been!!

Truly though, she needs a gap year. To let her relax, reflect and focus on what she really wants in life without school casting a shadow over her ambitions. It sounds as if she isn't making good decisions here because of a lack of confidence. That needs to be remedied - a gap year would be perfect for her.

Yeah, but being organised with school work isn't like being organised with university - the things she's not managing to do, the organisation that requires doing more than what she's been told, is what I think a lot of students struggle with at university, and that's what she's wanting you to take charge of.

Which is totally understandable and not unusual - it's just it seems a difficulty in combination with everything else.

Why do you think Nottingham would be more manageable, though?

Cambridge is very pressured, because it's short terms and a lot of reading. But I don't follow how someone who might struggle at Cambridge, would not be a risk elsewhere?

In some ways, universities outside Oxbridge actually put more strain on students, because there is less small-group contact and less is done by way of organising your non-academic life for you.

I'm not sure that the whole, 'she's anxious therefore she needs to take the least demanding option' is necessarily the right approach. It really depends on the child. Some people with anxiety will reduce the demand on themselves so they don't need to confront challenging situations and their world can become smaller and smaller as a result.

Presumably the OP knows her daughter the best.

LRD her uncle works in the "pastoral" section (no idea how to refer to it!) of Nottingham University, so I just think that looks like it would be a good support network to her, and perhaps doesn't have the same cooking pot environment due to less "prestige" as a university. She also likes the city and campus (despite once cracking her head open there!) and has told me the course looks good, which makes me think it would be somewhere she could be supported and happy, and it isn't TOO far from home or difficult to get to.

nolongersurprised i think what might be surprising is that she "works" (sits and analyses poems or does physics past papers) to de stress, as it boosts her confidence and keeps her mind occupied.

IT isn't the workload she fears - she wrote eight essays a week some weeks last term, and the Cambridge admissions tutor says only one a week of a similar length (of course higher standard) would be expected.

It is a fear of rejection from Cambridge, not of Cambridge itself.

You seem overly focused on the grades OP, listing them for everything, suggesting that anything less than 3 A's is easy ('only AAB'), giving us an academic rundown of all your children. Can you not see that this relentless focus on A's is absurdly stressful? Particularly for someone who is still obsessing over a single B in a wall of top grades at GCSE.

She is freaking out about not making the grade because all the focus seems to be on grades.

Presumably the OP knows her daughter the best.

As a private tutor I come across parents all the time who seem to know nothing about their child's mental state or capability. With good intentions they push their kids towards a path they think is best that either the student can't realistically achieve or just doesn't want to do.

Op if you genuinely think a gap year is best, stop facilitating open days and uni discussions this year. If your daughter wants to organise them herself, fine, but I don't think you taking over getting her into uni will be helpful in the slightest.

I recommend a gap year. Let her do nothing for a year and then decide

So difficult, but I think these things have a way of working out for the best in the long term. I applied to Cambridge and got rejected. I think it was a case of mutual dislike looking back. They asked me all sorts of non-relevant questions about my physics A level studies and I flunked them. I also disliked the city. That said I was still a bit down when the rejection letter came. Fast forward 22 years and I met my husband and best friends in the city that welcomed me instead 😀

She can't be that bad at tidying if her side of her room is spotless and if she is an A student at Physics then she can't be that* bad at maths.

You've backtracked a lot on this thread and you've done some massive drip feeding about her panic attacks. I'm not surprised that you and your DD are confused.

I think you should wait until tomorrow and see what her results are. It might be that if she does incredibly well her confidence will be buoyed and if she does a lot less well then Cambridge might be out the picture anyhow.

She will rule out Cambridge if she doesn't apply for it before mid Oct but she can take her time with all her other applications.

Is it right that there are 8 or 9 kids in the household?

Littlegreyauditor I don't mean to outright disagree - but there is little to no focus on grades within the house. I listed academic prowess as it is relevant to the application process. I listed my step son's academic credentials to show that hers are "good" enough for more than what she thinks - the system is very different to what I remember and we lived in Luxembourg for a while so to me I would have had no clue whether those grades were actually special.

I didn't go with her on results day - she got the train in and back by herself, and spent the rest of the day with her cousin. This year results day is her birthday but still I am not going with her and cannot give her a lift without dragging OCs so she's again getting the train!

I don't care what my children's grades are as long as they're nice people. She obsesses over the B, but when she brings it up I make jokes about how it's only in music.

I don't think less than 3As is easy, but I think for someone who's been getting full marks in essays and 95%+ in tests for the past year, it isn't a big reach.

Diglet she never allows things to get messy - tidying becomes an issue if things become messy (such as when cousins came to stay recently and she freaked out at how to put everything away after they went). She isn't bad at maths but hasn't done it for over a year so is bound to be a little rusty and would have to do some practice!

I have backtracked a lot due to the strong feelings of many of the posters, and perhaps I didn't tell the story in the correct way the first time.

I do maintain that the panic attacks are not something she intends to "give in" to.

Nine kids in the house - absolute chaos but mostly 10 and over so mostly independent chaos! (A 6yo who is more than happy to sit with a book or on a swing for hours on end)

That's fine, OP, but read through your posts. You list the grades needed for every university you mention. It reads like a career advisors report!

I can see that you are focused on where you are and it's occupying your mind, but just from an outsiders perspective it seems relentless.

Sorry, just been feeling rather attacked! I'm sure I'm not this argumentative in real life - I don't remember the last time I argued with someone! (Apart perhaps a debate about whether popcorn is an appropriate breakfast food, but it was more a discussion with a pros and cons list that is now pinned on the fridge!)

Oh, I follow you. Yes, I can imagine having her uncle there would make it feel that much less daunting.

HI, I haven't time to read the full thread at the moment, but just to say, I was in your daughter's position and didn't apply to Oxbridge. All I lacked was confidence. I wish someone had encouraged me more. It remains the one big regret of my life. I think I would have loved it. I got all the results I needed. I just lacked that little push to go for it.

lostoldlogin2 What college did you go to?

I've never seen anything like what you describe (I matriculated in 2004) except for those applying to join one of the more risque drinking societies.

I can assure you, OP, that lostoldlogin2's experience is very much in the minority, I've literally never heard of that happening to anyone I know who was at Cambridge (and I know lots of people who went, from many different colleges).

Well it is a pretty crazy story.
You have a DD who is high ability at seemingly everything, got amazing grades at a huge number of GCSEs, can manage to write 8 essays a week, is one of 9 kids in the household, compulsively keeps her room pristine, has high aspiration parents, sibling & extended family, and yet has crushing lack of self-confidence, and panic attacks. A huge contradiction is that although driven to do all these high achievement things, she seems to have very low aspiration & ambition.

My DD is quite similar in many ways mostly because she is also very ambitious, so I can't understand OP's DD. Or compare to someone like Simone Biles who came from a crappy neglectful background but learnt to aspire & handle huge amounts of pressure.

I guess emotional resilience really is an individual thing. Everything about OP's experience is totally alien to me so I will hide thread now.

I too didn't experience or see anything like lostoldlogin2 (I was at Downing) but it sounds dreadful. I just hope wherever DD, or any other DCs go won't give them that experience.

Sounds like a Gap Year would be a great fit for her if she could be persuaded to consider it.
One of mine worked for 6m doing bar work, which was surprisingly enjoyable then used the money to go to SE Asia.
The other one did a ski season.
Both came back depressurised, more grown up and ready for Uni.
It was the right decision for both of them.

If the OP's story about her DD is accurate (and I must admit to finding it stretches credibility), then her DD is a very bad emotional place and needs professional help.

I was going to ask what it was that your dd wanted to be when she left uni and you said a primary school teacher.

I think she needs a few life skills and a few of her hard corners knocking off her before she gets infront of a class. Most worrying is her thinking that people who are not like her are weak. There doesn't appear to be much empathy and everything is so academia focussed. How would she react to a child who had learning difficulties. Would she think they were weak, incapable and stupid if one of her pupils were dyslexic. How would she deal with a parent who might not be as academically gifted as her challenging her n her behaviour towards their child?

You said in a previous post
guess she tries her hardest not to be like her dad so ends up being a carbon copy of me

What about her being her own person.

I do think she does need a gap year to develop her own personality. To realise that there are hugely successful happy people in the world who have not got a GCSE to their name and there are equally unsuccessful unfulfilled miserable people who have umpteen GCSEs, A levels and top degrees.

Atm I think she is so focussed on academia that as far as she is concerned the rest of the world does not exist. The fact that she thinks by taking a gap year will mean she would be the oldest shows she has no concept of anything outside what she knows.

Can I ask wouldn't getting a job in a primary school or just helping out with an extra curricula activity helping the teacher out be good work experience. Had she ever done any work before.

I do think she is putting off facing her problems and hiding behind filling her time with studying and achieving to mask what is really going on.

She comes across on the face of it as some one who is hard and unsympathetic but underneath is a gibbering wreck.