To think you can't coach people to get into Oxbridge?

[RangeTesKopeks]

I suppose I also mean this more generally for other universities, but in particular, for Oxbridge.

My feeling is that because, quite important parts of the admissions process come down to how you perform on the day (which may be unfortunate or fortunate) - the admissions tests, the interviews - this means that it's very, very difficult to coach someone to get into Oxford or Cambridge?

I also think that getting a place is down to the applicant's ability to think critically, how prepared he or she is for defending why they enjoy their subject and why they want to study it at university and how good they are at their subject. But it's still up to chance IMO.

PS I went to Cambridge - didn't get in when I first applied (had an interview from hell with a philosophy professor - wasn't even applying for philosophy!!) and had much more positive interview experiences the second time around when I re-applied.

No amount of coaching will make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. However, if you have the raw materials for a silk purse the coaching will help make it a better silk purse. Equally coaching will help make the sow's ear the best sow's ear it can be!

hesterton how much of it comes down to proximity though? Is there any information on the geographical spread of applicants? Oxford/Cambridge can only take in students from the people who apply.

How many people in say the NE look at Oxford/Cambridge and think they are difficult to get to and a long way to travel? Not just as a student but also attending open days, interviews etc.

Oxford graduate here (m.2000) and state school educated, state sixth form college. I wasn't at all "coached" on what to expect at the interview, but I had two major factors which I think helped me get there.

The first was my home environment. We really didn't have a lot of money, hence no tutors etc, and neither of my parents are university educated. They both however are huge readers, bookshelves everywhere etc, but above all, they love to argue, debate and analyse anything and everything.

Kitchen table arguments were legendary, but I think it forced me over time to recognise that it was not enough to present an argument, or even know all the existing arguments on a subject, but to actively question and theorise, forming one's own view of the world. Or deliberately testing a view using logic, reason, deduction, whatever - the joy is in the testing and exploration, even if you return to the same place as you started.

So when I was presented at interview with the question "can technology ever become human" etc (!) the thinking process felt familiar. I knew I had to get out there and lay out a series of arguments, probing and testing views based on acquired knowledge and an ability to critically think. This can be tutored for sure, but I think if it's in the world around you, it all becomes even easier.

The second was that I had a great history teacher at sixth form college. Who told me that I needed a kick up the rear, because I was 'cruising'. I'd never been properly told this before, and he used a lot of psychology and a bit more teasing to push me to my limits, while also becoming a friend and mentor. I think he could see I might have missed the As, such was my friendship group and time spent on hobbies. Always grateful to him.

Students are more likely to go to a uni relatively close to home, so I imagine less students from Bournemouth will want to go to say Durham because of the distances involved. Likewise I doubt many in the north will want to go down to oxford.

Was certainly a factor for me when I chose what uni I went to, I didn’t want to live at home, but equally wanted to be able to pop home for the weekend fairly easily.

Of course you can.

My school has a high percentage of Oxbridge acceptances. Some of it is teaching / education. Some of it is creating confident and enquiring students and some of it is having the resources and experience to help in mock interviews, perfecting application statements and similar.

My son, at a good State school, is trying for Oxbridge.
I just sort of assumed if kids need subject coaching before they do the aptitude tests, then they won't be capable of studying that subject, unaided, at Oxbridge.

If he does get called for interview, I will ask his school if he can have some interview practice.

^you need to live in the south east
you need to go to a private and not a state school
or you need to be a foreign student paying the fees
and you need all a's/a stars.^

What a load of nonsense, the only true (mainly) one is the bottom one. I went to Cambridge from a midlands state school and out of my 8 or so best friends from uni, all of them were from the midlands or the north (admittedly some from private/grammar)

I get that this has been in the news at the moment, but spouting stuff like this ain't going to help correct the balance.

Oh and I wasn't coached for my interviews. But I did study maths so I just had to answer the maths questions...I say "just" I do remember being terrified.

Threads like this make me want to howl.

Take a child from a public school who has benefited from debating society, performing in high end theatre productions in the school’s own auditorium, small teaching groups, exposure to art, museums, theatre, opera, ballet, world class libraries and sports facilities, extra help with subjects if they struggle and compare them with a child from a standard comprehensive.

You don’t even need coaching to see that a child from public school has a massive advantage. And that’s why parents pay £30k for public school.

Op - you sound extremely naive.

@Timetogetup0630

As I said, having a school that is able to do that successfully is one of the many benefits of better Indy schools.

As well as asking, you should look into personally helping him practice.

If you'd like I can ask our University Counsellor for tips.

Remember, admissions tutors are well trained and can weed out those who shouldn't be there. Having said that, coaching, especially over the long course of an education, can have huge benefits.

Some private schools are better at helping prepare students for Oxford or Cambridge (very different unis - hate the term Oxbridge). However that doesn't mean a student may necessarily get in when one in a state school doesn't. You can't fake genuine aptitude and passion some really poor understanding on this thread which sadly helps perpetuate this myth of the 'type' to get into those unis.

Long time member - set up a new account for this!

Maths applicants at Cambridge have to sit STEP exams (which are much harder than A-level). Many state schools cannot support their students in preparing for these, which is why Cambridge have started a STEP support programme. If you know anyone in year 13 (or year 12) thinking of applying to study maths please point them to it.

And it's not just Cambridge, Warwick, Bath, Lancaster, UCL, ... will give reduced A-level offers if a student offers STEP.

Of course you can be coached! You still need to be exceptionally clever but you’ll have a much better chance f you’ve been working on interview technique etc with someone who knows what they are looking for.

My daughter wants to go to Cambridge or Oxford and guessing by This thread she has no chance lol. Low income family in the north at a state school. She is bright enough though (predicted 9’s and 8’s) she does a lot of related extra curricular and has amazing reasoning skills etc. However none of us have attended uni and don’t know many that have so it’s all foreign to us lol.

There is not the massive gap between Oxbridge and the next tier of unis that some people imagine. Some courses have less than 3 applicants per place

You can certainly "coach" students by offering sessions in critical thinking, extra support for their subjects, encouraging them to read around their subject and discussing that with them. And all of that helps - of course it does.

But can you coach someone to "get in"? No. It's much more random than that. I assume Cambridge is the same as Oxford, where each college has an allocation of places for each subject. Depends on the size of the college, but sometimes that's 1 or 2 places. 10 would be a large intake. Each tutor interviews and chooses who h/she wants that year. The year I was accepted, I was interviewed by a very senior, very old school professor who I think, in the nicest possible way, liked teaching polite middle class girls. He left the year after and was replaced by someone completely different, who clearly thought we were all the absolute pits and I assume would never have accepted us had he been in charge at the time.

Interestingly, the latter of the pair was talking about the interview process - there were six places at our college for the subject I read. He said they look for individuals who they would like to teach, but also look for people who will work well/interestingly as a cohort - so people with different views or slants on a subject. So I strongly suspect they'd be unlikely to take six old Etonians in one year just for that reason alone, as they'd all have been through the same "process".

I think the key thing to note here is not that you need coaching but that rigorous subject knowledge and a good bit of reading round your subject is really helpful.

Grammar and private schools will often be more experienced in ensuring this and will also often encourage much greater volumes of pupils to apply. So they then inevitably receive more offers.

A recent BBC report listed the 10 areas with the highest success rate for getting applicants into Oxford. It included Gateshead and Darlington, those well known bastions of southern wealth.

A lot, but not all, of the disparity in intake is due to disparity in applications and in the population that gets A*AA or whatever. But a bit of specific interview prep will make the difference between success and failure for an otherwise qualified candidate.

I think that coaching an applicant with their Oxbridge application doesn't mean that's it's a given that an applicant will get on.

Now that I do agree with. I went to a private school which talked about Oxbridge like it was basically a dead cert. They proudly claimed they didn’t do special Oxbridge coaching because we were all good enough not to need it... but yeah, they did. I got set a special essay to write solely for the purpose of submitting it with my application, and I had a mock interview with my teacher’s husband who was a uni lecturer elsewhere.

The problem was I didn’t really want to go to Oxbridge and I think that probably came across in my interviews. I totally bombed and was not at all surprised when my rejection letter arrived a few weeks later. I was relieved to be honest, but my teacher was outraged and was trying to persuade me to take a gap year and reapply to the ‘other’ one a year later

So no, you can’t coach someone to definitely get in, I don’t think. But you can coach them to think of it as a possibility at least, and help them to understand what to expect in the interview.

Looneytune
My daughter wants to go to Cambridge or Oxford and guessing by This thread she has no chance lol. Low income family in the north at a state school. She is bright enough though (predicted 9’s and 8’s) she does a lot of related extra curricular and has amazing reasoning skills etc.

Just wanted to point out that you don't need to rule yourself out of Oxford on income (or being Northern) - my son got a massive bursary from Oxford. If I recall rightly, it was about £6000 a year, but I may be wrong. He went to a state school in Manchester (with teachers who helped him refine his application). He was given the bursary because we were classed as a low income family at the time - I was a single parent earning less than £25,000 ( v low income for Oxford!!!) He took out maximum student loans and was easily able to live on that. Oxford didn't want students working in term time because the courses are so intensive but they get lots of holiday so can earn money in summer to top up.
Kids do need some kind of help with the application and interview process. There's stuff on line too. I hold no particular torch for Oxford, but just wanted to say don't rule yourself out of places like that - that's how the rich Southern bias of the place is perpetuated

I got into Cambridge. The interview day was nothing like I imagined; no chance of preparing for the questions because, well, the interviewers are there to catch you out (in a nice way).

I was asked about (academic) things that I simply hadn't been taught, would not constitute general knowledge and wouldn't be obvious 'extra reading'. I faced a fair bit of 'OK, let's go right to the start, tell me about XYZ' and building from there - very much a process of forcing me to work quickly with new information, combine it with what I knew, and reach new conclusions.

For the record, I was SW/state school. I wore a cheap suit in a sea of school ties I didn't recognise.