To ask was it all worth it for DD 1 to attend a super selective grammar school when she is so down on herself because she won't be going to Oxbridge like her three best friends.e

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DD 1 YR 13 is hoping to get offers from Warwick , Bath or Surrey Universities. However, despite potentially having the choice of three great Uni's is feeling extremely low this evening, unbelievable i know but with three of her closet friends likely to get offers from Cambridge and Oxford is feeling 'stupid!

Do these extra selective girls schools create the idea for normally very bright girls that if you are not Oxford/Cambridge bound you are mediocre .
Out of sympathy DD 2 year 10 who is at the same Essex Grammar school as now informed me she intends leaving the school next year and will not go to University.

I had a very similar experience to your DD at a very similar grammar school quite a few years ago; and went to one of the type of unis you mentioned for my undergrad.
If you weren't an oxbridge or medicine candidate at school, you did feel pretty average and left to drift through. It must be really hard if all her friends are going down the oxbridge route. And as a teenager your world is very small.
This. I had a very, very similar experience. It's one of the reasons I am thankful that we don't live in an area with local grammar schools. I'd never put my DD through that. They go to a good comp and I hope that they won't have the feelings of academic inadequacy it can leave you with. I worked hard and got a first class honours degree from the RG university I went to, which was a fantastic experience, but still felt that I "had" to prove myself by completing a master's (with the OU and whilst working full time) and further post graduate study on top of that. Grammar schools leave a lot of unhappy people in their wake, and I don't just mean those who "fail" the 11+.

So have the friends got offers, or not, and how can someone of without an offer have a chance for summer pool?

OP surely you have massively outed yourself by talking about the school, your daughter’s subject etc????

oh ok I've read the OP's other posts now, bit of a misleading op then when in fact yr dd has an offer from Warwick (fab!) and two of her close friends have offers from Cambridge.

ok op, make sure she works really hard and focuses on Warwick (or Bath, or Keele) and gets the grades she needs. Never mind her friends who may yet a) go to Cambridge and love it b) go there and hate it c) not get the grades and end up at their insurance choice, or even horrors, on a clearing place. (joking about horrors).

Just get her to focus on the good things she has and can get.

I have experience with not being the top set at CCHS. Problem is at places like that, at the moment it feels like it is all about those going to oxbridge. I was so disengaged because of this, and other reasons (such as generally wanting the girls to be carbon copies of each other).

To @AJPTaylor - they didn't teach resilience when I was there, no. That was a sharp lesson when I left. I've seen in taught/encouraged much better in schools since.

I've met lots who went to RG unis since, as well as still being in touch with some people (old girls, and others) that went to Oxbridge. I genuinely believe that oxbridge the only thing it gives you is the name. In terms of life experiences, other RG unis are very up to date, linked in with industry, with a broad future pathway and life experiences. All whilst having lots of fun too...

Take her back to where she gets offers from. Let her fall in love with them again?

Some of it will be recognising that she will be split from her close friends too/the end of an era.

I was ill during the 11+ and went to a school where careers advice for girls was along the lines of "would you like to work in a shop or an office".
Professional qualification and a post grad degree from a leading business school later, I survived the grotty comp. - but there are worse things than super pushy schools.

But is it really lucky to have the option of grammar schools?
What about all the children who don’t get into grammar school? Are they lucky?

The friends might not get the grades. A boy at DD’s school managed to get an offer from Oxford, and got quite over confident about it. He missed by a grade in two subjects, one of them being the subject he wanted to take at Oxford.

My daughters grammar school encouraged her to apply to Oxbridge and was horrified when she got 3a* and an A at Alevel and still stuck with going to one of the RG Universities...it’s so important to go to the one that does the right course and where they feel they will fit in !

I knew a girl at uni who spent the first week explaining how she was devastated she didn’t get into Cambridge. It took a single week for her to get over it, realise there’s life outside of Oxbridge and start enjoying herself. Your daughter will be fine.

Warwick's Politics Dept has an excellent reputation. A friend went there from a nondescript comprehensive and loved it. Got a first.

He has a brilliant mind and may have achieved at Oxbridge if he'd been encouraged to apply, but may have felt out of place in the hallowed halls and dreaming spires and not done as well as he did at Warwick.

I didn't get into Oxford and went to Bath - best thing that ever happened to me. I had the best 4 years ever, and did a course that was challenging but totally doable if you treated it like a full-time job. No all-nighters or breakdowns. Had a great student life there.

My friends in Oxford were constantly stressed, never went clubbing, and none of them got firsts. They say it wasn't really worth it. One then didn't work for 2.5 years with depression.

I really feel like I dodged a bullet.

This is my biggest worry about DD's grammar school. It's been a great school for her so far (she's Y10), she's flourished, but the biggest thing that winds me up about it is how their newsletters, website and any meetings you go to for parents go on and on about Oxbridge, medics, dentists and vets - how many got in last year, the extra sessions they run for those wanting to get in. It makes the girls think that's all there is to life. I suspect DD is capable of Oxbridge. I was too and my grammar school was shocked when I said I didn't want to apply - not because I thought I wasn't good enough but because the whole Oxbridge thing didn't appeal to me. I got an excellent degree from a well-renowned department at a northern redbrick uni and am so glad I didn't go down the Oxbridge route. Every time the school mentions it I want to stand up and say "Other unis are available". I don't think the schools realise how girls who aren't confident in themselves will take away the message that they must apply to Oxbridge or become medics/vets/dentists and if they don't do it they aren't good enough. It's like an extreme version of the schools that build everyone up to A levels and uni when for some children neither are right for them and they end up feeling like failures when actually they are just taking a different route in life.

You just have to keep enforcing the message that she is good enough, that the other unis are great and will probably be better for her personally.

This thread sounds like a first world problem to be blunt.

There are very bright kids that don’t get the opportunity to go to a grammar school (yet have the underlying ability)

Clearly your DD is very smart. Warwick is a top uni, so it’s not like she’s going to one ranked 182.

She’ll do amazing I’m sure, but it seems so sad that this is such a huge deal. Obviously it didn’t come from no where and I can very much imagine kids that don’t get Oxbridge offers are seen as “inadequate”, which is simply ludicrous.

I would imagine many of the top jobs that come with going to Oxbridge are already filled upon graduation, with a quick signed sealed delivered by daddy and his chums just to make sure young Edward is set up fur life..... 🙄

I think the saying ‘who you know, not what you know’ springs to mind regarding top jobs I’m afraid. Of course some make it on their own merrits but many hang off the cuff tails of ‘daddy dearest’...

erm, having had one of those children who turned Cambridge down for Maths, for Warwick (with our support)….a) some courses have very few spaces, some have a crazy amount eg computing v classics. And b) some are rubbish (eg Oxford engineering). And the short terms mean that if you have a full on course like medicine, no social life apart from your course.

If she really wants to go to Oxbridge would taking a gap year to gain experience in the political world help? For example managing social media accounts for your local council.

If she really wants to go to Oxbridge then you should support her to try and get in. Not encourage her to settle for second best

No, frankly, it wasn't worth it, because she has come away feeling that going to Oxbridge is this important.

The school (and, excuse me for suggesting, but perhaps you as well) have failed in making her feel this is so important.

Given some of the crap that the respective student unions have come out with in the last few years, I'm not sure that attendance at Oxbridge necessarily marks someone out as intelligent.

Realistically, think how many thousands upon thousands of children attend super-selective schools (bearing in mind many applicants will be from abroad, too).

How could you possibly imagine getting a child into selective school would mean they'd get into Oxbridge?

”Do these extra selective girls schools create the idea for normally very bright girls that if you are not Oxford/Cambridge bound you are mediocre ”

Speaking as someone who went to one but didn’t go the Oxbridge route out of choice, yes, that’s exactly how I was made to feel. Second class citizen. Stuff that. I’m a successful businesswoman now (and I didn’t even get a degree).

Make sure your daughter knows that Oxbridge really isn’t the only route in life to success.

If the school is creating that thought then I would question if it's a healthy atmosphere?

Surely they cannot expect everyone to go there? At most a school gets say 5-10 oxbridge candidates? Most schools are delighted with 1 or 2. If they are telling them all that they will get in they are seriously misleading people. I can remember in certain subjects back at school "in my day" they would not even predict A's as they said nothing is guaranteed.

Understandable to be upset when her friends got in but such is life, wherever she goes she will make lots of new friends and have an amazing time.

The other options are all fantastic. My (perhaps misguided!) perception would be the others would be more fun as well as educational ;)

PS I'm married to a Warwick reject who went to Aston. He's done alright for himself. There is hope lower down the food chain!

I think failing can be a hugely important lesson in life. Warwick and Bath are brilliant and will open all sorts of doors for her. It's all about her attitude now and what she makes of her time wherever she goes. If she gets a stellar degree, there is the option to study further at Oxbridge. Is she a perfectionist generally? That's something to try to tackle if so.

Ps just realised her friends haven't even got in yet - it will all change again you just watch!

Most schools are delighted with 1 or 2.

Like which?!

Getting 1-2 students to Oxbridge per year is high flying.

I have found many oxbridge grads to be pretty poisonous individuals. Somehow they just stop achieving and hark back to their pinnacle forever whereas the reality is not the wine cellars of Kings but the practice in Luton just up the road from a red light district. Self conscious pack of snobs.