Top Unis - am I missing something?

[OnTheRoll]

DD is in Year 13, predicted 3 A, already has an A from a language A Level she did last year, and 11 GCSEs all 8/9. Got a great work experience in her chosen field, lots of academic reading, etc., etc. Has been working very hard and aiming for a top uni.

The problem is, it seems that unless she gets into Oxbridge, there isn't a suitable option for her?

We are in SE so decided not to go for Durham/Edinburg as the travel is just too much, 5+ hours, and she would not be able to come home more than once a term. She would very much prefer a campus experience rather than a city uni which rules out LSE/UCL in London.

There are of course great options like Warwick, Bristol, Bath, Exeter. We visited and DD loved them and so did I.

But I cannot help thinking that if she were to go to one of those unis she didn't really need to spend that much time working, studying and sacrificing her free time. Does it make sense? Entry requirements in those unis in her subject are all quite lower than her current and predicted grades.

Would appreciate some perspective.

Stand corrected. Oxford regards 8s as equivalent to 9s, and the admission tests may be more important than the GCSE grades.

The philosophy, politics and religion (PPR) department it is sorely lacking.

When you factor in traffic at peak times, full buses etc the average journey time is 30 mins.
If you are looking for a campus experience, LU may disappoint. It's great for the first year but when you live off campus it I harder to participate in campus based activities as it means regular bus journeys or very long days with a lot of hanging around. Also at Lancaster there is no contact time during the third term so no need to be on campus, therefore it can feel quite isolated. Housing on campus is also much more expensive than in town.

Not sure why you think this as it's not the experience of friends whose DCs applied there.

Exeter could be a good option. I'm not a particular fan of the university due to them advertising high grade requirements but often having courses in clearing or happily dropping 2 grades on results day. However, I know someone there and it's clear they have an excellent careers department and a big focus on employability. I think you'd feel like less of a number there.

Bath also feels student-focused. It's very STEM -based and they appear to work the students very hard but that does mean it rubs off on all the students, so those with lower contact hours e.g. International Relations, won't be living with a lot of students with loads of free time on their hands and won't have FOMO if they actually want to do the hours of independent reading they're supposed to do!

Because you've misunderstood your friends or your friends have misunderstood the system - they want evidence the applicant is obsessed with their subject, not that they're in the choir, play grade 8 piano , rugby for the county etc, Ask on the Oxbridge thread where this is discussed all the time

Not sure why you think this as it's not the experience of friends whose DCs applied there.

From experience of DC who applied there, not second hand.

I've been pleasantly surprised by Exeter. The wellbeing department is brilliant and the scope for academic 'stretching' has been amazing in dcs experience. Expensive to rent there though :-(

Are you always so sure you're right?

One thing I will say is that employers don't want 'swots', they want rounded individuals with evidence of all-round achievements.

For example, investment banks have zillions of Oxbridge applicants and the deciding factor when recruiting is what they have done apart from getting a degree.

It's irrelevant to me now as my DCs are actually the ones recruiting and some of the worst applicants are Oxbridge as they have very narrow experiences.

Yes but not all experiences are the same.

They don’t want swots, they want nerds: people who are absolutely focused on their subject and study it for pleasure. So super curricular activities are very much worth demonstrating.

It’s not that they don’t appreciate related extra curricular activities, but they’re not going to get you an offer if the foundational interest and extra reading are not there. And people who pack out their children’s lives with the promise that a wide range of activities will ‘look good on the UCAS form’ are wrong.

@meandkarmavibe is right in this instance. It may be true that extra curricular activities look good for some employers, but they are not the focus of Oxbridge admissions tutors.

This. They want a prospective politics student to be engaged in youth forums, local political matters, read political science books for fun, engage with Andrew Marr, Laura Kuenssberg and Robert Peston on Twix on a regular basis, be engaging with their local MPs and campaigning for change in their local area maybe even have a researchers job for the local MP.... To read politics at Cambridge or Oxford she needs to make it her life. That said she's better going to LSE for politics, she'll meet with the crowd she will likely work with on graduating.

@NewFriendlyLadybird has put it very well.

Re employers - DH said when his company was recruiting they wanted one, or at most two serious interests. Which might be something like helping run a club rather than being a good athlete or musician. And that something like gold DofE might be completely meh in some applicants but impressive if another had completed it, depending on whether it would have been a significant challenge to them or not iyswim.

My understanding is for unis in the UK extracurriculars don't matter just super curricular. For US unis you need both.

For jobs in the UK and US you need both and ideally you should have extracurriculars during university.

@CherryKefir No need to get defensive, of course I am not always so sure I'm right but - as others say - I am right in this instance. What Oxbridge want and what employers want are two completely different things. I have absolutely nothing against people packing their lives with extra-curricular activities but it's misguided to think they will win you an Oxbridge place (some might win one anyway but it won't be because of their gold D of E). OTOH, they might well help in the job market and they absolutely will help people applying to Ivy League universities who love that kind of stuff.

I uses to drive from Durham to Suffolk nearly every weekend to visit partner. It's really not that far.

Weird post.

Oxbridge isn't a campus.

The vast majority of people I knew at Oxbridge didn't go home during term time anyway. Terms too short and far too much to do.

It's never wasted to work your hardest to get the best results you can, even if not needed. I've passed loads of exams with top grades in subjects that are fundamentally pointless but gave me massive pleasure and sense of achievement.

I got top grades and went to Oxbridge. I was much happier at the less prestigious uni I did my second degree at. Just because you can get in doesn't mean it's best for you as an individual.

You seem to be focusing way too much on the grades needed to get onto a course and equating that with being the best. Just because a course is ABB etc doesn't mean it's not a great course.

It isn’t what we’ve found at all. Bus journeys aren’t long at all and my ds has a bus pass. Nips back and forth very easily during the day.Accommodation is a lot cheaper on campus than the rentals he has had but then he didn’t have luxury housing on campus.

It is outstanding. The engineering department blew my Russell group uni educated husband away. The new building being built looks amazing .

Warwick is also very good for politics. She may not get the 4 xA stars and she may have needed those predicted grades to get the offers she had. In fact at the Cambrdige open day they emphasised that most students exceed the offer not beat the offer. Not even Cambridge ask for 3 x A stars for HSPS.

When we visited Lancaster, I absolutely loved the library (including the weeping fig 'tree'). Bumped into one of the librarians and he gave us a bit of a tour, everyone was so friendly and we were also blown away by the study facilities.

Also at Lancaster there is no contact time during the third term so no need to be on campus, therefore it can feel quite isolated.

This intrigues me, is it true of all the subjects? Is it also true of all Unis using the semester system, because I thought that in that system the third term tends to be dedicated to exams.

Do you go on the bus with your DS? It takes at least 30 minutes at peak times. It is not unusual to have to wait for several buses. If you are smart about it, housing is much cheaper in town compared with the cheapest campus option. (I was there two years ago). LU has some amazing facilities for engineering, ecology, etc. it has excellent economics and linguistics deps. PPR is really struggling and across the whole university is one of the worst departments - hence the new project trying to link politics with policy and cybersecurity (the course looks amazing btw) which is where all the funding is going. In my view (obviously just my opinion) LU is not the best option for someone interested in studying a standard politics/IR/history course.

This simply isn't true. Lancaster has three full terms (longer than many other universities which some will view as a positive and some as a negative). There absolutely is contact time during the third term - right up until exams. I suspect your YP has fed you a line there. There are lectures and seminars for most of the third term. Second half of the third term is exams and then extravs (college festivals), balls, other socials etc