Oxford uni (and just unis in general)

[law4569]

Hi all!

Just wanted some advice. My daughter is applying for spanish + beginners German and wants to do a law conversion after. She's decided she wants to apply to Oxford, Edinburgh, ucl, durham and bristol or warwick. I wanted to know people's experiences with these unis as durham and Edinburgh are very far from where we live + warwick we're unsure if it's good for her degree. For anyone whose children went to Oxford, did they do well at gcse? She got 999888777 but she's worried because of the context of her skl (she did okay) then she'll be disadvantaged. if anyone has any sort of experience on any of this id appreciate it :)

There's far too much worrying going on here.
Worrying about the GCSE grades (there's absolutely nothing that can be done about them now)
Worrying about being homesick if she goes to Edinburgh or Durham (what's going to happen when she does a year abroad)
Worrying about future prospects if she goes to Warwick (it's a good university with a good reputation and lots of employers are now recruiting university blind).

I don't know whether it's you worrying, or her worrying or both of you, but it's not going to do either of you any good and you should try to put a stop to it.
She can apply to Oxford or not apply to Oxford. If she doesn't apply she won't get in.

Read the Oxford website about admissions. I found this:
Candidates will normally be invited to interview unless they display at least one of the following shortcomings: results in official examinations, especially GCSE, are not at a sufficiently high level (note that the university assesses GCSE results by looking both at your performance and at the context of how it compares to others at your school); results predicted for A-level or other impending official examination suggest that the candidate is unlikely to succeed in meeting the conditional offer; the school report contains clear negative aspects relevant to the general admissions criteria.

Candidates who display one or more of the above shortcomings may nonetheless be invited for interview if the application reveals a clear justification for, or explanation of, the shortcomings and clear alternative evidence of the candidate's potential.

So yes, it could mean that the GCSEs aren't good enough but I think she should apply anyway. It's only one choice of 5 so if she doesn't get an interview it wouldn't be the end of the world.
She should apply for Oxford (if she wants to and not just because you want her to), 3 other good universities and one which makes slightly lower offers as an insurance choice. She needs to go and see the universities so she can see what she likes.

There's been lots of other good advice on this thread.

Then it is likely 5 years in Ed. Scottish programmes tend to have an extra year. Sometimes Y2 entry is possible; plusses and minuses.

Yes Scotland don’t make you do extra year if you have a year abroad it’s integrated into the normal 4 year degree. So if you are having a year abroad it’s 4 years if you pick England or Scotland.
I’d look at ease of travel not distance.
My dc’s friend at a Scottish uni flys from SE England. Plane can be cheaper than train.

Then the marks from abroad will count towards the degree? Teaching in the native language? Plusses and minuses.

OP said earlier that Ed was too far. We don’t know how definitive that was. There is no sense wasting a UCAS spot on a university you will not attend.

Ah, languages? Long time since I did my degree.

@poetryandwine It’s standard on a good degree to have the year abroad count as something but as some dc work, it might well be work set by home university. It was for dd, plus completion of the university modules she took at two universities abroad. I don’t know what Scotland do, but 5 years is just too long and probably too expensive. Definitely no better than the top ranked MFL departments in England.

If she wants law in the end, go to a top uni and that includes Warwick! It certainly must include Durham and Bristol is a top supplier of lawyers! Only a handful of unis want AAA so it’s not that difficult to get in, other than Oxbridge.

Some are being quite patronising about the distance/workload/homesickness. I'm sure OP knows her DD and has a good sense of what makes her happy or not. Train times to Durham or eight-week terms at Oxford are factors to take into account, but saying DD won't cope at Oxford just because she's not into going to uni much further away is not on. Our kids have their own feelings about where they do/don't want to study for myriad reasons and no one here can declare that invalid just because they went to Durham or were chained to a desk in Oxford or whatever. There's a lot of helpful advice here on the GCSE angle and it seems there's already been another thread so that's probably more than enough and beyond that it's up to DD to figure out where she might feel at home or not.

Thanks, @MeetMeOnTheCorner

What I meant of is that at Ed, when the year abroad is compulsory the marks count towards your degree. In many programmes where the year is optional, they do not.

Perhaps we are saying the same thing.

@poetryandwine I think we agree.

Sorry, @pinkdelight I'm afraid it's patronising to dismiss Oxford students as "chained to a desk". There are people on here with experience of just how hard Oxford students have to work and they are perfectly properly pointing that out to the OP. The fact that the OP even mentions that her daughter might be homesick suggests to many (including me) that she may just not have the type of very hard working and resilient personality that you need to thrive there.

When one of my sons was writing one essay a week, and one term a year three a fortnight, with all the research that went with that, one of his friends studying for the same degree at Bristol was writing one essay a term. There's a reason that Oxford degrees are more highly regarded, but they are not suitable for everyone.

To people saying that university doesn't matter because of blind recruitment I should say that when my son was interviewed for his first graduate job the interviewer, after she had offered him the job, asked if he minded telling her which university he went to. When she heard she said that they had actually employed more Oxbridge graduates that year, all recruited blindly, they were just more impressive.

Okay, your son's the best and anyone who's ever been homesick doesn't cut it. Shame these Oxbridge threads tend to go this way. Good luck, OP, hope your DD gives it her best and thrives wherever life takes her.

That is really not a criterion on which you should be basing where your child applies for university.

I'm sorry to upset you. It was true. I'll keep out of this now. Too many people too touchy.

OP, something else I think is worth considering when choosing a university - which I wish I'd been aware of back in the late 70s.

Aside from the prestige aspect and the courses, there are a variety of types of university and they differ in character quite considerably. I categorise them as

• campus universities like Birmingham, Warwick, York where the university is on a large, exclusive site.
• collegiate universities: Oxbridge, Durham and...Exeter??? There must be others...
• universities which are integrated into large cities: the London university colleges, Manchester for example
• universities which are in smaller towns which may take a high proportion of students from the local area - they may live at home.

I went to a campus university and even that made me feel a bit lost! An adventurous friend went to UCL ( this was the late 70s and we were from a northern, small industrial town) which she just adored. I have had a lot of involvement with UCL since then and I would have hated it. I would have felt totally swamped and found the metropolitan, edgy, international culture too much of a leap at that age.

I was an Oxbridge reject but I have always hankered after a cosy college! Who knows - I may not have enjoyed it, but my son went to Cambridge, as did other young people I know (or Oxford) and I loved everything about the small-scaleness of college life - with the wider university available too, of course.

So - visit with your daughter and get her to consider also the implications of life in these different types of university and which type suits her best.

I have a year 12 (DDD2) applying to Oxford from a grammar school with 8x9 and 2x8 (so 10 GCSEs). She seems to think they treat 8s and 9s pretty much the same and look at the top 8 or 9 GCSEs and then within context. But I did not go to the open day, she went with her friends. My older DD is at Oxford and got 12x9s and is just incredibly academic so I just did not pay much attention because with her it was unlikely she would not get in.
DD2 did mention that Oxford care more about GCSEs than Cambridge. Also Cambridge tripos for languages is pretty broad. So if you are concerned, perhaps worth exploring further.
Generally speaking, mine is also good at languages but is going for law. I think getting in for languages is much easier than some other degrees. There just are not that many state school kids even doing plenty of languages anymore. It is shockingly few A levels taken overall in most modern languages now.

I never know why unis assume teaching is better at private schools. It quite often is not the case! DD2 has friends from private schools in her sixth form and some say their private school teaching in some subjects was shockingly bad, like some of the teachers were foreign and had not even read the syllabus in detail.

DD2 also said something about context which means if you did the same as your school average at GCSEs even if it is 9x9 and 1x8 because it is eg St Paul’s Girls school, they do not give you extra points for your GCSEs. But if the same child went to a local underperforming state school and got the same grades (but had lots of tutors on the side which they would never know about) they would get lots of brownie points for that. And DD2 thinks that is unfair given how many people tutor now. But it is what it is. And maybe they have realised and it has changed again, hard to keep up really.

You need to visit all places first, please don’t go in blind. Oxford is best for quieter students I’d say who prefer an insular experience. I did my post doc at Oxford uni so lived there for a while and it’s a really small city. Lovely museums and of course the uni buildings are beautiful but it’s not a vibrant cultural student city as London or Manchester would be of course.

I’m an academic at Manchester. We tend to get the outgoing students who prefer the nightlife, busy hustle bustle of a city etc. Different personalities go for different vibes you see. Strong candidates might think they want Oxford but find it dull when they visit (it can be) so end up at UCL, ICL, KCL or LSE.

So yeah visit all first and see how they make her feel. The GCSE results are on the low side for Oxbridge, most will be 8-9 across the board. Oxbridge are the only uni’s really interested in GCSE results, the others just look at A Level.

low side for Oxford yes but is it really on the low side for languages? Not many people can say they got 95% and above in 3 different language gcses (which she started from scratch in year 10). just food for thought - grades aren't the most predictable outcome

9988888777 = example of a boy studying at Oxford for languages. Proof you don't really need all nines - I think the mums on this type of thread believe anything they read on gossip forums...

That wasn't my experience at all and I was an undergraduate and later a JRF at Oxford. With 24/7 door to door buses from central Oxford to central London that go every ten minutes at peak times, London is close by for partying or a bigger canvas if that's what you want, and lots of us did. We would often come out of the pub in Oxford and decide to hop on the Oxford Tube to go clubbing in London and come back at dawn. Oxford doesn't need a massive clubbing scene of its own like Manchester because there's one already there, just down the road, at the end of a cheap coach journey.

I’m honestly not sure clubbing in London is a thing now. Many have converted to private members clubs. I also think my DD worried about not being at Oxford with outgoing types like her. The dc who we know that went seemed to be very studious types. Other cities do have a wider range of entertainment but Oxford clearly caters to student needs and these days it’s not a bustling nightlife. I used to go clubbing in Oxford in the mid 70s. Those were the exciting days.

OP, just another thing to mention. My niece applied to Cambridge in this last cycle. Not for MML, but for English Lit (slightly more competitive than MML but not drastically so, in terms of the offer rates).

She was at a leading London Day School (independent). Her GCSEs were all 9s, except for Maths (7) and Physics (7). But she had 9s in English Lit, English Lang, Drama, French, Spanish, History, Religion and Philosiphy - all of which are in the 'preferred subjects list' for English Lit, so she thought she'd give it a go. She also had 9s in Biology and Chemistry.

She did the English admissions test set by the college she applied to. Had interviews. Did not get in. She requested feedback which basically stated that her interview scores had been very strong, as had the admissions test results and the two essays she had had to send in. But the reason she didn't get in was the GCSE grade 7s - in Maths and Physics (!) - because these are low for her school. At the time if applying, my niece already had an A star EPQ and was predicted all A-stars in English, History, Drama snd Philosophy at A-level, but no - it was the 7s in Maths and Physics that were the issue - apparently! I think it's because they have so many applying with straight 9s, they have to decide somehow.

But anyway, she's off elsewhere and will do brilliantly there.

The friends' children and relatives/godchildren I know who have gone to Oxford recently have been a wide range of personality types. Many of them are enormously outgoing (which isn't the opposite of 'studious' -- you have to be able to do both). My godson rowed seriously and was also heavily involved in student theatre, both during termtime and as a commercial enterprise in his college garden in summer, and got a first. My niece was a clubber and did a lot of London clubbing, balls and got a Blue in her sport (athletics), as well as a first (which she claimed to have been surprised by). Another friend's son more or less lived in the Union and is headed for a career in politics.

Seriously, the place is full of preternaturally confident extroverts. Not surprisingly, really, given the amount of privilege that still clusters there. Growing up using one of your father's minor titles and in the knowledge you're going to inherit a Palladian mansion and a large chunk of the Home Counties doesn't tend to create shy, retiring types. (Granted, my college had unusual numbers of these, but still...)

Well you can comment on the stellar brilliant sporty types you know but DD was not sure about it at all. She had been but she’s now happy she didn’t go but she did get offered a place. Fitting in meant a lot to her and I think she was concerned about being very average in all sorts of ways: and you have just demonstrated she would have been.