Anyone gone to Oxford Uni or had their child go?

[piffle]

Have ummed and ahhed about posting this
ds is only 11, shows every sign of attaining very high grades if previous and predicted scores have any relevance.
Anyway he has mentioed that he may think about Oxford if his marks are good - 4 boys from his grammar got in last yr so he is quite keen.
I am not sure what "Oxford" entails, ie: financial implications, whether it is a larger drain than any other uni.
I know he may not want to even get there, but I need to get it in my head now, just incase as if he did, I would not want lack of resources to stop him IYKWIM.
Sorry am not bragging mother etc am genuinely curious.
TIA

We have a child there just now. It cost about £1400 per annum for the university fees which we wouldnt have to pay otherwise as there are no fees in our country. On top of this there are the usual living fees for halls of residence / student house - about £3K per annum. As everyone has said, the terms are only 8 weeks rather than 10.

DD is really struggling there as she was used to doing well at school by doing no work at all. Sailed through A levels with 3 As but hardly ever went to classes. Now she has to work and finds it a bit of a culture shock. I think she is not self motivated enough and is too immature to cope

Also the college she is at is not the best place for her subject - as others have said, Oxford is not the best place to study every subject, so it would depend on what your son wants to do.

KristinaM - if your DD is really struggling encourage her to speak honestly with her tutors. I always thought I was there to please everyone else but actually this is not a freebie and they should be open to discussion about difficulties. I went from a comp where the library was no bigger than our bookcases at home at the moment. The adjustment was huge. It is a huge leap for some - I hope she sticks at it and proves her mettle.

tamum, ellbell and Pruni, I did tutorials at Oxford as a postgrad (felt very ill-equipped to do them, but desperately needed the money).

I was only at Oxford as a postgrad but I felt the system was quite hard on all but the most brilliant and confident undergraduates. Attendance at lectures did not necessarily prepare the students for what they would later be examined on. The students were supposed to read around their subjects to prepare themselves for exams. A lot of them were too immature to cope. I would have been completley at sea had I gone to Oxford as an undergraduate.

Non-college accommodation in Oxford was expensive when I was there (as a postgrad I lived out most of the time).

Piffle - I think it will depend very much on which degree he wants to do. If he really is at the very highest levels of attainment such that he is in a position to pick and choose, then where he studies will depend on which university has the 'best' course in the subject he wishes to study. It has probably changed a lot recently, but when I was helping with grad recruitment at one of the big 4 accountancy firms we didn't look at what university someone had attended but whether they were at the best university for the subject they were studying, IYSWIM.

What subjects is he good at, what does he want to study?

There is a question Soapbox
He is outstanding at everything - I think his true niche lies in maths/science - hard to say for sure at yr 7.
I know its early honestly I would never have thought of it yet, it has been ds who has asked if it would even be possible (for us as a family) if he managed to get in.
The reason I am asking is that I have a dd with special needs and only dp works, ds natural father is musician and low earner so help from him would be speculative.
Now if I need to go back to work to start saving for fees and /or accomodation I just windered if associated costs/expectations were different at Oxford, or maybe even CAmbridge too
personally I'd lean for Cambridge as its closer to me
I know that UMIST and Durham provide exceptional maths and science courses too though.
Bloody minefield
We could also leg it to NZ and he could study there. we're sorely tempted but ds is def keen on Oxford and possibly if he had too Cambridge!
Wonder who he has been talking too quite honestly! He is self motivated and very ambitious.. He has lots of time to consider it though!

Imperial College, London is another very good place for science subjects.

Kristina, what subject is your dd doing?

Piffle, I think Cambridge is supposed to be 'better' than Oxford for sciences - this could, of course, change, though.

And the actual difference between the 2 is prob minuscule.

Thanks for all this info everyone, really appreciate it.
I am from NZ so know little about UK universities.DS knows more than me and it's freaking me out!
The school have mentioned to me that he could be a candidate for early uni admission assuming he can boost his English marks up a tiny fraction more.
Am not particularly sure this would be a bright move on his or our part, but it has to be considered I guess if he wants it enough.
There is so much going on at the minute I feel like my head might explode....

I'd be really wary of early admission, Piffle. What does your ds gain from it? If it's just that he'd be bored at school if he had to stay there till he was 18, why not let him take his A'levels early and then take a year out (maybe working and saving some money towards his time at university - thus also relieving some of your financial worries). There's no reason why he couldn't also spend that year reading and preparing for his university work. Or he could take some extra A'levels (a language that he could start from scratch perhaps... always useful). But I think that starting university early would put a huge amount of pressure on him at what is still really a very young age.

Still, I see a lot of 18-year-olds, and some of them are incredibly mature in their approach and cope brilliantly, others - if I'm perfectly honest - should have waited till they were over 21 before coming to university, they just need to grow up a bit. Your ds sounds very mature though. And he's obviously doing brilliantly. (Send him to my department, please.... !!)

Thanks Ellbell
I resisted getting him put up a year at primary school several times, as socially it was not right for him
It's not that he is bored, it's just that he could easily step up a year and still be great.
He is mature and focussed and sensible. I think I want my little boy at home for as long as poss though, we were hoping to send him away to NZ for a gap year if poss to live with his paternal relations and work and play there for a while. We'd join him for a bit of it too.
I think that plan sounds more sensible to me
Teachers do make you feel you need to push though... its all so competitive, I just got caught up in the vibe I guess....

Show off!

I studied in Oxford for a year and found the students to be pretentious twats. If you came with a Northern accent drinking pints of Guinness then as far as they were concerned, you might as well stepped off the Planet Meezlopple.

Oxford is a very nice place though with plenty of opportunities for p/t work, many of the students took work in bars. The Union is fantastic, with loads going on, interesting debates and top guest speakers, etc. If mine got accepted I'd be quite chuffed, but I'd make sure they had a bloody good dose of common sense before they went.

I just came back to say, Piffle, that even if I had reservations about my child going to university at 17 or going to Oxford or whatever, I wouldn't say so to them directly at the age of 11. I think I'd go with the line that 'it's a long way off and we want to keep our options open, but it's really good to make plans...' etc. etc. Sounds like you have your head well screwed-on, though!

ATM my dd1 (age 5) claims that she never wants to leave me and dh and so she is going to be a childminder so that she can work from home and be with us all the time. (She's got it all planned out - on Friday nights she's going to drive daddy to the pub, then me and her are going to go to a cafe for tea and have a 'ladies' night out'! LOL!) I wouldn't say that this is exactly what I dream of for her future, but, hey, I think it shows what a loving child she is, so for now I just agree!

I went to Hilda's College Oxford. I hated it as it is all women and they really were so pretentious it does not bare thinking about. Oxford Halls of residents I found were expensive as well. I transferred to St Mary's College, Durham University which I found far nicer and better for sciences.

ellbell - aw bless!

thanks rhubarb
The "class" thing has concerned me too as I am a guinness pint swilling rugby fan from the southern hemisphere

Well I spent most of my time at Oxford drinking beer in various forms (unless it was happy hour at Raouls (cocktails- can't even remember how to spell it). I can't say I stood out particularly - I can't really think of any female friends who didn't drink beer. I even knew some with northern accents (shock!)

Have spent time at 3 universities - Oxford as an undergrad, another top 5 as a postgrad and now at a "new" univeristy- again as a postgrad (I'm changing area). It's one of the very few new univerisities that did well out of the change over but at postgrad level at least I can't say I can see much difference between it and either of the other univerisities. (the dept I'm in has a 5 research rating so that may be why it feels similar- the staff don't have to spend every hour teaching they can do some research).

In all the universities I've attended there have been a real mix of people, I don't think Oxford was any different in that. It's lazy to suggest it's full of public school pretentious twats because in my experience it's like anywhere- a real mix. The only difference I've found at the "new" university is a higher proportion of mature students. I have encountered a lot of reverse snobbery about Oxford (as in "oh you went to Oxford so you must be a pretentious twat") but I figure if people have stereotypes then that's their problem really.

I thought it was cute too FiT, but then she mentioned that, as I'd be at home with her all day with nothing to do, I could look after any of the children who were being naughty..., oh and I could cook them all lunch too!

In my more paranoid moments, though, I worry that it's a comment on my being a WOHM .

Baka is right. There are pretentious twats everywhere... and plenty of 'normal' people in Oxford and Cambridge. There is still a slightly higher proportion of people from private schools at Oxford and Cambridge, but (a) they are not all pretentious twats and (b) the situation is levelling out all the time. It's also true that Oxford and Cambridge increasingly recruit from outside their own pool of graduates, so the whole system is getting increasingly less 'incestuous' and more open to outside influences. In some cases, this also involves some updating of the syllabus (i.e. 'modern period' involving things written after 1900... that sort of thing!). AFAIK some colleges are 'worse' than others when it comes to pretentious twat-dom, so it would be worth investigating that when the time comes.

"It's also true that Oxford and Cambridge increasingly recruit from outside their own pool of graduates"

I meant, recruit lecturing staff

I've said this somewhere else, and it might only apply to Oxford arts complacency 25 years ago ... but: after graduating from Oxford, having done perfectly nicely & just as expected etc. etc., I went to Harvard, and got the shock of my life. I was meant to work! I was meant to have done the reading! I was meant to go to lectures and pay attention to other people's ideas and discuss them! I was - well, not meant, but pretty well expected - to have a job and support myself and be a grown-up. I loved it.

I think the spectre of American Private Universities means that you can overlook that the good ones' endowments offer nearly full scholarships where needed.

so ... I was getting at: how about MIT for Piffleboy?

i went to cambridge & am really normal, honest! i didn't go to one of the big famous colleges & suspect i might have had a different experience if i had. i had a fabulous time for 3 years, worked pretty hard but not constantly. i do think students there are generally more serious - i didn't have nearly such a wild time as dp did at liverpool for instance, we had saturday lectures ffs . i read natural sciences which has a lot more lectures/lab time than arts subjects.

I think you and I could probably both name a reasonable number of pretentious twats at the supremely redbrick Reading Ellbell, unless it had changed radically by the time you got there! Estate Management certainly drew them in by the shedload.

Hoxtonchick, I had always assumed you were an English graduate, no idea why though