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

Found in translation - studying law

Rhubarb

Oy I'm not a pretentious twat, thanks

Come outside if you think you are hard enough

I went, have a stong south Walian accent, came from a comp, grew up in a terraced house, and can drink pints with the best of them....but not Guinness, it gives me the trots.

Mates that I met included two mad geordies, numerous 'Makem Bastards', monkey hangers, people from Leeds, liverpudlians and a cockney with an avccent so strong the geordies couldn't understand him.

And as Baka knows I went to one of the snobbier collages! And loads of us were normal....including my darling dh who was a soft southerner, but had gone to a comp and came from a one parent family.

So are we taking our earings out to have a scrap then???

i'm hardcore tamum . though i did psychology as my part ii, which is pretty soft in cambridge terms!

another 'normal' cambridge graduate here (imho of course!) I also had a great time though you have to choose the college carefully - dh felt rather isolated in his very public school college. My brother went to Oxford and still regrets it.

I don't think money is a huge issue - you need to remember that many of these colleges are hugely rich and in the event of them introducing higher fees, they will have a much better range of means tested scholarships than some other institutions.
The style of teaching does need thinking about (nearer the time obviously) as it does require a level of robustness and independence that A levels and other universities do not. There are many other excellent and prestigious universities that may offer a better course depending on particular interests. Overall though I would say the benefits are lasting and worth any negatives (for me at least!)
I am pretty blown away though by an 11 year old having such a clear idea of his future!!

sorry to hear about your dd KristinaM.

Law is known at Oxford (prob elsewhere too...) for having probably the biggest workload of all (with the possible exception of medicine). It is a totally different world from A-levels and I don't think anything can really prepare you at 18 for working the way that you "ought" to work. The upside is you don't have to actually come up with the goods until the end of the third year .

I found my ability to plough through the reading list did improve by the third year - you just mature into it I think. There probably isn't a short-cut, but maybe it's worth encouraging her self-esteem generally and making sure she's looking after herself - it's easy to be too hard on yourself at that age.

Thanks Carolina

Kristina - sorry to hear about your dd's problems.
this would be my personal advice (I also went through the Oxford experience):

• dont admit to your tutor that you are having problems (same as you wouldnt automatically blurt out your personal problems to your boss, and for the same sort of reasons)
• focus your study. Go NOW to the library, or the Exam board or wherever, and get as many past exam papers as possible for your next exam (mods, prelims or finals). Spread them all out, and make a table of the different subjects, and how often they come up. Identify the questions that are most likely to come up, and the ones that are least likely.
• Choose a combination of the fewest possible subjects, that gives you at least a 90% chance of all those subjects coming up in your exam.
• from now on, only study those subjects.
• find out whether your exams are marked by adding up marks, or by adding up marks squared. If marks squared, then focussing your effort is even more important.

I used this method in history of art exams at another university, from the whole syllabus I revised only the five subjects most likely to come up - I got 4 1/2 questions from my five subjects, and I got a 2:1 grade.
what you should NOT do is the usual girly thing of trying to conscientously cover the whole syllabus, cos its too big, and you'll lose out to the guys who spend the whole term rowing or playing rugby and end up just cramming a few subjects at the last minute.
good luck!

Yes, tamum, the main difference being that in Reading they didn't even have the excuse of being phenomenally clever pretentious twats!!

sorry - I've not had time to read through the entire thread, but I was at Oxford - graduated 13 years ago from my 1st degree which I absolutely hated. I didn't like the collegiate system and found the atmosphere very claustrophobic. there was no student union in the way that, say, Leeds Uni or any other has. Saying that I still returned a few yrs later to do an MSc with a vocational bent and really enjoyed it - poss. because I met lots of like minded people and went to a post-grad college. 1st time round I suppose I inadvertently ended up in a very rugby orientated college and found it hard to find people I could click with. Also the 8 wk terms are pressured and the work load is heavy. I do accept though that it just wasn't great for me as an undergraduate and lots of other people had a good time.

Can I join in too? I agree with what has been said about living in Oxford often being comparatively cheap. I lived in for three years (meaning that I only paid rent 24 weeks a year) and in my post grad year I paid very low rent in a private house. No travel expenses, 30 highly subsidised bars, very cheap food, lots of things like book grants and travel grants available. The college structure means that if you are enthusiastic but crap at things like me you can still get involved (so I was hockey captain, in the choir and orchestra for my college - which had 150 women, which would never have happened if I'd been one of 10,000 in another uni!)

I ran the Target Schools Scheme which encourages state school applicants. Contact them at the Student Union (on Little Claredon Street), they are good. Don't get this confused with the Oxford Union which is a private club full of stuck up toffs and hacks (although they do have some good speakers from time to time).

You do have to do more work, but I only realised this when I was home during the holidays. During term time everyone is working hard so you just get on with it. Plus I like working hard, anyway!

I was a bit upset cos I went there assuming that it would all be brainy geeks and hoorah henrys, and that I'd stand out for being normal. But as it turned out everyone was like me!

Back to the original question, though, I'm glad you're trying to find out. It is important that he has all the support he can from you. But at the same time bear in mind that he needs to make his own choice - not least because the stats show that people who made the choice themselves stood a far greater chance of getting in!

Can I join in too? I agree with what has been said about living in Oxford often being comparatively cheap. I lived in for three years (meaning that I only paid rent 24 weeks a year) and in my post grad year I paid very low rent in a private house. No travel expenses, 30 highly subsidised bars, very cheap food, lots of things like book grants and travel grants available. The college structure means that if you are enthusiastic but crap at things like me you can still get involved (so I was hockey captain, in the choir and orchestra for my college - which had 150 women, which would never have happened if I'd been one of 10,000 in another uni!)

I ran the Target Schools Scheme which encourages state school applicants. Contact them at the Student Union (on Little Claredon Street), they are good. Don't get this confused with the Oxford Union which is a private club full of stuck up toffs and hacks (although they do have some good speakers from time to time).

You do have to do more work, but I only realised this when I was home during the holidays. During term time everyone is working hard so you just get on with it. Plus I like working hard, anyway!

I was a bit upset cos I went there assuming that it would all be brainy geeks and hoorah henrys, and that I'd stand out for being normal. But as it turned out everyone was like me!

Back to the original question, though, I'm glad you're trying to find out. It is important that he has all the support he can from you. But at the same time bear in mind that he needs to make his own choice - not least because the stats show that people who made the choice themselves stood a far greater chance of getting in!

I dont think Oxford is that cheap to live! rent is v expensive. Its only cheap when youre living in college.

fisil your remarks about the Oxford Union! Its full of normal people (ok there are a few t*ssers running for office)

Alright! Alright! I take back the pretentious twat comment! It's just that all the students I met from the Uni were pretentious twats, so you lot must have been in some other pub then!

My mate used to go to Oxford Uni every weekend to get laid, he said they were 'easy' - his quote not mine! And the ones I met certainly never endeared themselves to me. Perhaps I just got unlucky?

Preston Uni is quite nice you know! Full of cheap pretentious twats who failed to get into a 'proper' Uni! Am I digging this one deep enough or what?

Ai never went to pubs Rhubarb - too town for me!

by the way

All those who went to Oxford, prove then that you are not pretentious twats!!!

rhubarb thats fighting talk, dp went to preston poly ooops I mean uni
ds is planning his future around becoming chancellor, I kid you not he is deadly serious, although unless a lib dem govt he would be like a shadow chancellor
He is frighteningly decided for such a young lad, he has said he wanted to be PM from age of 5 when previously he was happy to be a bus driver...
I think I will just let him sit and play a bit, find out some more about what makes him tick and see where that leads him.
I guess I just wanted to check they would be no major obstacles to him going IF he got that far ya know... rising hopes and all that.
Durham looks to me like a good university.Family history - dp's aunt got all A* in her A levels or whatever and was turned down by Oxford, she is certain as that when she mentioed her dad was a miner, their eyes glazed over and within a minute they had wrapped up the interview.
dp is not ds's dad btw...
So I'm not sure what to think!

I know where Between Towns Road, Cutteslowe, Oxpens and Blackbird Leys are

My friend's sister used to go to the Dolly - and she wasnt a member of the Dangerous Sports club either!

and the aunt went on to double degree to doctorate in several sciences, she went to work for Boots and helped develope their own brand ibuprofen compound.
she now runs a dancing school - her first love

Nightynight - you're probably right about the union - I'm just still bitter at being done out of such a huge amount of money for very little return (although I did get to see/hear Ronald Regan, Desmond Tutu and John Smith, all of which were pretty amazing!)

What, you mean you actually PAID for the Union? LOL!

pretentious twat? moi?

fisil - membership is for life, so drop in if youre passing Oxford. Cheap food and drink in the bar, and 2 fab libraries. Did you ever find the Poetry Room? If not, then add it to your list of life's ambitions!

piffle, just don't get disappointed if ds changes his mind at 17 and decides on Santa Barbara or media studies or something. I think kids are actually more certain in their ambition at that just pre-teen stage than later.

Incidentally I was 17 when I started at Cambridge and if I had my time again I would definitely think again on that one. Given that we will have to do work until we're 70, there's a lot of time available before you need to start on the career track.