If you can afford private education but remain in the state sector cont.

[happygardening]

Thought I repost the OP although the debate has moved on a little .
It's going to be hard to avoid this becoming another state v private thread, but what I'm interested in is a slightly different take on that debate. It's not "which is better?" but "if you think state school is better even though you could afford private education, then why is that?"

The question is based on the assumptions that the DC in question is/are reasonably bright (so might benefit academically from academically selective education), that the state school is non-selective (as most people don't have access to grammar schools), and that you hope for your DC to go to a good university (to make the £££££ fees worthwhile!)

I've been mulling this over ever since I heard some maths professor from Cambridge talking on the radio about the age-old private v state inequality of Oxbridge admissions. He was all for improving access for state school applicants but said that the simple fact was that for maths, even the best state schools generally teach only to the A-level syllabus, whereas the best private schools take their maths/further maths A-level candidates well beyond the syllabus and so the state school applicants are at a huge disadvantage - they simply don't have the starting level of knowledge required for the course.

This made me wonder: with this sort of unequal playing field, if you have the choice of private education, what reasons might you have not to take it?

Would be interested to hear from those who've made this choice - how it's working out, or if your DC have finished school now, how did it work out? Did they go to good universities/get good jobs, etc? On the other side of things, if you paid for private schooling but now regret it, why?

My DC go to a state school by the way.

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Yes rabbit I think I would distinguish, on the basis that other universities over offer quite deliberately but Oxford and Cambridge can only offer the number of places each has. So it matters.

It's up to individuals to decide how they want to be and live. Some will to get a job seek to wear the right clothes, perhaps go skiing or whatever hobbies they might have in common with a boss at a certain place. Others will be great at their work and not play by the same rules or seek to fit in.

Others won't know they are not fitting in and suffer and not know why (like the ex student with bare legs last year where my daughter was working when everyone else was in tights or trousers whom I think no one took aside and said copy the dress of the other people here if you want to get taken on somewhere)

Also rabbit, in a family where everyone is a doctor, you'd expect guidance to be readily forthcoming so it's even more churlish. Especially when it's not just one DC who does this, but two.

I think the issue is that if you decide not to accept an oxbridge offer because you don't like the course (which seems to be the implication), then you should have done your research better before you applied.

If on the other hand it's because you prefer a different course, but would still choose oxbridge if you didn't get your preferred choice then that's OK (it still leaves the issue yellow describes, but that's a fault with the system not the applicant). The thing is in this case, oxbridge (whichever one) should have been one of the candidates top four choices, so they shouldn't really be rubbishing the course after turning it down or being rejected (if that is indeed what is happening - I've not really seen this happening to be fair). Lots of people do have a natural instinct to see the positives of wherever they do end up, which is fair enough, but if oxbridge was originally one of their top 4 choices then they must have rated it highly at application time.

yellow, oxford and cambridge can and do over offer very slightly - it's what the open offers are for. They are both used to a very small proportion of candidates either not taking up their places or not meeting their offer grades.

Do you mean, Yellowtip, that if some people turn down their Oxford or Cambridge offers, that those courses then run half empty?! Or do they find some way of filling in the spaces after all? In other words, handing out more offers in retrospect, if anyone asks whether there are still places available? I'm not sure any university or medical school actually physically takes on more people than it is capable of catering for, does it? Surely all universities have to work like airlines and calculate their offers in a way that does not result in more people than they have real spaces for actually turning up on the day?? Even if they can get away with over-offering (like airlines over-sell their seats)...

Yes but it's marginal compared to other places gelo, so a little bit of additional thought for other applicants (especially from aspirant doctors) wouldn't go amiss.

rabbit the offer letters these days ask for anyone not wishing to take up their place to let the college know within ten or so days, precisely in order to re-offer. The problem with that is that on the whole the very sought after other places often interview later, partly in response to the Oxbridge cycle. And yes, there's a major problem with other medical schools having culls. It's ruthless and some schools are becoming known for it, not before time.

Yellowtip - the university applications system does not require applicants to think of others - it's a competition.

Well I'd expect any of my DC in that position to let Oxford or Cambridge know within the very narrow window, which perhaps is what both siblings of Fitnik did. The legal isn't necessarily the moral Bonsoir.

It's just a statistical thing, they know each year about 2% or whatever will turn down or not meet their offer and so have mechanisms to deal with it. They are just in a very fortunate position that it is that rare for it to happen, so their mechanisms are easier. Other universities have big problems especially for medicine where numbers are capped - it's not just oxbridge. So really if you think it's OK to hang on to an offer anywhere else it's equally fine to hang on to one for oxbridge. Morally wrong if you are sure you don't want the place, but otherwise quite acceptable imo.

I didn't raise the issue of legalities, Yellowtip and that wasn't my point. The only moral course of action is to treat the process as the one it is: a highly competitive one. Each applicant is free to use the strategy he/she thinks fit to optimise the outcome for him/herself. That is the moral course of action.

"that the aristocratic tolerate but never truly accept the Kate Middleton like upper middle class type families"

Love this idea! If the royal family aren't top of the aristo tree, who is? William might have struck a blow for classless Britain. Now Harry had better marry a pole-dancer from a council estate...

Ooh, now Kate Middleton's family have tried very hard to fit in with the right sort of people, rather than merely provide them with entertainment. It has finally been accepted that they are not very entertaining, and their daughter can fit in, having had the right training via wealth, school and university... a pole dancer, on the other hand, is still just there for the entertainment factor, not for marrying purposes.

And, of course, Kate had the right contacts from school, too, whereas a pole dancer would have altogether the wrong sort of contact...

If we roll back to about 1880 William would have had to marry a princess from another royal house abroad. Prince Charles did not although Lady D did have a title I think, but even so she was not a royal princess. Obviously over this century the monarchy has survived preciesly because it has adapted in these kinds of ways otherwise we might have gone -off with their heads in the style of the French.

gelo are you familiar with the numbers of students kicked out of various medical schools before the clinical years?

Each to his own on what constitutes decent behaviour I suppose. Myself, I don't think it's that hard to think ahead and minimise the impact on others.

Absolutely, Xenia.

Well yes, Xenia, William would have been obliged to marry a princess. He would also have shagged every Page 3 girl in sight.

not really yellow. I only know that some have a reputation for culling a lot more than others. Why is it relevant to admissions? Do some places use that to control their numbers?

grovel - surely you are confusing William and Harry?

Yes gelo they clearly do.

Ahh, not nice for those booted out. I imagine they must plan it that way to an extent though - ie: intentionally over offering so that they can get rid of the underperformers and maintain a higher standard. Especially given that some do it more than others -it sounds like policy to me.

Still not sure why lots of people being booted out of other courses should affect your view on how you apply to Oxford and Cambridge. Unless, of course, the people good enough to have been accepted by Oxford and Cambridge but who missed out and accepted somewhere else before Oxford/Camridge could re-offer as a result of rejections are the same people who then get booted out of other medical school courses. Which would mean, presumably, they weren't thought to be the right material to make excellent doctors??? Or is it unfair on the people who are booted out on the basis that they might have hung on by the skin of their teeth if other people had accepted offers elsewhere?... Or would Oxford and Cambridge really want the people who rejected them not to have rejected them, even though they clearly changed their minds about it being the place they wanted to go? Or would Oxford and Cambridge like to behave like the other medical schools and make far too many offers so that they can keep as many of the good ones as they like and by not behaving like this, they are getting the less good candidates?

That's too complicated rabbit. The point about the other medical schools is simply that their numbers are more elastic than those at Oxford and Cambridge. And since the standard of interviewees for Medicine at those two places is pretty exceptional across the board (particularly at Oxford, who interview fewer), many of those who don't get offered a place are easily up to the course and miss out by a hair. So some primadonna hanging onto a place can scupper the legitimate hopes of another for no reason other than vanity - certainly a rather unattractive lack of consideration. As for the other category, the floating voters, it's pretty lame not to know what type of course is on offer at both places: the lead up to the interviews with all the BMAT fandango is pretty intense and the opportunities to look around and find out pretty much all you need to know are ample, for all students wherever they are geographically and whatever their income. The website info is also second to none.