Why didn't your child apply to Oxford or Cambridge?

[ZeroSomeGameThingy]

www.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/27/oxbridge-state-school-numbers-falling

Given that most people who apply will not get in - there's no shame in an unsuccessful application. So what are the real reasons for this apparent reluctance?

Year 8 or 9 I would say.

I think a lot of the current access and outreach work is trying to reach students younger. I know at my college a lot of the tours and talks were with pre 6th form groups, and a lot of the focus was on making the right decisions about subjects and so on. Part of that is also talking about what sort of careers doors open from different degrees; so trying to encourage students to see that you don't need to do medicine or law to have a fulfilling career. Sometimes it's hard for a 15 year old to see where a degree in Geography or History could go.

I know at Oxford each college is allocated a region of the country to work with on outreach projects. The extent to how much happens will depend on the college. Look to Pembroke or Mansfield for two trailblazers in outreach work. I know Pembroke run a scheme with certain schools where throughout year 12 students are mentored and work with academics and current students - with the aim being to help students adjust to the academic demands of university. I read an article which said at one of these hub college, Russell Group places has gone up 500%.

Across the university there are the UNIQ summer schools which students from certain ec

I remember reading a few years ago that Oxford and Cambridge senior academics believe they are not taking in a high percentage of applicants from a minority ethnic background because those applicants are far more likely to apply for the obvious vocational subjects, e.g. medicine, law, PPE, and not for humanities subjects which are far easier to get into (still not that easy - just not as hard). The value of doing a degree in English, History, modern languages, Classics etc is not obvious to many people. Everybody thinks they know if you can get onto a degree course in medicine what your career path is likely to be afterwards. It's not nearly as easy to see where an English degree will take you if you don't go into publishing, writing, journalism etc.

Another reason is that a lot of young people from minority ethnic groups want to go to university in a place where there is a community they can identify with, which usually means the larger cities, or they choose to stay at home. It's a huge cultural leap to go to a small place where there isn't that safety net of having things around you that are like what you've grown up with - somewhere you can worship with fellow believers, the right kind of food shops, a critical mass of people who don't need to drink a lot of alcohol to have a good time and so on and so forth. Some super-confident people can cope effortlessly with all that, but a lot can't.

Another bit of research I heard about was carried out by either Oxford or Cambridge. Dropout rates at both places are fairly low, I believe, but they had identified that they were higher for some ethnic groups than others. They found that many young men from a Muslim background found it very hard to cope with the drinking culture. Lots of the welcome events for freshers had alcohol as a big feature and there was an assumption that everybody would welcome that. These young men didn't at all. It just reinforced their view that they didn't belong and would be better off going somewhere else.

My child did apply. From a state school, with minimal support from the school. She got offered a place at her first choice college and is now finishing her first year and really enjoying it. She doesn't find it overwhelmingly posh, and says that those people who do come from that kind of background try and play it down.

As far as finances go, I don't have the figures in front of me, but the accommodation and maintenance costs are lower than some of her friends are paying at other universities. Food is cheap though not great quality (this does vary across colleges). Student loans are enough to cover basic accommodation but not much else. We are giving her some money, and she is working in the holidays at a job that pays just above minimum wage, which will fund the rest of her costs. At her college they have to live out in 2nd year - at colleges that offer three years accomm people generally live in because it's cheaper.

The key to getting in a seems to be a passion for the subject, being able to demonstrate evidence of reading and researching beyond the school syllabus, and a willingness to engage in academic debate, by being willing and able to argue your corner, even if that means going out on a limb or disagreeing with the examiners.

Oxbridge students do have to be willing to deal with other people's perception of them as posh, and be able to cope with the relentless workload. But dd is having a great time, and would encourage anyone who likes their subject and is up for a good argument to give it a go.

Has anyone linked to this fascinating article about the Cambridge admissions process?

I was really struck by this bit:

She has had "unimaginable teaching difficulties", the tutors hear. She has taken her A-levels at a school that has had a spectacularly high turnover of teachers. Peering at his laptop when her name is announced, Nick Cutler, an admissions tutor at Churchill, says there are "multiple flags". The flags are used to indicate factors such as poverty, or a school that performs very poorly at GCSE. There are six categories in all – including whether an applicant has spent time in care. There is evidence that a strong candidate from a bad school is likely to perform well when they come to Cambridge. But the academics are concerned that in this case, the school has been so turbulent that she simply lacks essential knowledge. Her examination and interview marks are low.

So here is a candidate with good potential but simply not enough knowledge to keep up. This is desperately sad. Encouraging, though, that the admissions tutors also reject a girl from a private school who had the knowledge but not the potential/spark/call it what you will.

I'm currently in year 10 and at a grammar school (11th in country )where Oxbridge application cants get a lot of support to get in . I'm wondering if I stand a chance of getting in ? I got an a in maths GCSE last year (so two years early) and now taking a level maths early . I'm predicted all a at GCSE and will most likely achieve this - do I stand a chance ?

here is a candidate with good potential but simply not enough knowledge to keep up

To be honest, what else were they going to say? That they interviewed a bright kid from the wrong school and rejected them because they were poor?

Admissions tutors always have to give academic reasons for rejection, it doesn't mean that conscious or unconscious bias are not a part of that decision, just that it is not articulated.

Hello, chumaniward1! Yes, I'd say you stand an excellent chance if you carry on as you are. The key thing is that you should be really interested in the subject you apply to do. You'll need to do extra reading and be able to discuss it. They're looking for students who will do well in the small tutorial teaching they specialise in. It wouldn't be everybody's cup of tea, so you should think about that carefully. There's lots of information on the Oxford and Cambridge websites to help you decide.

Good luck!

Oh come on, creamteas, have you read that article? It wasn't just because she was poor. She would have struggled from the start and they didn't think she would be able to catch up, and the main reason for that was the very poor teaching she'd had. The article gives details of other poor kids who did get offers because they'd had the good luck to get a better start than this girl.

Poor grounding, be it in basic/transferable skills (eg essay writing) or in subject knowledge, can mean that students, however intelligent, won't be able to keep up with the demands of a course from the outset. It is not kind to make offers to such candidates, however sorry you might feel about their lack of preparation and educational opportunities.

How can I persuade creamteas that rather than allowing our prejudices, conscious or unconscious, to run unchecked, we as tutors instead spend hours carefully deciding, on the basis of as much evidence as we can muster, which candidates to admit for a handful of places? We have to balance achievement against potential, as the article explains. We also have to think about who can cope in this very intense environment (and give interviews which reflect the intensity to some degree). All of this is done with profound seriousness and ethics, usually involving hours and hours of careful consideration.

I wonder whether some of this stems from the ratio of rejections to successful applicants. We reject the majority of our applicants (this makes each admissions round immensely meaningful to me - I am conscious that we will disappoint a large number of wonderful applicants, and say yes to only a few). This means that the majority of people who come into contact with the admissions process will have a negative outcome, and may retrospectively see the whole process as remote, prejudiced and unfair. But we can't do anything about this, and I work on the basis that all I can do is to evaluate candidates as professionally as possible, so that those few who do gain a place will make the very most of it.

virelai what worries me is that whilst I don't doubt your ability personally to interview in a way that meets the Oxbridge aim of identifying the candidates that have the potential to make the most of and succeed with an Oxbridge education, irrespective of background, I really do not see how you can achieve any sort of consistency/objectivity/fairness in a system that involves every tutor in every college interviewing prospective students . A concern that is intensified by my own daughters experience. (Three tough but stimulating interviewers she enjoyed but one person involved in a two person interview who completely intimidated her,made the other interviewer feel clearly uncomfortable, and my daughter feel she did not show what she knew and quite sure she did not want her as her tutor in her main area of interest, even before she was pooled. She is on a first elsewhere, lots of opportunities to further her ambitions as a research Scientist, has never looked back.)

In any decent business recruitment process you are trained to interview,and held accountable for conducting a process in which you find evidence, supplemented by all sorts of supplementary evidence , not just academic results and cv, but the results of psychometric and aptitude tests, that provides evidence of qualities that have been identified as essential for success. Then you are constantly evaluated in terms of the quality of the evidence you provide that candidates will succeed, and also if they actually do. Wonder how much accountability there is, though the introduction of more subject specific aptitude testing is I think a good development, even if people perceive it as new entrance exams

Isn't there a difference though? In business surely you recruit people who are intended to work towards a common goal - in education, certainly at undergraduate level, each person is working for their own purpose. The question is "will this individual achieve their goal?" not "will this person achieve the company's goal?" Different search criteria apply.

Also business recruits are expected to be fully mature, finished products from day one but students applying to university (even mature students) must be expected to change and develop through their time at the institution - doesn't this require a different kind of thinking when choosing them? Surely there's inevitably more of a gut feeling, leap-of-faith angle to the selection process?

I don't want the kind of gut feeling that throws (UK) applications with "difficult" foreign names straight into the bin, or that pulls a face if the candidate doesn't ski at the same resort as the interviewer - there must be some restraint - but I'm not sure that testing as if for a corporate entity would be the best way to achieve the best and fairest result.

Sorry creamteas but that is nonsense.

The reality is that Oxbridge can't deal solely in raw talent. The applicants have to arrive having honed that talent somewhat. And that is the job of schools.

It is simply not right to expect university staff to bridge the gap made by state schools to that extent. That is not what they're there for.

The problem in that case is not Oxbridge or the tutors but the school!

zero I agree.

I think interviewing for university isn't a perfect system, but it does (at least a bit) replicate what tutorials will be like and how that student might engage.

And, unlike in a corproation, the student and the interviewer will most likely spend an awful lot of time together, so personalities must come into it.

FWIW, none of the admissions tutors I know expect to adore the applicants, they just hope to find some sort of commonality.

And of course, testing is now becoming common place alongside interviews with HAT BMAT etc etc. Then there are Cambridge's much favoured A* offers. So the interview isn't the be all and end all.

We reject the majority of our applicants .....This means that the majority of people who come into contact with the admissions process will have a negative outcome, and may retrospectively see the whole process as remote, prejudiced and unfair.

Clarity!

Why isn't this at the top of every single piece of information or publicity sent out by both universities?

Agian zero I agree.

Every year Oxbridge has far more applicants than it knows what to do with. So every year superb applicants are rejected.

The admissions process tries to uncover the most suitable applicants, but it is not a perfect process, nor does it claim to be.

This remians the case in all aspects of life where competition is high...

But what it means is that we're left with an extremely critical massof clever people who go on to succeed and become prominent journalists voices; all saying how awful the whole Oxbridge edifice is, prejudiced, unfair "the interviewer was weird" "they rejected me because I wasn't wearing the right shoes..." "no-one with any sense would ever apply there..."

D'you know I think I've answered my own question - with a different one "Why are they allowing so many people to apply?"

Senua I am shocked at your post which I am afraid does smack of ivory towers.

Sorry but I don't see much difference between my point and "The reality is that Oxbridge can't deal solely in raw talent. The applicants have to arrive having honed that talent somewhat. And that is the job of schools."

It seems a bit silly to be worrying about the tiny number of 'diamond in the rough' when you are already rejecting so many good applicants. To the outsider it seems a bit of a lottery who gets in and who doesn't. The way to have a fairer application system is to have a more transparent and predictable process, so you don't get the Laura Spence argument of "I apparently ticked all the boxes so why didn't I get in?". It would also save the huge expense (time and money) of interviewing ten pupils for every one place.
Perhaps it needs something along the lines of the Maths and Physics Olympiads?

Ah, cross posted. I think that we are agreeing on the over-application point.

Statistics here, which give you the realities rather than the myths:

www.ox.ac.uk/about/facts-and-figures/admissions-statistics

senua's 'bit of a lottery' is again frustrating. In my subject, we get all candidates to sit an aptitude test. We look carefully at their exam results and predictions. We look at a piece of written work they have sent in. We look at their UCAS form. When looking at the test result, the written work and the UCAS form, we pay careful attention to the contextual data we have on their school and any other contextual 'flags' (as per the Guardian article). We then rank candidates on the basis of that evidence so that we can see who to interview. We then give the top candidates at least two interviews. The interviews model the format and intensity of tutorial teaching. We use our professional experience to select those candidates who show the most potential to do well in the tutorial and collegiate system - why would we do otherwise? Accountability is provided to some degree by our subsequent exam results. My Faculty also follows candidates through the system to see how various bits of admissions data correlate with final exam performance (which again informs my decision-making as a tutor).

How might we make this more transparent or predictable, given that many many of our applicants are very able and well qualified? It may look unpredictable from the outside, to people who don't see the whole cohort of candidates, but it seems odd to think that we are conducting a lottery (we don't think that other professions do this?).

It must be so hard to go through that process, as a very very talented and high achieving applicant, and not get a place. Easier to blame the system rather than accept that you didn't make the grade (though I do accept that we make such fine-grained decisions that this is not a perfect system - how would YOU balance potential against current achievement?). I've seen it at close hand both when I was an applicant and now from the other side. It must be so hard to accept that you were great, but that others were yet more exceptional, either in terms of their achievement or their potential. This produces zero's 'critical mass', which then puts many candidates off.

If you look at the admissions statistics, the lack of state-school students is largely a result of a lack of state-school applicants. We do lots of outreach work to try to change this. What else should we do?

So how do you explain school's experiences then? When dead-certs are rejected and maybes are taken on. And remember that this analysis of 'dead-cert' and 'maybe' is based on seven years' knowledge of these pupils and years of teaching experience.

I dare you to do an experiment one year: allocate half by your usual system and half by lottery then see if there is much difference! As you say yourself, it's all a bit fine-grained so I'll bet that all this effort doesn't actually reap huge rewards.
The idea that, as long as you meet the basic ('basic' being atmospherically high, of course) standard, you stand an equal chance in the lottery might encourage more State school / disadvantaged pupils.

oops. schools' experiences

Just to recap: (1) the Oxbridge admissions system is criticised for appearing 'a bit of a lottery'; (2) a tutor explains why there are lots of structures in place to help us do all we can to stop it being a lottery, and to take account of differences in education and opportunity; (3) it is suggested that we run a lottery...

More reading matter here for those interested: d307gmaoxpdmsg.cloudfront.net/Access.pdf

Doing exceptionally well at university, particularly at Oxbridge, requires potential which is different in scale and kind from that which is required to do well at GCSE and A-level. In 2012, c. 46,000 students achieved AAA+ at A-level, so if we want to take the best of the best, we are going to be rejecting many applicants with excellent academic records. That is not the same thing as a lottery. Our very labour-intensive system allows us to find the applicants with the most potential from amongst all our applicants (and if people don't apply, we can't accept them - back we go to zero's OP).

The difference between 'bright' and 'gifted and talented' is important to us (I realise that these definitions are controversial and are changing, but they provide a useful shorthand to describe the difference between the pupil who can answer the question perfectly and doesn't want to do any more than that, and the pupil who can work out what is wrong with the question itself). Sometimes, what we are looking for (i.e. the potential rather than current achievement) is the person who is gifted but whose school record may be less perfect. They may then go on to do brilliantly at degree level in our sort of tuition/exams. Might this be why we sometimes are seen to behave 'unpredictably' by schools?

senua Good post. That is exactly the prevailing perception at my DDs' school. I think Oxbridge loses a lot of good candidates, not just at state schools, because they feel the process is a lottery and one that involves a distraction and risk to self esteem. I understand what virelai is saying but what he is describing is subjectivity, a subjectivity DDs' school warned applicants can make the results from their perspective seem at times inconsistent with the potential they see in their pupils. Of course the 1 in 10 Oxbridge pick subjectively from a pool of talented pupils go on to succeed, Cambridge admit as much by pooling those of the standard, but so I suspect do most of the other 9 as well. It does mean candidates with the right support are prepared and where there is not parental expectation / pressure can like my DD shrug it off. At the end of the day it is a rational response for candidates to say that given Oxbridge is essentially from their perspective a lottery (they may or may not encounter tutors with whom they "gel") they will try it or not depending on whether they can be bothered / feel ready for the challenge because they will without doubt be offered places at other excellent universities that will, based on student satisfaction, give them an excellent experience and enable them to succeed. But is that what Oxbridge want?

I still totally disagree on widening access though. How can you say it is a "tiny number of diamond in the rough candidates" when a charity like AC Diversity has a track record of enabling large numbers of pupils to not just succeed but to get exceptional results (I can't find the statistics on the website but I have seen them). They don't perceive they have helped the tiny number, they perceive they have hardly touched the edges of the problem, and that is just in London, I have no idea if those candidates from other inner city or rural backgrounds of disadvantage have even the chance of such help, certainly not at the rural comp my friend teaches at where she constantly battle against the same poverty of aspiration in her clever students.

zero I take your point but in business subjectivity is a known source of bias, the subject of plenty of study by Occupational Psychologists that shows that however well trained and focused on the evidence an interviewer is, quite a lot of the judgement is made before a candidate even opens their mouth. The pendulum has swung in business, as it always does back to valuing subjective criteria, on the basis it ensures candidates fit in with the team and organisation (essentially what *virelai says) but the research is there none the less and it will swing back.