Are top private schools getting fewer oxbridge offers?

[Ijustwanttoask]

Just read in the papers about the drop in Oxbridge offers to Eton in the last few years. Is there a same trend for other big name public schools and top London day schools too?

In the past years, these schools generally happily announce the numbers of Oxbridge offers they get around this time of the year but I haven't seen much for 2021.

* Title edited by MNHQ by request* **

@makemineatriple765
@seasonfinale that’s really interesting and I didn’t know that. So if you go to a private school and then switch to a state school in a deprived area you will be asked for higher grades at A level than your class mates, even though you are now receiving exactly the same education?

Not for Oxbridge, no. As several people have stated up thread, veryone is asked for the same top A level grades. But you may be less likely to get an interview/offer.
There's an explanation here for Oxford: www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/applying-to-oxford/decisions/contextual-data

And here for Cambridge:
www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/applying/contextual-data

The contextualised grade score at Oxford is fairly problematic. But it applies to GCSE grades, not A-levels, and the marks are obviously contextualised against the pre-16 school, not the post-16 one, if there's been a change. So the risk, I suppose, would be in changing from a less academic to a more academic one in the year or two before GCSE.

But the real problem is for those who aren't all rounders. You can be brilliant at History and French, but if you go to a school where students get excellent GCSEs and manage only a B in Maths, this will give you a negative contextual score.

Still, only one small part of the application.

@DinkyDaisy

So, moving from private to state may be an advantage to university applications but a state pupil getting a full scholarship to private from a state, may not disadvantage them with applications?

No you'll reap the best advantage possible because the GCSEs may be contextualised if the school Is properly crap (and fair enogh wouldn't you say?), but A levels never are; all offers are the same. Plus if you're private in sixth form you will get thorough prep for the specialist entrance papers abs interviews - something very few comps do (tho I suspect grammars may). So crack on if you want to make a strategic switch

Plenty of comps do prep - they ask parents and teachers who’ve been to help

@NewModelArmyMayhem18

Asian students are under-represented at Oxford relative to the share of top grades they achieve but the acceptance rate is on par with other groups so like I said its because they under-apply to the university relative to others. There isn't a different standard for them due to race. I suspect they're highly over-represented at places like Imperial though?

I don't have stats but probably. All London universities have lots of BAME students because the city is very diverse and therefore attracts top diverse talent (in every sense possible).

@Newgirls

Plenty of comps do prep - they ask parents and teachers who’ve been to help

Not in my experience. Both DC went through the process. Not a jot of help. Contrast with the local private school who uses every Wednesday in the third abs fourth term of sixth form to coach practice papers and do dress rehearsal Interview. Oh and they buy in consultants. It's a booming business because parents want to know their DC have the best chance fir the bucks they pay. But if your DC's comp does this, that's great

All London universities have lots of BAME students because the city is very diverse and therefore attracts top diverse talent (in every sense possible).

Or simply because London's non-student population is overrepresented in BAME relative to the UK overall, and many students find it more familiar to stay close to home and/or cheaper to live at home. And that some BAME families are very reluctant to allow their girls to leave home for university.

30% of London's student population is from abroad. I'm not really sure you can argue that London's student population is diverse solely because its full of people from London.

London is an international and diverse city that attracts international and diverse talent.

private schools get about 30% of all A* grades, 25% of A grades, but still about 40% of Oxbridge places.

in other words there's still discrimination in favour of private schools. they're just upset that there's a little less discrimination than there used to be.

I suspect that once they go to university though (Oxbridge included), the private school advantage disappears (except when it comes to finding the high-powered graduate jobs with contacts!

private schools get about 30% of all A* grades, 25% of A grades, but still about 40% of Oxbridge places

Oxbridge can only select from those who come forward, and out of those that do they do apply some common sense and understand that a pupil from a poorer background has probably had to work a bit harder than one from a place of privileged.
The issue is why so so few (comparatively) from northern areas and/or state schools choose Oxbridge? The fact that so many private school pupils attend could well put many off, and like it or not but things like Bullingdon Club do help reinforce the image that it's full of hooray Henrys and Henriettes who dine on roast swan and have their butler write their essays.

@Ifailed - it's very well established that state educated kids to better at uni than privately educated kids with the same A level grades, e.g. see

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/state-school-students-get-better-degrees-private-school-pupils-same-levels-10504225.html

it's very well established that state educated kids to better at uni than privately educated kids with the same A level grades

If you would read beyond the newspaper headlines and look at the actual paper you would see that the actual conclusion of HEFCE's paper is:

"For all but those with the very highest A-level grades, state school graduates tend to have higher degree outcomes than independent school graduates with the same prior educational attainment" (my emphasis)

If you would look at the data, you would see that the paper reports no statistical difference in the 2:1 or better outcomes for those children with AAA or better. As about 13% of university applicants were getting AAA or better, and Oxbridge educate closer to 1.3% of UK university students, it's a pretty safe bet that nearly all Oxbridge students fall into the category of AAA or better, so this particular study has little relevance to students at Oxbridge.

Exactly..so for anyone with decent A levels its not true,but doubtless people will keep repeating it just as they keep repeating the 7% go private line and ignoring at A level its actually nearer 18%

In answer to OP's original question - the answer is yes. The head at a top super selective said a few weeks back (when offers started coming out) that they are getting 5% less Oxbridge offers every year. This, however, has had knock on effect to other top uni's with those kids taking up places (as has been the case at the super selective mentioned here), which could make them harder to get into for state school kids? Could this lead to a levelling out of the top tier universities?

Also, as NewModelArmyMayhem18 said the advantage with a private school comes later on with contacts. Friend with a son who went to a grammar school (not London/Surrey) at Cambridge said there is a marked difference in the career savvy ness and contacts between her son and his private school friends at uni. However, this will be balanced out by top city firms (finance, law etc) increasingly selecting from state school, whether grammar or comp.

Maybe the kids at middle range private schools will feel the squeeze more than the top private schools?

Interestingly my DS and his mates don’t see Oxford and Cambridge as the best Unis at all.

They are all into engineering/tech and would prefer Imperial or Loughborough or Bath (or US Unis). They are a bit dismissive of Cambridge as their Engineering degree is very broad (general) and they all want to specialise in electronics or aeronautical or similar. Not sure Oxford offers engineering at all.

They are all bright kids at State comps, hoping for A*s and As and non of them have applied to Oxbridge

Thought that was interesting (am from abroad myself and I thought Oxford or Cambridge must be the best! As famous and old institutions)

Just looked it up to educate myself and apparently Oxford is top for engineering , ha! I clearly know nothing...

So maybe the kids I mentioned above are typical for self-selecting out of Oxbridge (they are Asian and Eastern European mostly and all state Ed)

Even the ones with straight 9s at GCSE and heading for top grades did not apply

That's interesting and yes Oxbridge is great for the topics you mentioned. Cambridge is one of the top universities in the world for machine learning and AI.

Cambridge (the area) has become a very important global tech hub with a strong relationship between industry and the university.

@BrideofBideford

Interestingly my DS and his mates don’t see Oxford and Cambridge as the best Unis at all.

They are all into engineering/tech and would prefer Imperial or Loughborough or Bath (or US Unis). They are a bit dismissive of Cambridge as their Engineering degree is very broad (general) and they all want to specialise in electronics or aeronautical or similar. Not sure Oxford offers engineering at all.

They are all bright kids at State comps, hoping for A*s and As and non of them have applied to Oxbridge

Thought that was interesting (am from abroad myself and I thought Oxford or Cambridge must be the best! As famous and old institutions)

They may be onto something else tho... Oxbridge life can be weirdly monastic. Short intense terms. Other unis offer other things like years in industry and abroad for subjects other than languages. DD did maths at Durham abs is fairly sure she has time to other things she might not have at Oxford. So they may be maki g v rational decisions on subjects which let's face it have high rates of employability for most universities.

In London I'm not sure postcodes necessarily are a good assessment of background particularly if you have parents who work in public sector jobs. The girl who is doing medicine at Cambridge who we know (who didn't get into a super-selective at 11) lives in a 'poor' postcode. However, her parents are both professionals and her father did at least some of his post-graduate studies at Cambridge and has a PhD. That is not unusual.

I mean not necessarily to have a mismatch between parental achievement and where a family lives!

Looks like someone at the Times has read this thread. There's an article on it this morning! Behind a firewall I'm afraid.

They may be onto something else tho... Oxbridge life can be weirdly monastic. Short intense terms.
Other unis offer other things like years in industry and abroad for subjects other than languages.
DD did maths at Durham abs is fairly sure she has time to other things she might not have at Oxford.
So they may be maki g v rational decisions on subjects which let's face it have high rates of employability for most universities.

Has it really changed so much? My memory of Oxford is garden parties along the river, punting, cocktails in fellows' gardens, all-night balls or techno raves in clubs run by boys at Christchurch, Pimms on the river in eights week, theatre productions in college gardens, as well as lectures and seminars and intensive tutorials, days in gorgeous libraries and exams. Even the medical students and historians who worked notoriously harder than anyone else joined in most of this. It was work very hard and play very hard. I hope someone comes along to say it is still like this (outside of lockdown, obv) as I'd hate state school students to be put off from applying.