Dd told she should be thinking Oxbridge

[asdx2]

Dd y12 was invited to attend the applying for Oxbridge chat yesterday at school.
She was a little bemused as she isn't really sure of just how good she is but went along anyway and is open minded to the idea.
She is still unsure about what she would study at any uni. Her A2s are Maths, Further Maths, History and Economics predicted at least A in them all probably a couple of A*
So why should she consider Oxbridge as a serious option?

If she is thinking of doing something Maths-y at Cambridge she will need to sit STEP

"I would hazard a guess that teaching and learning opportunities are better at Oxbridge than the top 4 London unis (a bit) and many Russell Group unis (a bit more) mostly because of who ends up doing the teaching/marking," - not sure that's true, Wilf. DH taught at Cambridge for a while as a postdoc, and other friends work/have worked there - high contact hours and small group teaching made possible by high use of postgrad/postdoc teaching - the big names have lots of research time, and so often are not the ones doing the teaching/marking. Resources such as libraries etc are definitely very very good in Oxford and Cambridge, but you don't necessarily need everything, esp at UG level.

Habbs, yeah. Deffo a reason to study at a tinpot mediocre university like mine where there are precious few PhDs/postdocs and insufficient research funding or funds to buy in tutorial staff... So at least you'll be taught by actual lecturers, research active even if they are mediocre.

Well tis very seductive. I had an interview at Newnham college but failed for some reason! And walking about there gave me such an addiction to the place that I couldn't watch Chariot's of Fire without crying for a whole decade

So either go for it with an expectation of success or go for rebrick and the pretence of working class solidarity

I think that she should seriously consider it. It is a life regret of dh's that he didn't apply (he had the sort of background where going to Oxbridge would not have crossed his parents' minds). He had the A Level grades, just not the confidence. He ended up at Bristol and was very academically successful there - however with age and maturity he has realised that Oxbridge would have opened far more doors to him.

Wishing your dd luck with whatever she decides .

I went to cambridge, enjoyed it immensely, but certainly never used my degree. However, that could equally be said of any university I guess. Did English and have ended up working with the homeless!

OrmIrian - I think Newnham made a big mistake.

I seriously thought about turning down Cambridge for London, because the course in London was better for my subject, but in the end career considerations and the attraction of student life at Cambridge won out. I think living in a smaller place where you are surrounded by other students makes for a more intense experience - being a student somewhere like London may keep you more in touch with the real world, but you're going to end up there sooner or later anyway...

As I expected, my course was more old-fashioned than it would have been in London, but there was a lot more small group/one-to-one teaching, which was great. And I deliberately chose a big, rich college so I could take advantage of book grants, travel grants, scholarships etc. I think a lot of Oxbridge colleges are also able to help out now that students have to pay fees and higher living costs.

And yes, a lot of teaching is done by PhD students/research fellows, but there are also plenty of opportunities to be in contact with inspirational people at the top of their subjects.

Thing is though, Wilf, there's a whole world of univs between Oxford/Cambridge and a tinpot institution, but the impression is sometimes given that there isn't! What I was trying to say is that I think people often have the impression that they'll be taught by the stellar names at Ox/Cam, but the names have the jobs because they don't have to teach. In other univ you will be much more likely to be taught by the big names, even if there aren't quite so many of them.

Of course she should consider it (along with other options). Her uncertainty demonstrates exactly why there aren't as many state school pupils at Oxbridge as there should be - I bet that if she were at a private school she would not be hesitiating about considering it.

apologies for largely irrelevant tangent. ds driving me demented...

roquefort - Good point. I think state school pupils would have a bigger presence if they applied more. I think success is broadly proportionate to the number of applicants for both state and private pupils since everyone who applies is of approx the right calibre.

I think you will find that in good deparmetns of most Russell Group/1994 group universities you are unlikely to be taught much by the stellar names. (DS at Russell group university on highly rated course found he was largely taught by uninterested foreign post grads with a shaky command of spoken English).
At least at Oxford and Cambridge there is still a tutorial/supervision system where you see your tutor and have to produce written work regularly. (Do let me know if that is wrong - then my disillusion with higher education will be complete!)

She should definitely consider applying. I've never regretted the fact I considered Cambridge and I don't regret applying. But I don't regret turning down the place either because at the end of the day it wasn't for me.

What I would have regretted is never giving myself that chance and spending the rest of my life going 'but what if...?'

If she considers them and thinks it's really not her sort of thing then she's at least looked at it.
If she applies and gets rejected then she tried her best and she gave it a go.
If she gets accepted she can think about it some more and she can decide what she wants to do.

omrian - your post breaks my heart
did you recover eventually?

Lily, I wasn't being entirely fair (ds screaming for ages put me in bad mood), but the reason the stellar names like Ox/Cam is that they have to do practically no teaching, and have lots of time and resource for research. In RG and 1994 gp unis many will fund funds to buy themselves out as well, but proportionately it's less than at Ox/Cam. The tutorial system still exists, afaik, and that's where much of the PG/Postdoc teaching takes place - many other univs have similar systems, albeit in larger groups - it varies hugely according to univ, department, course, etc.

I think I may sound chippy here, and I don't mean to be - Oxford and Cambridge can be perfect for some people/courses, but the gap between a particular course there and elsewhere can really be quite small - there really isn't such a huge gulf between "oxbridge" and "the rest" (which isn't necessarily redbrick, btw - I should start a pedants corner thread on that). There is undoubtedly a perception in some quarters that Ox/Cam graduates are special, and that can be an employment advantage, but the truth is that it's all much more varied, and there are some excellent departments all over the country.

takver you have scared me with your Peterhouse comment for my state educated child!

Otter - I don't think it's like that AT ALL. Oxbridge entrance is extremely transparent. Imagine the outrage if it was discovered that Peterhouse, Cambridge, hadn't admitted a state school boy since 1624.

No, I think I'd agree with Habbibu that there isn't such a huge difference between Ox/Cam and other Universities as people sometimes like to think - as the guy in charge of the Cambridge Admissions said the other day.

But maths at Cambridge did seem to me to be for people who are naturally brilliant mathematicians - there seemed to be a point half-way through the course at which some hard-working and able students just stopped being able to 'get it' anymore. I'm not trying to put your daughter off Cambridge altogether, although it sounds like it, but more to say that when I was an undergraduate, there the maths course seemed to be very different to all the other courses, in that there seemed to be certain threshhold concepts that either students got easily, or they did never got, whereas on other courses, if you worked hard, you were ok.

< an aside - the thought of maths at any university makes me feel ill - no ^really!>

Dunno if things have changed lots since 1995 but in my time at Oxf we had tutorials with the 'big names' (such as they were..!!?) in both my subjects, with Post Docs etc doing grammar etc and some basic stuff (which counts for less in an Oxford language degree than in most other places).

I would say only one of the big names made any difference to my overall learning experience, and that I wouldn't have had a clue who he was until actually being instructed to read his book.

although i did do statistics as part of my course and that was fine - but you do tend to feel maths at that level is for the genius amongst us

This is a link to the top 100 universities int he world. I'm not sure how they've managed to measure but it's interesting and puts Oxford below a few UK institutions.

DH pointed out that a huge number of univs on that list are Anglophone, Swedes, which is curious - may be accurate or display selection bias. League tables are all a bit mad, really.

ds said ucl quoted that list at his interview

i only scanned it but could not find Durham...