Parent of oxbridge candidate-peersupportneeded

[funnyperson]

OK so my DD is applying to Oxford for entry in 2011 and has a 75% chance of getting rejected so I am told by the Oxford website so I reckon a new thread would be helpful for us parents who may end up with joy or grief but in any event need to keep sane enough to support our loved ones. Any tips on maximising chances of success at this stage?

Ponders sorry -none of the young ones are types they are all individuals. For some reason I was thinking of Under Milk Wood, I don't know why, perhaps the way in which stories about individuals in a microcosm (such as a mumsnet chat thread) can sometimes appear to be a reflection of the wider world.

My DS is the introvert bit of that type - he and Ponders DS are obviously being rolled into one candidate given same course/same college.

I am somewhat perturbed at the number of PPE candidiates mums on here - it does support the view that being invited for interview is just one hurdle for PPE and the finishing line is still a way off, whereas for other subjects the interview is more of a formality. Or is there something about parents of PPE children which makes them more likely to visit internet networking sites...?

DS is applying for PPE everywhere, which means he is applying for the same set of universities he applied for last year ( once you discount London - for the same reason as optimistic mumma - there's a finite list of PPE unis). He's not get any offers yet, but told me that his offer from Warwick last year came five days after he was rejected by Oxford, his best mates offer from LSE came three days after he was rejected from Oxford. Not that the universiteies talk to each other or anything....

Optimistic mumma - you're on the CFS thread aren;t you - now that's spooky ....

True, I think I got the two boys mixed up.
Another way to look at it is if DC has a PPE interview thats really good because from what can gather there have been quite a few rejects due to massive oversubscription and the TSA threshold being subsequently raised.
Agree in general though that the interview is crucial and the fat lady hasn't sung yet.

Imperial College London divide applicants for medicine into 4 groups: Nov/Jan/Mar/Reject in order of merit. There is large overlap between the Nov group and Oxbridge medicine applicants but because candidates are only allowed to accept one medical school place the successful Oxbridge candidates generally turn down Imperial come January so the Jan group get their interviews and offers. Some of the Jan group decide to accept a place at Nottingham or UCL or wherever so then the remainder of places available go to the March group. There is no direct communication between Imperial and Oxbridge. UCLHMS offer places independently of Oxbridge as far as I am aware.
I get annoyed because some great candidates will act as though there are only 4 medical schools in the UK (Oxbridge/Imperial/UCLHMS/Nottingham) and risk 4 rejections whereas there are fantastic medical schools all over the UK

Immense thought goes into the selection process for medical schools, and effort into standardising the interviews. As a result it is not very difficult to select successful candidates. I must admit the individual variation for interviews described by those in the know on this thread for other subjects has surprised me, although it is possible that this is just the way it comes across. Perhaps it is because most applicants discussed here have been the social sciences or arts.

hello all just spotted this and you were US this time last year iyswim

DS did wear a suit btw and said he felt just right - collarless shirt. He was cold though

his interviews were

1. AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL - barking questions on molecular structure to him...
2. good

they were 100% academic - nothing personal

A boy in the food hall the day before his interview said to him ' unless you come out of your interview wanting to die - you are NOT in'

For the large part this seemed to be true. Loads of the people with a 'lovely' or 'good' interview did not get places...

DS rang me after his interviews and i put the phone dow and cried ...
He got his first choice college

fp - Perhaps I didn't make myself too clearly. My original posting on this thread was about a group of boys leaving for Oxford this Sunday, almost all of them going for the same course, PPE but not necessarily the same College. It is made known to me as early as in the summer that many of these boys in this particular group are only going for this one course at this one university only. But I did say this particular group has a proven track record, dare I say, perhaps the most academic guys in the land. Without question, they are the super elite of the school ? the King?s Scholars! So it is not fair to suggest that the school is not advising properly; they are individuals and they know precisely what they are doing, obviously knowing full well the risk they are taking and I don't believe the school can change their minds even if it tries!

But I can?t say the entire school cohort is doing the same, i.e. applying to only one university. Indeed, quite a few parents I know are saying they are not trying for Oxbridge at all. But I will soon find out what is the normal average number of boys (out of 260?ish) trying Oxbridge annually.

theholly - yes I am on the CFS thread because of my DD. Why spooky?
Am getting very twitchy about another snow day - we are up to about 14 inches now! DS was going to the girls' grammar for a 'practice interview' tomorrow but I can't see it happening...oh well....

ponders - 'proximity issue' - I mean just that. We live too far away and Edinburgh looks at how far you are - not necessarily if you are in Scotland or not I don't think! School told us that they had had fewer and fewer boys getting being offered even though they were of the same calibre!!

Funnyperson

I am not posting where ds goes to school although anyone who knows me will find it easy enough to figure .
They got 33 boys into Oxbridge last year ... 200 in the last 5 years. They are quite good at the science / maths thing although ds1 is into English Latin and art.

I am ducking out of this for a while as I realise the very things that make me wary of the whole Oxbridge proces are raising their heads.
My mum was dragged out of school at age 10 when her mother died .. She was left uneducated and unemployable because in Ireland back then women had to look after the males.
She and my dad raised 8 of us and encouraged a love of education and reading. I did ok, got A levels and now my son may not only go to uni but also to Oxford, a place I grew up next to but which seemed far removed from my life.

I came on here to read a bit about the process and hopefully share nerves and info, even gossip.

If it is going descend into superior wanky lecturing about how Eton really is the best daaaahling like some kind of middle class pissing contest then I am off.

Good luck all.

this particular group has a proven track record, dare I say, perhaps the most academic guys in the land.

Clever boys, yes, but you must admit you are being a bit of a silly billy with this comment aren't you?

optimisticmama sorry if what I posted came across rudely. I said spooky only because of the parallels between us - both to have sons currently applying to Oxford for PPE and both having DDs suffering from horrid Chronic Fatigue.

Eek the snow!....

PS meant to say top tip - make sure DD/DS takes an alarm/ sets phone on the alarm. The loveliest girl, a friend of DD1, overslept for her interview because the college was so much quieter than home (she had lots of younger siblings!)....

My advice would be to be prepared to talk about anything in the interview. They range from the purely "on topic" to the truly bizarre, depending on how the interviewer is feeling.

I spent weeks swotting up on current affairs ("Isnt it terrible about Chechnya" etc).

Ended up talking about supermarket chickens.

I got in.

Pagwatch, I know where you are coming from :)

At my DCs' state grammar school they had more successful applications to Oxford than to any other university (and they ALL go to Russell Group ones).

My DN was one of the successful ones and now in his first year.

He was just himself at the interview. He is a nice, modest, quiet but extremely clever boy and that is what came over, and that is what the admision tutors saw and presumably why they offered him a place.

Everyone on the admissions panel were pleasant and helpful to him, no 'trick' questions etc. There were many overly confident applicants but they didn't get the offers in the end. I think some of those sorts of candidates are genuinely shocked to find that there are other applicants who are as clever, or even more so, as they are!!! (and yes, there is someone from Eton on his course, but there was also at my DS1's RG university so they don't all get into Oxford.....).

Comixminx, here is one link talking about proportions of firsts, I'll find something more rigorous in a bit...

www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=400190&sectioncode=26

I read PPP 86-89. yes I really enjoyed it, especially the philosophy and especially towards the end, when I wondered why I'd spent 2.5 years doing the minimum work needed when in fact I enjoyed the work. I was originally applying for PPE but was a bit turned off by the links with party political ambition, and philosophy was the subject I really cared about.

I didn't see any point in aiming for a first cos in my view the only thing you needed a first for was if you went on to do a PhD and they were for losers who couldn't face the real world.

And as for what I did after. ahem.
lots of Tefling and travelling and tour guiding in Tahiti, and then a Ph.D. and academia.

Comimix and Bink's dh, what did you/dh do after PPP? You don't meet many PPPers but I think quite a few end up as academics.

Another link, scroll down to the second graph.
I haven't got the data yet for the last 20/30 years, this is just for the last decade or so. but I know the trend was there before as it's quite well known and discussed.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/10557068

While not wanting to perpetuate the pro/against-eton bunfight, the King's scholars should beware. They often come across exceedingly badly in interviews and are rejected accordingly. The problem perhaps being that they are over-prepared by their school and underprepared by their themselves.

I have a good idea where you're coming from too, Pagwatch.

Woah Pagwatch, don't go. You have reminded me that one has to be careful of invading personal privacy on internet threads. I don't know you in real life but you sound like you have a great deal of gumption and staying power to me.
Oxford is not Eton. Though some Etonians go to Oxford not all Oxonians are Etonians.
KIngs Scholars are only as bright as the other very bright children in the country. They just have the (dis)advantage of being hothoused in a place which drove one of them to suicide ten years ago. Anyway an Oxford admissions tutor when faced with two very bright children this year might reason that the Etonian/Westminster pupil could well afford the high tuition fees next year and not offer them the place. Even a Kings Scholar has to pay up massively for the schooling at Eton. An admissions tutor might think that the schools which instilled a blinkered elitist arrogant ethos into David Cameron and yes man Nick Clegg could take a little rebuking from academia.
But thats just my opinion.

Fennel, thanks for the links - blimey, a steeper change than I would have thought!

I really enjoyed PPP too - I did Philosophy and Psychology as my two (for those that don't know - it's a course that list three subjects but you choose two out of them - hardly anyone would choose Phil & Physiology though it's strictly possible, but Phil & Psych, or Psych & Phys, would be normal). It was good to do a mixture of science and and humanities - that matched the sort of split I did at A level. It's hard though because the two different faculties didn't necessarily share the workload equally, so you might get more work than someone doing a single course IYSWIM. Philosophy was frustrating and very hard but extremely rewarding when it went "click" in my head at the beginning of third year. Psychology was always more straightforward - also hard in its own way but not half as frustrating. With Philosophy there was always a lot of struggling with fine shades of meaning and concepts.

After college I got a job at Oxf Univ Press, working in publishing of philosophy books. Am still there now, but as a business analyst, which is a computing systems sort of job. I reckon the philosophy / analytical thinking has done me very well over the years!

And Fennel, that means we overlapped, at least by a year! I was there from 1988-91. I was at Queens so got quite a lot of focus on Human Information Processing cos my college tutor (McLeod) was in that area.

Well I think we've ascertained (though of course we can't generalise from a small sample like this) that PPP-ers like to ignore the main topic and dig around in stats.

Yes PPP was mroe work than just the Experimental Psych course, and they did warn us actually that if you wanted a first you should switch to single honours psych as there are more firsts in single honours.

But I also liked the mix of science/arts/humanities in PPP. It was a good subject if you were equally keen on arts and sciences.

'An admissions tutor might think that the schools which instilled a blinkered elitist arrogant ethos into David Cameron and yes man Nick Clegg could take a little rebuking from academia.'

It's supposed to be about potential, not whether you like alumni of a particular school.

I have just realised that the element of competition here is colouring my view- Oh dear- I am beginning to feel a bit tired, but still have to gear up for the long haul. I am quite proud of being a mum just at this point though. Pride goes before a fall though.