Support thread for anyone applying through UCAS this year

[Lorelai]

Following on from a thread in chat I thought I would start this so that we can hold each others' hands through the UCAS process with all its challenges.

Who's with me?

It wasn't till the very day of ds' interview that dh and I realised it might have been sensible to consider the entrance procedure of each college and calculate how that would suit ds; eg, pre-test then interview; one interview or two; or variations on that theme. The problem is that college choice is mahoosively complex. Also at the outset we didn't know that deer parks were not necessarily a good thing.

The admissions procedure for Medicine at Oxford means that college choice is as marginalised as it could possibly be. Arts and Humanities (which I think sieglinde has said that she's in) are at the opposite end of the spectrum, but even within those subjects there are varying degrees of centralisation. I think it's fair to say that those colleges which tend to get most applications have historically always been good at re-allocating good applicants. Sometimes all applicants for a particular subject at a less popular college will be rejected pre-interview and replaced by better applicants shipped in from other colleges. It may not be perfect but I don't believe that there's too much scope for tactics to facilitate an easy way in. sieglinde?

At DD's school they invite students to apply for the posts of Head Boy/Girl plus deputies then proceed to give the posts to the students deemed most likely to get in to Oxbridge.
The rest assume they might as well not bother and they certainly won't get advice.

I am deeply depressed by the ignorance and prejudice shown here about all things deery. DFS is almost as upset as he was when his mum... well, you know.

Having missed out on the age of development, either because they were already rich enough or they were too unworldly, the maudlin' dons are stuck with 5 ha of land that would otherwise be worth £25m but which they now have to keep up.

Running it as conventional garden parkland would be expensive and a bit dull, so pasturage is actually a sensible option. But modern domesticated livestock have had the hardiness bred out of them in favour of productivity, so require a high level of management, veterinary intervention in reproduction etc. Those breeds which require least management are the upland breeds (Scotch Blackface sheep, Welsh Black & Galloway cattle etc) which are tempermentally unsuited to urban farming and physiologically unsuited to lush lowland pasture.

Deer, on the other hand, as wild animals retain their native hardiness and require minimal management. They therefore provide an ecologically sound and economically viable method of managing high profile parkland with minimal intervention: the most obvious example of this is Fenton Richmond Park.

I assume that the prejudice against the deer in the Grove comes from the assumption that they are inalienably a symbol of toffs & stately homes etc. This conveniently ignores the facts, that toffs tend to understand better than townies how nature works, and are generally pretty hard-up in their own way, so have long since cottoned onto the fact that herds of deer are a very efficient way of managing areas of parkland, especially as they are also very tasty (though don't let DFS know I said that).

I see.

I think the deer are charming. The CCF from DS school smuggled in a gun to try and shoot them. Horrid school. Avoid it like the plague. All new money.

The college itself I thought rather spooky though the history subject tutor there is, according to DS, amazing. One of DD friends reads English there and says it is amazing. The singing is the magical thing about that college, I have been there on May morning when young.

I echo what Sieglinde says about subject tutors. DS wasn't allowed by his school to apply to the college where he thought the subject tutor most amazing and got on well with him (Queens) : says it all about his school, really. He met the tutors on the faculty open day where you could listen to talks and then go round the colleges and meet the subject tutors. Fantastic day. The tutors varied so much. Such different areas of interest and very different personalities.

btw good luck for history resits. DS got 100% in his history AS module resit. It is possible apparently.

One of DD's friends didn't get a second interview and went to the faculty admissions or college admissions office (I'm not sure which) the day the notices were up and asked why not and he got a second interview and got in. I thought I would let you know. His friend who also asked the same question and so also got a second interview didn't get in.

London is a great place to study history and economics. Phenomenal libraries, excellent tutors, lots going on. (Too much going on) Great classmates. DS very very happy there.

History resit seems to have gone better thankyou all .Very impressed by 100% funnyperdon don't think we are quite in that league for this paper (altho' he did get 100% in RS last year),I am depressed about how formulaic the whole thing is .I think the premise of the source paper is good but the Mark scheme reDs like a rick box .

Thanks for the interesting and informative agronomics lesson Bambi'sMum! Land Economy anyone?

Ok, lots to address here.

In my subject - yes, humanities - no, not telling - success rates for top pre-interview candidates by college vary from 45% success to over 80% success - so yes, it makes a huge difference still. Naturally Oxford is unkeen to tell people this. Yes, in medicine and law the differentials are reduced. Anyone with any doubts can ASK the chosen college what % of people who applied there last year got a place. If they decline say you will make a Freedom of Information request. The data is digitised, and they should comply.

Sorry for all those hoping that a few nicker in a brown envelope will do it. :) We do have a few donors who thought like this in the past, though not apt to give me the money personally, :( and I've taken or rejected their scions on the same basis as everyone else's... ie, are they good enough? I've never been pressured about this in any way.

Schools are wrong to say they mustn't send two candidates to the same college. NOBODY GIVES A MONKEY'S. Apply to the college YOU WANT. Schools just won't be told.

As said, get on to the SUBJECT TUTOR in an individual college for advice, and bypass everyone else.

Good luck to all of you. Message me if I can be of further use - must now go and teach those here already.

Omg ds1has letter from his tip top choice,(last year 250applicants 18places)it's a large one and just checked TSR and people are getting interview letters
Texted to see if he wants me to open it but quite reasonably he says he'll open later

Fingers crossed mrswoodentop. TSR is such a useful resources isn't it!

sieglinde, I wonder if you could explain exactly what you mean by success rates for top pre-interview candidates? You mean top according to scores assigned to written work, pre-tests, GCSE's etc.? And success at what stage? The admissions processes for sciences other than Medicine are different again.

I think if one of my DC were particularly keen on a college reluctant to release the data I might advise them not to be a pain about a request under the FIA. I'd rather they picked a college on the basis of one they liked and didn't attempt a numbers game, particularly if they've got to be uppity to get those numbers. I'm not sure it makes a great impression to appear to be seeking the softest way in. I would also say that a rejection after having played that sort of game can often be harder to take.

funny did the school steer him away from Queen's because another student had opted for it first? Or was it for a different reason? On a practical level, if a student is concerned about alienating his school, remember that the reference will already be written at the critical time, so it's not a particular risk to put down whichever campus code you like - and very unlikely a school will scrutinise the completed UCAS form that closely (incredibly busy time of year, campus codes are the least of their problems!).

mrsw which subject? (I know, I should scroll back....). Looking good!

Another confirmed TSR lurker here! A poster there called FluteFlute has put in lots of Freedom of Information requests to Oxford and other universities asking for detailed admissions information, and has collated the results in spreadsheets which are freely available on The Student Room. I think if you did a search on his name there you'd find them fairly easily. From memory, he has a spreadsheet showing total applications to each college for each subject, which is not otherwise published. How useful it would be is another matter.

For what it's worth, at the Oxford History Faculty Open Day last year the admissions people (one academic, one administrator) said that for History, shortlisting for interview in 2011 would be based on two things only: performance in the History Aptitude Test (weighted at 70%) and GCSE performance (weighted at 30%). They aimed to interview about 2/3 of all applicants. The personal statement, school's reference and predicted A level grades would then be considered during/after the interview phase. This info wasn't published on the website, as far as I could see, and it would be worthwhile for any history applicants for 2013 to check whether this is still the case. Preparing for the HAT is important and from skimming TSR I don't think all applicants fully grasped that.

It's interesting to hear the insider's view from Sieglinde, as Oxford has been keen to say that no one should be at any disadvantage from college choice, because of the pooling system. Not always true, then?

Yep, all those things mashed together, Yellow, with contextual factors allowed to modify them. By success I mean receiving an offer. I know a bit about science applications because ds will be doing one this year. maths and physics desummon quite viciously on the basis of their pre-tests, irrespective of exam outcomes in GCSE and AS.

Yellow, I admire your idealism, but frankly it is idealism. Your dcs can make any kind of choice they like, but a reminder might be in order that nobody ever seems to reject their second-choice college if it offers and their first choice one doesn't. There is therefore SOMETHING to be said for knowing the odds; if you choose to ignore them, that's your choice.

BLUNTLY, and all over again, everyone is at liberty to choose in whatever way they like, but some might like at least to be aware of the effect they are having on the likely outcome of the application. That just seems to me a basic right - and schools in all sectors are STILL directing kids haplessly to oversubscribed colleges BECAUSE neither they nor the kids really understand the interior workings of the system. If you really like a college you might be willing to take the risk, but lots of applicants are still jabbing a pin in a list when they might just as well put in for somewhere else they like just as much. This isn't 'playing the system'. It kicks in when the candidate doesn't mind desperately about college choice, but about Oxford - and this IME is most of them.

I am not saying there are ANY soft ways in - just less ridiculously hard ones. You still need great GCSEs and predicted A*s and As to be shortlisted for ANY college, and then you need brilliant written work, and a good pretest score.. and great interview scores, everywhere. But at some colleges there are 50 people who have those things competing for 10 places, and at others there are 25. Yes, there's reallocation; yes, there are second interviews, but even so your chances are still numerically worse.

yellow not sure I should give too much away ,as ds deserves bit of privacybut suffice to say that it is a politics related course at a RG university but includes a prestigious placement.Last year they interviewed 45 for 18 places so pleased he got this far,of course he could open the envelope to find he has been rejected or has been offered a place on their standard course.

We found out a lot of detail on admissions for this course through someones freedom of information request ,for example there is no point applying for this course and their standard politics course because in previous years candidates have been automatically considered for both,in fact he had a letter to this effect after he applied but they don't tell you that before and he may have been tempted to go this route as he liked both.

Yes, thanks woodentop. The point is that some people like to have as much info as possible - and why should this be denied them?

Big envelopes almost always bode well mrsw :) Didn't mean to pry.

Well obviously each to their own but surely the open app route is more calculated to lead to success then sieglinde, if college is immaterial? A previous year's numbers may look persuasive but all it takes is a blip, and blips definitely happen.

LondonMother I don't think there's any secret about those twin criteria. They're widely stated at all the open days, both the departmental one and the university wide ones in the summer. Students all know the HAT is crucial but there's only so much they can do. Since they have to put their best foot forward in every respect, does the sifting formula for interview much matter at the end of the day?

I don't know that it does, Yellowstone, but finding that out was the deciding factor for my son to apply for Oxford rather than Cambridge, as he didn't have to disclose his AS grades for Oxford. They were good, but not stratospheric, particularly for History, and he thought he stood a better chance of getting an interview with the HAT and GCSE assessment.

It did surprise me that they didn't put those criteria on the website as anyone who couldn't make it to an Open Day would have been out of the loop.

LondonMother the different methods used by Oxford and Cambridge can be absolutely crucial, I completely agree. The two are often very misleadingly conflated.

No, no, Yellow. NEVER do an open application. It's not well administered, I'm afraid. I've known people doing an open app being sent to a college with only two places.

And actually success rates in my discipline are very consistent across many years. Blips don't happen often - and you can ask to see 5 years of data if you are really concerned.

On a different note, he's still waiting for the last of his five UCAS applications to be decided on. I hadn't realised till now that you can't register your firm or insurance choices until all five decisions are back - the only way to do that now would be to withdraw from no. 5, which he wouldn't want to do as it might be his insurance choice. I suppose it's no big deal but it would be nice to have this all done and dusted.

Yellow didn't think you were prying just worrying a bit about discussing his business on an Internet forum !

Sounds like a very good day in the Woodentop household. V. pleased for you if it is indeed what you're hoping for.

Londonmother, is that right that you must withdraw from No. 5 in order to confirm your first and insurance choice, if you haven't heard from No. 5 [cough, cough, Durham]?

Re college choice, Sieglinde, state schools really do need to know not to recommend an open application, because they most certainly do.

I insisted dh and ds "do the math" and then explain it to me over and over in choosing a college; all the info was there on the websites, though, no need for FOI requests. You are right, of course, Yellowstone, that there can be blips however. TSR are quite funny re this: "why are so many of us applying to x?" when of course TSR is not the whole world. Just like MN isn't.