Looking for the helpful Cambridge admissions tutor who posted a while age..

[seeker]

......if you're around, could I ask a couple of questions, please?

For what it's worth and I'm talking a few decades ago, I know someone who was in Division 2 in Maths/French at a grammar school. A diligent child but never regarded by peers as one of the 'bright ones'. She did get some As in her O Levels and the rest were Bs but certainly she didn't get 14 O Levels as the brightest cohort did. She managed to get into Oxford to read English (so a tall order!) no problems...

Word! A* is quite hard to get! Last year it was 3.4% in Eng Lang, 5.8 in Maths, 10.7 in French and the same in History. Double award Science 5.7.

These are bumped up inLatin (33.7). Add maths (18.5) and separate Sciences (physics 19 and Chem 20) but it is the highest in the cohort who take these.

My own three have had a run of A* at GCSE/IGCSE at a selective school and young relatives have had 8 or 9 at a nice but unremarkable rural comp. I know it can be done in both sectors but it isn't that easy, really.

The thing is that it's not entirely about academic rigour, though is it? We have family friends where the Mum was most put out that her DS didn't get an offer from Cambridge although his school friend (who according to the friend was nowhere near as clever as her DS) got into Oxford. But we all know examples of this...It seems that the Admissions Tutors are looking for that extra elusive quality which doesn't always appear on a personal statement or actual/predicted grades....

And when you have socialised and known a lot of Oxbridge graduates (as SIL is) they are generally fiercely clever in a way that leaves the rest of us looking positive academic slouches.....

The extra elusive quality (or lack thereof) is sometimes just luck.

Well yes it could just translate as 'clickability' with the Admissions Tutor

Slip I didn't want to say it was easy to get an A*. But the average is about 7% achieving one, no?

I would expect an applicant to Oxbridge to come wihtin that highest tier.

I'm not saying they need to have a full hand of A*s. I do accept slippage happens on the day (particularly for those students taking lineat IGCSEs and GCSEs) and I also wouldn't worry if a potential physicist got a B in art!

But I do think a decent slwe of A*s would be requisite.

gazz with an abundance of applicants, all displaying academic prowess, often the choice of who gets an offer can seem arbitrary.

And although it isn't arbitary, it does often take things into account over which the student has no control.

Some admissions tutors like their students to be highly articulate. Others will work around it. Some will lean towards a student who seems very serious, others will prefer the more serious types.

Admissions tutors afterall are just people.

I agree a good handful is requisite for Oxbridge, though to be one of three in 100 to get A* in English Lang is tough - about 5 get it in Lit. However Oxbridge say they are after the top 3% in broad Ability terms. This isn't very many children.

in reality, top grades are not won in large numbers, easily? That's all I mean.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1AQaFcn_rI

Well let's hope this Don, talking at the start of the clip, isn't in admissions!

Comparing percentage success rates at A* GCSE isn't very useful, given that practically every teenager takes English Language but very few take French or Latin. One would expect higher percentages of top grades in "elective" GCSEs versus "standard".

Clearly there's a difference between being in the top 3% for a single subject and managing to be in the top few % in each and every subject, or even the majority of subjects, across a spectrum of subjects. Especially when the exams are all taken as linear in a single sitting. The percentages of those achieving that narrow further than the top 3%, which is why not everyone at Oxford and Cambridge achieve it, or there would be empty seats. Of course it doesn't explain those endless stories of the 12A* applicants who were shown the door....

'One would expect higher percentages of top grades in 'elective' GCSEs versus 'standard'

I thought that I pointed that out when I said the highest achieving of the cohort would take subjects like Add Maths and Latin. I was trying to counter an impression that I get (perhaps from other discussions) that strings of A grades are fairly common among the population and that schools which don't have lots of A s are failing. Perhaps some are, but in practice, hitting the top grade across a large number of subjects is an achievement that shouldn't be taken as a given.

Wordfactory - the reasons bright students don't always get A* grades at GCSE are nothing to do with difficulty of the exam.

littlefrieda I agree.

And within reason Oxbridge will acommodate/contextualise.

But there comes a point where it is not the universities job to resolve school level/societal failings!

When SIL applied to Cambridge, one of the Admissions Tutors (to a college she didn't receive an offer from), remarked upon the tightness of her suit - seriously.......

Word factory - it is their job if they want the brightest pupils.

It isn't you know.

It's their job to find smart people who have the necessary skills/aptitude/persnoality and will thrive. It's their job to find the right match.

Gazzalw, that would not happen now.

Yes, I know but shocking nevertheless.... this was in the 80s....

Just to say that all of SIL's female Cambridge friends are a very sparky, feisty, vocal and successful lot (know less about her male cohort), even though they haven't all gone down the traditional City routes. They just have an aura about them which I think they all had when they got offers to go there.

Incidentally, just to show how O Level/GCSE grades have changed. When we did them, even at very, very good grammar schools it was just about unheard of for even the very, very bright pupils to get more than 6/7 As (amongst their clutch of 13/14 O Levels). Twixt me and DW we can only think of one pupil within our peer groups who managed to get all As.

I think the Admissions Tutors know their job and know what that 'elusive quality' is that they are looking for. I'm not sure they often get it wrong, are you?

Of course they get it wrong. Frequently, I imagine. There are so many bright sparky applicants that many will be rejected, not because they have anything less than those who are accepted but because the admissions people got it wrong or couldnt take everyone. I don't know where or when you did Olevel or gcse gazza but when I did them in the ark ages it was common to get all A's for the brighter girls and by no means all would get accepted for oxbridge though it was generally thought that if a bit of an effort were made one would get in.
I dont think the Oxford or Cambridge lot are so 'fiercely clever' as all that. I do think they get a very very good education though which helps them make the most of their undergraduate brains so that they are confident enough by the time they come out. In fact I think the education they get at Oxford is really so excellent that any very bright child should be encouraged to make very serious efforts to apply

Grammar schools in the 1970s and young people who got into Oxbridge weren't all the highest performing at O or even A Level. As I said upthread someone who was a 'division two' (not someone anyone would have marked as Oxbridge material) pupil managed to get into Oxford to read English....

I've only got 6 As in my o levels (other four Bs and Cs) and it was absolutely never a problem in making a successful application to Oxford.
The thing about Oxbridge is everyone knows someone really clever, sometimes the cleverest person in the school, who's been rejected. So those who are accepted go there with raging imposter syndrome, convinced that everyone else must be far cleverer than they are.
I was shocked and relieved by just how normal and not impossibly bright most people were when I arrived. There were some serious plodders.
Applying to specific colleges for specific subjects means it's utterly arbitrary who gets in and this over-emphasis on Oxbridge success is a total nonsense.

Word factory - it is their job if they want the brightest pupils

As wordfactory says, it really is not an academic's individual responsibility, nor that of a Department, or even an entire university, to right the wrongs of British economic divides.

We can do what we can in formal, structural ways, to try to mitigate the effects of economic advantages that start before children even get to school.

Although I do find it interesting that any mention I've made on MN of getting rid of fee paying schools is met with deeply felt outrage and opposition. So there are quite a few people around here who actually do believe in buying advantage.

But that universities should fix all that?

So there are quite a few people around here who actually do believe in buying advantage

I think people who support buying advantage for their DC is probably a MN majority view. Not me though .

There is absolutely nothing wrong with buying advantage for your DC, provided it isn't cheating. The more developed the average person in a society is, the better the society works. Buying advantage for your own DC is the best way to give to society as a whole.