My girl has set her heart on Oxford or Cambridge. Encourage or ignore????

[Ilovemyrabbits]

DD is 12...I know, it's very young and she's got a long way to go before we seriously need to consider this BUT...she is a very determined young lady who becomes very focussed when she has a goal in mind. She is academic and does well at school but she's not always top of the class. She's not overly outgoing, but she mixes well when she needs to. She has told all her friends she wants to go to Oxford or Cambridge. Her Y6 teacher told her she could do this if she wanted to. In the teacher's defence, she has two daughters who have gone through the Oxbridge process successfully and I think she was trying to be encouraging.

I am torn here between wanting to encourage dd in her aims, because it's good to aim high, and wanting her to be grounded. She's quite a sensible girl, even at 12, but I'm trying to figure how to deal with this. Part of me thinks, keep quiet...it's a long way before the decisions need to be made and she may well adapt her plans by then. Another part of me thinks, she's stubborn and what do we do if she sticks with it?? Should we be encouraging her now? Asking teachers if she's capable? Or what????

Neither her dad nor I went to university, so I guess we're a little out of our comfort zone here. Does anyone have any advice for me????

Back to the subject...from what I have heard about English at Cambridge you have to cover an awful lot of very early literature - and you are not allowed to specialise in a particular period. I could be wrong - but my point is that the contents of the degree syllabus matter too!

When it gets nearer the time you will want to ask your DD to look very carefully into what is covered in the syllabus for where she is applying - and to make sure that she really wants to spend 3 years reading it. If she has a love for modern literature, a uni that makes you do a full year of Beowulf might not be the right one for her - even if it is Oxbridge. Or vice versa! Being at Cambridge just because it's Cambridge but getting a 3rd because she hates the course contents would be stupid.

Of course I can form a view all of my own, I often do.

Commenting on facts volunteered by the OP is not in any way the same as 'demanding' financial details though, is it angus? Which is why I asked you to smarten up your act in terms of accuracy. The reference to the child being an only child is not in any way negative. I would never make a negative comment about that but it is fair to say that only child dynamics can be very different to those in families with several siblings, no doubt both positively and negatively. Obviously.

The comment re a year of Beowulf is complete or *

See www.english.cam.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/tripos.htm

angus read back what you said I'd asked: 'demanding financial information'! That's not just wide of the mark, it's wholly ficticious, so yes - next time please get it right.

Oop north is a joke term I share with my Sheffield born and bred husband. It is used in a light hearted way with me and my family who all come for Birmingham. It may have become a habitual turn of phrase but its said with affection as I adore where I live and the people I've met since I moved up here.

I do not feel sorry for myself at all. In fact I feel truly blessed to have my life as it is and my lovely daughter, all the more so as I had 4 miscarriages before she arrived and one after. Forgive me if I am a little precious about her.

I am not in a competition to see who's come the furthest, had the hardest past,or is the most self congratulatory. I came on here asking for advice and that's just what I've got. As with any thread you get advice you value and comments that are less welcome and, at times unnecessarily aggressive and confrontational. I was bought up on a council estate....I've dealt with worse!

This week dd and I are both reading junk novels. Michael Grant's 'Lost' series. She recommended it so we are both racing through our 6 novels so we compare notes. Not literary notes, just normal, conversational discussion about shared reading material. University is a long way off but I feel like I have a better understanding now of the process, the options she needs to look at for next year and the things we may need to consider going forwards.

I'm not sure Oxbridge will be an option for dd. I'm not sure she's clever enough, but there are a few years before we get there and where my dd is concerned I'd never say never as she's a tenacious little bleeder. I will, however, tell her straight when we get to selection time what her best options will be, with the help from her teachers. Til then, it'll be fun and encouragement all the way. Thank you all for your time and comments.

Ilove I say oop north too!

I also say nowt and mithering regularly .

It's possible that I've read you entirely wrong OP but whether or not you're as you seem to be on the face of your posts I think my message was useful too, in it's way. It was not to not encourage and it was not to ignore but it was most definitely to tread carefully, not to ramp up hopes and not to over invest emotionally. I think this must be more of a risk with only children. That's a quite natural by-product and may be one of the negative ones. My kids assure me that there are lots of negatives in having siblings and I've seen it first hand myself. I've also seen the upset felt by kids who've decided prematurely that only Oxford and Cambridge will do; it's a dangerous path to tread.

Miscarriages are wretched, I agree and all children are equally precious.

FrauMoose I'm so sorry that I accidentally got something wrong - but I'm pretty sure you didn't need to be quite so rude. If you had bothered to read my post I did say it was just what I remembered - and my point was not that it does or doesn't contain a year of Beowulf but that the OPs daughter should consider the course content as well as the university.

I studied English at Cambridge. While there are obviously a range of views and experiences, I think, to say that 'doing English at Cambridge you have to cover an awful lot of very early literature....and you are not allowed to specialise' is inaccurate and unhelpful. It's up there with saying, 'Oh they're all from public schools' or 'They don't let you in with a regional accent'. It's one of those partial truths which is quite damaging. (I took a specialist paper in James Joyce in my final year.)

The syllabus is easily available online. Students look at medieval literature - e.g. Chaucer - during their first term. Anglo-Saxon literature (e.g. Beowulf is part of a separate degree course - Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic and is not studied as part of an English BA.

I have 14 nieces and nephews and have seen what over parenting and under parenting can achieve within my own family yellowtip. All the kids in our family have left school at 16. Some have gone off the rails; one has been in and out of prison for most of his adult life; a few have relied entirely on their parents, even after having children of their own and some have turned out to be hard workers and have some success in life.

We live away from the rest of my family and the age gap between me having dd and my siblings having their children means we are not close either geograophically or socially. My brother and sisters are all currently engaged with grandchildren so we tend not to see each other outside of high days and holidays.

Your advice is as valid as the rest yellowtips and would have been ingested sooner had it been a little sweeter. I am aspirational for dd in as much as I am providing her with encouragement and support, but road sweeper or author, civil servant (a career for which frighteningly she shows some natural proclivity for) or plumber, I will always love her with all my heart, and she knows that. We are quite laid back, most of the time, though I do worry about her single child status from time to time and hope that it will do no harm.

I said in my earlier post to forgive me for being precious. My child may feel more precious to me because of the road taken to get her, but I'm not foolish enough to think that she'd be less precious if she'd been preceded by her 3 brothers or sisters. As you rightly say yellowtip, all children are precious.

Thanks FrauMoose. We will, after seeing advice on here, check out all syllabuses (syllabi?) before we choose any course and I appreciate the personal viewpoint of people who have been to Oxbridge so much.

Oh...and thanks for the support angus and Xenia, again, great advice. I really don't understand about GCSEs yet, being an old gimmer, so some food for thought there and again, the best perspective I can be given.

Ooh...and thanks valentine too. I thought you were advising re the syllabus content. I confess the thought of studying Chaucer makes me feel woozy and I loved English lit back in the day. Mind you, that was just John Wyndham and The Chrysalids, Merchant of Venice and the poetry of Robert Frost for o level, so not in the same league as degree stuff. Strange how some things never leave you though. I can still quote bits of all three now.

I wouldn't say 'think of other places because you might not get in', but I would say 'think of other places too because you might find when you look at the courses they are better.

I'm a Cambridge grad (and married to another), despite studying completely different subjects I think in retrospect both of us would have been better suited academically at Warwick.

DH not so much, but my parents both left school at 16, as a family knew nothing about unis, or the fact that courses vary so much in content so when one teacher said 'why not try for Cambridge', it was very much 'ok, that must be the best option then'.

O levels OP .... :)

Ilovemyrabbits before we choose any course

No. No no no no no. Before she chooses a course. Seriously. It's her life. You can't choose her degree for her. It's just wrong on so very many levels.

Quite right Russians. I also have a lot of growing up to do in the next few years. Unfortunately I currently have my 12 year old child/mother head on so probably have more influence on dd than I will have when she's older. I do think she'll take on board any advice she gets but I rather hope it will not come just from me. i also know she will go her own way no matter what i say. shes strong but, so far, quite sensible too. I will make sure she has some of the feedback from this thread on hand though as I do think it will be invaluable. I also think it will help me to ask her and her teachers the right questions to ensure she thinks through her choices and doesn't get pushed down the wrong route.

This is more about the nature of English literature courses than about parenting children and nurturing ambition.

I think it is quite easy for people who enjoy reading to access 20th and 21st century English and American novels, to discuss them and argue about them. GCSE and A-level syllabuses will often pick modern fiction because students may be able to enjoy them on an immediate level, even if they've just picked English because they have to (or because they are not natural physicists.) You don't need a university, just a public library, a reading group and internet access so you can check up on book reviews.

But there is something to be said for a course which takes you back to other centuries - so you read sonnets, epic poems, tragedies, where everything is saturated in the language of the King James Bible, and the novel didn't really exist. It's an adventure and it makes you look at literature in a different ways. But there are also opportunities to look at distinctively modern writing too. I chose the course I did because I wasn't sure that left to my own devices I would read Piers Plowman or Paradise Lost. But I am hugely glad that I read both these works.

Ah, but did you read Paradise Regained?

Yes, but I confess the memory of it has faded slightly.

Iloveyour DD is still quite young, so it's entirely normal that you still feel one unit.

It probably seems unimaginable that soon, very soon, she will start making her own choices, entirely independently .

By the time she comes to choosing such things as university courses, you will probably wonder how on earth you ever thought you'd be involved to such a level and you'll probably be rather glad!!!

A sad day if the only reason for choosing particular books to read is to encourage a child to read English at Cambridge. Actually...I'm not sure whether it is sad or happy: does it matter what the reason is, perhaps not. Ithaka, journeys vs destination and all that.

www.poemhunter.com/poem/ithaca/

funny I don't think the motivation matters.

It's the doing it that's important!