Oxbridge Entry 2015

[Roisin]

Do we have a thread already?
ds1 has decided to definitely apply to Oxford to do Biochemistry. He will probably apply to St John's.

The subject is Chemistry so not a typical private school subject!

I don't know if there is a huge difference in the percentage of private school pupils at each college or not. I am a bit in the dark about this whole thing, really. >

The college is Trinity, Roisin.

Which colleges have all your sons or daughters applied for?

DD3's very good school friend does Chemistry there Raidne. We're state school. He loves it. They're nice :)

When I was at Oxford there was a "northern scientist" (male, comp) stereotype

Trinity is nice, great location, huge amounts of space for such a central college.

Dd has applied to St Hilda's. I said, "argh, it's miles away" (in true Turl Street fashion - I was at Exeter, basically as central as possible :) ) but actually it's probably a great choice for her, and they have their own punts, right there in college

St Hilda's makes me think of 'Gaudy Night' and Harriet Vane/Lord Peter Wimsey - if I had my time again that's where I would want to be

Hello there , first post here , but DS doing HAT tomorrow .
Offers from Kings (AAA) Exeter (A*AA)

Littleham - college is Lincoln - we will both be thinking of DCs tomorrow morning .....

Given where we are , my only advice to him is an early night.

Best of luck to everyone doing aptitude tests tomorrow.

Welcome HocusUcas. I don't think the odds are very high of our dc's meeting at Lincoln, but possible for Exeter! Have tried to advise an early night.

Does he prefer Kings or Exeter out of his offers? Best of luck to him tomorrow.

Good luck to all for tomorrow

Littleham , Hello there .

He prefers King's (and did before the offer from Exeter ) . I haven't looked up the league tables but suspect Exeter is higher than King's now (generally , maybe not for History specifically ) . However given

he will be 18 soonish , I think I have to leave it to him to decide. It was a theme , though, in some of the open days we went to that an A* offer in an arts subject is a pretty tall order given subjectivity in marking . I believe UCL also offer AAA for this reason (if they want you ) .

For tomorrow I am crossing my fingers but not holding my breath IYSWIM.

It's so competitive I just keep trying to reinforce that not getting an offer doesn't mean you are rubbish. Luckily he is v keen on at least 2 other universities.

Anyway best of luck to your DD.

Also echo Webwiz - good luck to all , and Webwiz - good luck to you and yours also , even if it isn't tomorrow morning !

HocasUcas

Good luck to all today. Xx

Good luck to all those dc with exams. Glad we don't have them at the moment as I am having trouble enough getting dd to send her essays off!

Littleham - dd is applying to Emmanuel, Cambridge.

Kings has a terrific history department. Check out the work of their History and Policy group which does lots of work looking at how we can learn from the past on issues like industrial policy, institutional child abuse, etc.

Figment
Thank You , I will.

HU

www.historyandpolicy.org

Here is the link. Earlier this year I went to a fantastic one day symposium they organised, open to all - on the miners' strike 30 years on, with input from the then BBC correspondent, the then observer correspondent, several miners' leaders, several mps, Anne scargill and Neil kinnock. It was very intimate - in the sense that all the speakers were very upfront about how they were feeling at the time - and fascinating to see how much residual conflict was still in evidence. Really interesting to watch oral history being shared and recorded. It's run by a young history professor called Lucy delap. There were lots of students in the audience.

Thinking of everyone whose DCs are taking tests today. Good luck to all!

dd should have just finished hers! Hope everyone comes out feeling they did themselves justice :)

Do people's dcs have a Plan C?

Given that Exeter/Bristol/Durham are giving out such high offers for humanities which a candidate could easily fail to meet, what is the next step?

Given that £27K ++++++ is at stake, surely not anywhere - anywhere being somewhere not in the top 6 - is fine. And why should an AAB (given that Durham says this won't cut the mustard) student be swirled round in Clearing along with someone with three Cs and come out in the same institution?

Sorry - too many "given that"s!!

Your dc has three options -

1. Choose a high Firm and lower Insurance, so that your dc doesn't go into clearing. Upside= no clearing. Downside= if insurance takes your dc, then you cannot automatically go into clearing if your dc sees something they like more. Have to plead to be released.

2. Choose high Firm and high Insurance in the hope that your dc will be scrape into one on results day. Upside=two favourite choices. Downside= higher likelihood of being in clearing which is more uncertain & can lead to accommodation problems.

3. Take gap year & wave goodbye to the nutty system.

I'm in favour of 3. It's all lunacy.

Going back to poster upthread who asked about chances of getting into Oxbridge based on subject strategy, I would honestly be interested in hearing the Norse Studies or whatever department's take on applicants. I know someone who did this and, yes, they did choose this course (were advised by their public school) because there is 50% chance of getting in compared with 0.000001% for English/History. Does Admissions favour the good linguist/historian playing the strategic game, or the person with the genuine interest in Old Norse? How many kids can convincingly prove they've had a "passion" for Norse since birth?

DD not too keen on the HAT test (just finished), so I think it might be curtains for Oxford. She is quite upbeat about it though and is really glad she has tried.

DS said HAT was "Oh Kaaay". In DS world this could mean anything. He felt up against the time towards the end. As he said , the good news is he got down most of what he wanted to say , the bad news is he has no idea if he got down any of what they wanted him to say. In my world , I'm just glad he got down anything.

KCL is a lot higher than Exeter in the world league tables.

THES tables: KCL 40, Exeter 154

QS World University rankings: KCL 16, Exeter 161.

I felt obliged to make this point even though as a UCL graduate it sticks in my craw to talk our hated rival up!

Brenda fortunately dd1's plan B is perfectly achievable, so that should be ok.