Oxbridge 2015 #2

[Molio]

Continuing Roisin's thread.

I've even succumbed to TSR, having sworn I wouldn't. Still no news here and haven't heard of news from any other source in the same subject at the same college but being very uncool tbh as the reality is that rejection after an interview would be much kinder for DS than a no ab initio. Massively cheered by a late afternoon offer from Bristol though. I thought I was chilled, I'm clearly not .

Fingers crossed for everyone still waiting and hoping. It's very hard to see them disappointed, is the problem :(

Atia and Roisin ,
I like your style .

Of course my worrying about his offer is not really an Oxbridge thing as most offers from good universities will be in the same bracket (Oxford , history AAA ) or even higher e.g. medicine or e.g. Exeter .

I feel for those of you with more than one DC at different stages who are stretching your attention in different directions. I suppose I am lucky to just have one to worry about at the moment.

Any best of luck to all DCs
Hocus.

Molio , I think you can see from the time of my last post that I cross posted with you .

What you have said is very interesting and thank you for giving me the benefit of your experience. So , and do PM (or indeed ignore ) if you would rather not divulge , are you saying that your DS3 who has just , this year , been given an offer has asked for his HAT score already ? Also all credit to DS2 , 77 sounds incredibly good - I hardly dare think what my DS got . I am not sure I quite understand the timing between UCAS says "yes" , the not getting grades on the morning , and retakes (did he take a year off ? )
Sorry to ask, Molio , it is not my business what happens with your family , but I am (as you might imagine ) interested.

If you would rather not answer here , let me know if you are happy for me to PM. Otherwise , I think the answer is for me to adopt the Atia / Molio school of thought , i.e. - Just Get The Grades. Or as a pp said - you don't deserve the place if you don't.

Hocus

Molio , please ignore the part of my previous post which relates to DS2 .
I think I have it now . He got an offer with 77 in HAT. On results day he was accepted through UCAS. Results came through lower than offer , he was confirmed as accepted , but he had remarks done anyway. I think I get it. So ignore all PM requests .

Sorry to ask dim questions but , seriously , thank you for your advice. Also could you send through details of the remote Scottish island. I may decamp until August. Probably easier all round

Thank you Molio

Hocus.

You've got it Hocus . It was a bit garbled, sorry. Yes the current DS has asked for his score - they reply really fast.

I'm not so sure about not deserving a place. There's been some really wacky marking esp. with humanities in the past couple of years. It becomes clearer if you ask for a photocopy of a paper. One of DS's papers shot up - really bad. I take nothing for granted, so anything which can bolster a case if grades go west is worth having I think. There were large numbers at several colleges who didn't get their grades this year, in sciences too. Not everyone will get their place confirmed, but clearly some did.

Yes, the Scottish option is good :) Almost no parents go into school with the Y13s anyhow, so I might as well be up there with the midges :)

Testing namechange

Can I share with you something about DD's interview, that she has just shared with me? DD applied to read Music.

As part of the interview at the college of her first choice, she was given a text to read 20 minutes before and during the interview had to discuss it. One of the questions the interviewer asked was how reliable DD thought the text was. All good so far.

DD answered, “Well, it is from "Classic FM" so it should be fairly reliable? The interviewers then asked her, "But who listens to Classic FM?". "I do", said DD. She realised much later that her answer was a complete faux-pas.

DD plays piano and we do listen to some Classic FM programmes in the evenings that play the kind of piano music that DD has been learning. It was always very inspiring for DD to hear a piece that she either knew or was trying to learn on the radio.

Do you think their question, "Who listens to Classic FM?" is fair?

Why did DD realise that saying she listened to Classic FM was a mistake?

Maybe any mistake was not to present arguments for and against why something from Classic FM may not be reliable - i.e. it is a radio station dedicated to classical music ( "expert" knowledge so helps reliability), versus it is a radio station trying to attract listeners, who may not have specialist knowledge of classical music, so may incline towards simplistic commentary (not "expert" knowledge so does not help reliability).

The interviews are designed to push students to explore ideas and question things. So Who listens to Clasic FM seems fair. And so in fact does your daughters answer - but maybe they wanted her to go further...

None of DD2's friends were asked about their EPQs at their Oxbridge interviews (despite school having promoted them as good) - when asked why by school an admissions tutor said we're not interested in what a student knows/has learnt, we want to see how they explore new topics or question long held ideas.

Thanks, Tantalisingduck for making me think.

I don't think that DD realised that Classic FM was inclined towards more simplistic listeners. I feel like a philistine.

We don't live in the UK, one of the results of this is that she is not as award of certain intricacies that others would routinely know; for example, that would-be music students should be listening to Radio 3 and not Classic FM.

EPQs?

Just looked it up - Extended Project Qualification. DD did an IB which includes an extended essay, so similar.

I have a problem with the question because firstly, their question "Who listens to Classic FM" was asked in a way that afterwards DD realised was derisory; and secondly, it is testing subtle cultural awareness that candidates from outside the UK are much less likely to know. As far as she knows, she was the only international candidate and the only non-white, not wholly English candidate.

Was your dd offered a place after all that?

Listener ,

I can see your point. The only parallel I can draw is that the History candidates have to do a similar thing with a piece of text. This is , admittedly, I think designed to be a text no-one has studied but the principle is sort of the same, i.e. from something you don't know a lot about you have to question the source for reliability etc. . So if you don't know about UK radio stations , then the I am guessing a valid line to take would be

DD - Classic FM = fairly reliable
Interviewer - but who listens to Classic FM?

DD - I do , but I don't know the target audience for Classic FM as don't live in UK, so it is difficult for me to say .

At which point the conversation may have gone down the track of - well from what you have read , heard on the radio , what do you think the target audience is etc. ? Which would have been interesting.

Listener , I am speculating wildly here, as what I know about music could be written on the point of a baton , but just trying to think along the lines of your question. I would doubt that an interviewer would be being derisory , nor that he or she would think listening to Classic FM is a Bad Thing per se . If there was any mistake , my thought would be it was Dd saying the source was reliable without any backup other than her own experience (1 person).

I think I am going down the lines that Tantalising has so much more succinctly done.

Your post though resonates with me. It takes a deal of confidence in an interview like that to admit you don't know something , or don't really understand the question. That is the one piece of advice I gave DS. If you don't understand what they are asking you - just say so . Luckily he only had to employ it once

Anyhow , not sure if that helped but I do wish your Dd well and hope she is not too deflated by it.

Hocus.

I can't imagine that a single answer to a question would be decisive Listener. My DS applying for medicine was asked which cake was the best in the tearooms where he worked but I don't think his answer (coffee and pecan) would have swung it. Sometimes the tutors just throw out comments for something to say. It sounds as though you're overanalysing the interview and moving down a slippery slope to finding discrimination where there was none. I mean there really wouldn't be, it would make no sense. The usual mantra for substantive questions is: responses to unfamiliar material or unfamiliar approaches to familiar material. They emphasize over and over again that they aren't testing knowledge.

Hocus the same DS said multiple times that he didn't know answers (medics have four interviews usually) and each time the tutor in question wouldn't let it go, just kept saying yes you do, if you think it through, so DS just had to keep on going - they didn't let up, not once.

Molio , I think I phrased it badly.
What I was saying to DS was , if you don't understand the question , say so . Or if you know your knowledge is imperfect , say so when you are hazarding an answer.
I wasn't really meaning just say "I don't know " without expecting them to push. Reading my post - it was typed too quickly and doesn't get that across.

Inchkenneth ? Is that remote enough ? or is it still owned by the Mitfords ?
Memo to self to dig out atlas and find most remote island off Scotland , or indeed Hebrides.

Thanks, Molio and Hocus for having listened to me. I am sure that you are both right, that I am reading too much into the questioning, and that a single answer could not be decisive. I am probably being oversensitive. I guess she just doesn't have what it takes.

Queenie, no, she wasn't offered a place. She had two interviews after that one at other colleges, both of which she was very happy with. She described the conversations with great pleasure and in detail, it sounded as though she gave good answers to the question.

Perhaps I'll just come and join you on that remote Scottish island. and for everyone.

It must be very disappointing not to receive an offer after all her preparation and hopes. I do think there is inevitably some element of luck about the process at the end of the day and not getting an offer in no way means that she 'doesn't have what it takes'. To get an Oxbridge interview and to take part in those interviews as your dd clearly did is an achievement in itself. There are many people who would do well at Oxbridge who aren't offered places. Best of luck to her wherever she ends up!

feeling grumpy. my ds got 92 in his HAT and didnt get an offer. not even a second interview.

'who listens to classic fm' is an ageist question in my opinion. People of a certain generation (ie pre classic fm) despise it because in the past it never played the whole of a piece of music and had adverts and no opera, and (sin) played movie music. Personally I think classic fm is great, loads of people, especially young people and families listen to it on the school run. Commuters in dreary cars listen to 'smooth classics' at 7 on the way home, which is not just Bach but modern stuff too.
That said, their weekend programmes are truly dreadful with Titchmarsh, Aled Jones and Llewellyn Bowen's taste making one want to puke up.
The interviewers clearly don't have young children otherwise they would know who listens to classic fm in the week on the school run. Radio 3 is stuck in a fossilised groove.

funnyperson 92 is completely and utterly off the scale. I think you mean no second interview at his original college? That's just so odd. Not even because of 92, just in itself. Did he query it at the time?

Lisyener I don't think it's fair to say that would be music students listen to R3 not classic FM. It's much more nuanced than that. Howard Goodall read music at Oxford and is a classic FM presenter and composer in residence. I don't think anybody would suggest that he should be stripped of his Oxford degree or various awards because he is associated with classic FM. I suspect - if a faux pas was made at all (and it may not have been) it might relate to what the piece your DD read was about rather than the fact that it was originated by Classic FM (for example if it was about the importance of show tunes compared to opera then it might be relevant that it was produced by a radio station that tends to out more emphasis on show tunes than opera, for example. If it was about film music being the key composition art form in c21 and chamber music/early music being dead as the dodo, again, the fact that it was generated by a station that makes a big deal (rightly so) of film music and doesn't cover much early music would be relevant. I don't think any Oxford or Cambridge interviewer would judge students on their personal tastes. But an answer of 'I do because....' Or 'it's a good source (or a bad one) because (relevant reasons rather than assuming that a radio station will always be reliable)...' Would be what they were looking for. If DD1 next year gets asked if she listens to classic FM she will say that sometimes, she does - because they play works from composers she knows personally and/or admires, and because in the case of Howard Goodall a living composer whose work she has performed in (and who actually writes for her instrument which is quite rare). If they don't like that answer then they can bog off, to be honest.

I'd have thought the question was not so much about it being wrong to listen to anything - but more looking for an awareness of the status of texts. Something will be written in a particular way for a particular audience. So programme notes for a concert audience would be one kind of musical writing. Something for a popular classical radio website would be different.

So perhaps the interviewers aren't looking so much for personal experience. 'I do this.' 'I do that' - but a knowledge that there are all sorts of different ways of writing about music. In an academic context some might be considered to be more reliable than others. For an example a scholarly textbook would be checked for factual errors, while a popular talk might repeat anecdotes that have very little substance just because the audience would enjoy hearing them.

But I imagine interviewers would be aware of the background and opportunities available to particular applicants. So that someone who sang in a choir, played in an orchestra at an independent school in the UK would be seen in a different light from an applicant who went to a school where very little music teaching was on offer. They'd tilt the scales in favour of the latter applicant - but still opt for the person who seemed to be enthusiastic and curious and thoughtful maybe.

Tantalisingduck It was one of the other candidates that suggested that what she should have said was that it was not as reliable as if it had been Radio 3.

funnyperson thank you. I think it is also a bit of a classist question. I don't think there was outright discrimination but I do think that DD's enthusiasm for classic fm didn't do her any favours as it marked her out so clearly as someone who wasn't in the know about what she was supposed to listen to.

I do think that DD's enthusiasm for classic fm didn't do her any favours as it marked her out so clearly as someone who wasn't in the know about what she was supposed to listen to.

I really do think you are barking up the wrong tree here.

MarianneSolong I do agree with everything you write. It is just that DD wasn't aware that Classic FM would be considered "popular" and that, for example, Radio 3 would be considered more serious. She mistakenly assumed that Classic FM was a serious music station and hence the text from Classic FM could be considered reliable.

She knows how to evaluate sources but she didn't know the status of the source.

The follow-up question "who listens to classic FM" was supposed to lead her to the idea that the text could not be considered reliable because Classic FM is popular.