Still waiting to hear from Durham

[ryansbeat]

Would anyone like to join me in the wait to hear from Durham....feeling so stressed on DDs behalf as she is convinced that she won't get an offer (having been rejected by Oxford). I think that if she doesn't get an offer there she's going to take a year out and reapply....she says she'll be more upset to get rejected by Durham than Oxford. Just wish they would make a decision either way so she can plan ahead. Anyone else waiting to hear....why do they take so long?

Having said that, I do agree that the Oxbridge admissions people do get it right.

Nobody gets it right all the time (I certainly don't).

Very small differences can result in getting a place or not.

Sometimes extremely good candidates get rejected. My sibling did - reapplied, got in, came top of their year, became famous in their field. I was just interviewing somebody who are rejected from Oxford, perhaps because they were quite quiet and shy at the age of 18, but is stunningly, awesomely good at the subject. I can't understand how Oxford rejected this person when I look at what they had achieved even by the age of 18.

Looking at applicants for PhD positions there are also always very good UK students who were either rejected from Oxbridge or who didn't apply in the first place (for a variety of reasons). Meanwhile some Oxbridge undergraduates do very poorly - many of the low 2:2s are from people who perhaps shouldn't have gotten in in the first place.

Probably talking about making the right call most of the time uilen, that's all.

uilen one thing that struck me during this round of admissions was that it isn't an exact science.

I kept looking to colleagues for guidance and they'd all just smile and be terribly reassuring that the process is there to help us find some good candidates.

No one says, or has said (at least to me) that they even expect it to be a perfect process or close to that.

Sorry posted too soon...

A lovely colleague put a lovely post it on my desk, after I'd been seeking more help with the process...it read

There are far more good candidates than places.
Just try to fill those places with good candidates.

.

There are far more good candidates than places.

This.

I think the right choices are made most of the time, but I often ask myself whether most means 60% or 90% or 95% of the time. I suspect it is at the lower end rather than the higher. For undergraduate entry the very top candidates are generally clear and all interviewers agree about them (although see above, some top candidates still get missed) but the remaining places are often far less clear and the candidates who get them are very similar to those who don't.

I also question how much effect unconscious biases are still having particularly since I see unconscious biases occurring in joint interviews, for PhD, staff and administrator positions. Everybody has a tendency to prefer people who are the same wavelength as themselves.

Just in response to the point about formal dinners - these vary quite a bit between colleges, and at some are nothing more than wearing a tie at teatime, as a pp has said. The more formal dinners tend to only be once a term, and are totally not obligatory, so quite easy to avoid if wanted. Certainly at my old college formals have got a lot less, um, formal over the past ten years, apparently.

Of course interviewing isn't an exact science Word, that's an incredibly pious hope for any interviewing process, as is the idea that unconscious bias doesn't occur, uilen. All one can do is try to consciously counter unconscious bias and do the very best that one can, with all the other strands of evidence that one has at hand.

Word, presumably you had the usual training? You did say somewhere that you yourself didn't make the decisions. Does that mean that you were an observer, and didn't engage directly with questions? If that's so, perhaps it's harder for you to evaluate the method in the madness. Apologies if you were a full member of the panel, but a previous post suggested differently. I think you'd have to agree at the very least that the process isn't random, and that the tutors flog themselves to get it right. But really your questions to uilen are moving even farther from the thread, so probably better for the Oxbridge thread, not here.

I observed in the 2013 round and took part in the decision making process in 2014.

I didn't ask uilen any questions. I made some observations, as did she, that the process is not very exact. uilen felt 60% correct.

I would have thought that actually this is welcome news on a Durham thread, where some will have been turned down by Oxbridge and many won't have applied in the first place.

But hey ho, I'm wrong again .

Obviously uilen is the person to explain her own post but I took it to mean: she questions what percentage of applicants get the correct outcome - is it 60%, 90% or 95%? (or less or more, by implication). And that the most doubtful cases are at the lower end of the ability range, not the upper end.

But it is ambiguous I agree, and of course it is only uilen's view. And then one interpretation of the anecdote about the Oxford applicant who subsequently succeeded at Cambridge is that Oxford has higher standards. (that by the way is a joke Word, before you get wrapped around yet another Oxbridge related axle).

No you made the comment that the process isn't an exact science. Which obviously it isn't, by its nature. But that's very different from saying 40% of kids at Oxbridge are there by mistake.

Incidentally Durham only used to get the dim Tims in by allowing them to read for general degrees. That's what's changed. People on the honours courses were relatively bright. Very few of those reading general had applied to Oxbridge, they simply weren't in the frame (just a minor amplification of what you said about those there 'in the olden days').

My DD would have been delighted with Durham - although daunted by the A*AA offer. It was always her first choice. There are some students every year, as I understand it, who opt for Durham instead of Oxford (English). In our case, pragmatically speaking, the choice was a no brainer but only because the Oxford offer of AAA is that bit easier to achieve, making the next few months marginally less stressful.

My DS would also have been thrilled with Durham and is in exactly the same position as yours Figment, for a similarly regarded subject. He does have the option (as does your DD) of firming Durham with Oxford as the insurance, as I've suggested to him. He's been to Durham a couple of years ago with his brothers and loved it then but is iffy about the open day because it's just ahead of his mocks. Once the college allocation comes in I'm going to try to persuade him to go.

Waiting patiently here for the college allocations, which according to TSR and the Durham FB firmers page, may be this week. My Dd will definitely be going up, hopefully for the second set of days.

Having a younger DD who is aspiring to a top uni - how did you help your DC prepare in the years prior to application?

What counts? What helps?

I didn't say 60% correct - I can't place a number on it. And I am referring to one specific subject, not across all subjects.

In my own field I would say that of those scoring mid 2:2s or below, or transferring out of my subject into another tripos, many are probably not the students who should have been chosen. They make up around 20-25%.

From those who get high 2:2s or 2:1s, there are also quite a few who are decoupled from the subject and not interested in it, counting the days until they graduate. When I compare them to the prospective PhD students coming in from other UK universities with high firsts, lots of enthusiasm, then I would say that the latter seem more deserving of places.

Whether you select at 11, 13 or 18, you are always going to miss some good students and accept some who fall off the rails. I always find it surprising what a high fraction of students in my subject turn out to be not engaged and not interested, given that it is a subject with very high entrance grades, very high application: entrants ratio.

Yes that's what I thought that you meant uilen: two lawyers, two interpretations :) I have to say I'm absolutely amazed that 20 - 25% at your uni in your subject get mid 2:2s or transfer. My understanding is that mathematicians aren't encouraged to take a year out, so perhaps, in all seriousness, the students are done in in terms of intellectual energy given the tyranny of STEP? Surely other subjects at Cambridge don't have those stats - or do they?

On the Durham front, I hope the allocations do come this week or the train tickets are going to be monstrously expensive.

Molio, Oxford and Cambridge have similar statistics for maths, so STEP is not the issue. Approx 30% get firsts, 40% get 2:1s, 20% get 2:2s and 10% get thirds or fails, at the end of the third year. (Official statistics, they are public.) An additional number of mathematicians in Cambridge transfer out into other triposes and I believe similar exit routes are found for them in Oxford. Stats for other Oxbridge subjects vary - for example, engineers cannot become chartered (or some other professional status) with less than a 2:2 so miraculously very few students are ever given less than a 2:2! However, 20-25% disengaging from their subjects and scraping by is not unusual.

I think the main issue for maths is that maths at university is quite different to maths at school. Students tend to default into studying maths when they can't pick another subject, thinking that maths is "easy", they are good at it, it keeps many careers open, but they don't have a real passion for it and they don't even know what pure maths/applied maths/statistics/theoretical physics are. It still surprises me that so many students turn out not to be interested, when there is so much competition for entry, though.

Just to add having looked up the figures - around 20 students start maths degrees but switch to something else by the end (a bit under 10% of the cohort). However the ability to switch at part II (3rd year) is often one of the attractions of the tripos system, so not all students switch because they aren't doing well at maths.

I am not surprised by the number of "disengaged". In my (limited) experience a significant number of young people go to university - including the top ones - to get the obligatory 2:1, have fun and move on. They don't go because they have a burning desire to study their subject for another 3 or 4 years. If the going gets tough they don't have "love of subject" to keep them enthused.

Just coming back to this to say congrats to ryansbeat's dd and all others who got the news they wanted. So - college allocations - can anyone shed any light? DS has been allocated a college he didn't apply for and I think it's really putting him off, oh dear. How important are colleges? Are they set in stone (he wanted modern and newer and has been given trad and v old school - it's not him At All.)

Dd wanted old and traditional and has been given the complete opposite. She's very disappointed at the moment.

DS also got his allocation earlier today and is trying to book but the website keeps crashing and crashing - I guess too many people trying to book?

uilen that's really interesting, thanks. But very surprising (to me).

Same thing happened here GypsyFloss and Merrylegs. DDs first reaction wasn't great when she saw she hadn't got allocated college but she's done a bit of research and now seems much more positive. Very odd that she went for a small, non sporty college and has been allocated a very sporty, huge college. Maybe she could swap with your DS Merrylegs!! She hasn't firmed yet and is deciding between Durham and Edinburgh. Hopefully once she goes to the offer holder days she'll have a clearer idea of which one to choose.