Despite having the right grades, my child is not applying to Oxbridge because ....

[TalkinPeace]

• she wants to live in self catered accommodation
• she does not like the small sizes of the colleges / social units
• having to go back to college for lunch while doing a lab based degree does not make sense
• the whole gown and formal dinner stuff smacks of coat tails rather than standing on own feet
• she does not fancy fighting through hordes of tourists while moving between buildings
• having a tutor picked by which college they are based in rather than their research specialism seems very odd to her

Also, for what she wants to do, the course at Oxford is not that well balanced
and Cambridge, despite having a fab course was not a place that felt like home when she visited for 2 days.

So she will be putting other Universities on her form and taking a great deal of stress out of this house.

For what its worth, those of her friends I've chatted to are also ruling out Oxbridge in favour of other Unis because of the first four points.

What are other people's reasons for ruling out Oxbridge, despite having the grades?

There are quite a few of us on this thread that are name changers but entirely identifiable.

We don't usually do it so posters on MN won't know who we are on t'internet.

It's protection for RL.

"So she will be putting other Universities on her form and taking a great deal of stress out of this house."

This seems to be the crux of it - OP is scared of the 'stress'. As long as DC know it is only a choice on their form, not life and death, the only stress is getting the application in a few months early and booking the train for the interview. I was mostly stressed about the fact that accommodation at DC's insurance place would cost £2k a year more than Oxford.

(I think in my case it was caused by the recent requirement to password change. Anyway it's not important. If I wanted to pretend to be unemployed housewife from Hull I would do so).

Some kids are just left cold by the whole 'only fellows walking on the grass' and outdated traditions at Oxbridge.I know of one super super high achiever who turned down his place because he was blown away be another Uni .Despite much advice from the school and 'talks' from his parents, he would not be shifted.In the end it was his life! A friend's DC lso did natural Sciences at Cambridge and was quite unhappy there because she was hopelessly academically outclassed.She was a very bright straight A* start of a kid but she was in the company of geniuses and really struggled, coming out with a 2:2and feels she would have got a first if she had gone elsewhere.Not only that she developed a lot of tics which she still has 10 years late

I do know a few nice but dims who have got into obscure courses at Oxbridge still.Some courses have less than 1.5 candidates per place.

Decisions made at 17 are often not the most reliable.

I turned down an offer from Cambridge for reasons not too dissimilar to those in the OP. The open days/overnights I attended (targeted at comprehensive pupils) put huge emphasis on all the formal rubbish such as gowns at dinner which put me off entirely. Never felt it was somewhere I could fit in.

The university I ended up at was on the basis it was nice and sunny when I visited

Well, the university I ended up at wasn't the right choice for me either I just didn't have the knowledge at 17 to make good decisions.

If I had my time again I'm not sure I would have gone to university at all, I certainly wouldn't have done Biology but I have no regrets about turning down the Cambridge offer.

I graduated 14 years ago (god that makes me feel old), traveled around and worked for a bit (think TEFL type stuff) and accidentally got into my current line of work whilst temping trying to sort out what to do with the rest of my life. Love my current job and it's well remunerated but it's not really life advice I'd give to anyone else as more luck than judgment!

DD1 rejected unis for: it raining when she went for the open day (Lancaster); smelling like a doctors surgery (Imperial); the college we went to for a course not being near the train station (Cambridge); having had a relative go there (Birmingham). She did like Oxford, but decided not to apply as she felt the style of teaching wouldn't suit her (true).

However, she did chose the right place for her, and a 1st class MMath later (not so stealth boast ) she was perfectly right.

shegot
Name changing is as it is - there is only one poster on this thread whose Daily Mail article I can link to in a jiffy
Actually, Sarah Vine is quite easy to spot as well.
I'm entirely identifiable to those who know me and post assuming such.

the right university
is a bit like the right school
you only ever try one so know nothing about the others at that age

I hated my secondary, loved my college and then loved my uni
does not take away the "what if" of having been better advised at the time

Does Sarah Vine post on here????? Blimey.

I think a lot of people think "what if" Talkin I know I often do.

talkin just because you don't care if people in RL spot you here, doesn't mean it's wrong for others to try to make it a little harder.

Some of us have public lives, or are high profile in our industries. Or a million other reasons not to want people to go digging. Preventing a long search history is entirely sensible.

shegot
I care
but I'm in the habit of assuming that my emails are blind copied
and know from bitter experience that confidential conversations hit the jungle drums in seconds
I therefore know that any person really wanting to track a person down would find MN name changes a minor impediment.

That and I've never voluntarily put pictures of my house and children in the Daily Fail unlike others on this thread

Interesting thread! I've said before (on another thread, under a previous name) that I had a Cambridge offer but didn't get the grades. I went to UCL instead and absolutely loved it. I met the man to whom I have been married for nearly a third of a century [gulp] on the third day. The entire course of my life would have been different if I'd gone anywhere else, and as I am generally pretty happy with how my life has turned out I find that a worrying thought.

On the other hand, just to show the power of coincidence, there are two women I've met and become close friends with in recent years who are my age and were both at the college I would have attended at just the time I would have been there. If I'd got in back then I expect we would have started our friendship 20 years earlier than we actually did. Odd!

talkin I've had my picture ( some of them in my house ) in most papers over the years. And on a trillion blogs.

It's part of my job.

But my public persona is very carefully managed. I give little away ( though perhaps I give much away in my novels ?).

MN is about our inner lives. What we actually think about things. much of those things I would not share with my readership. Or not as directly as I do on MN.

Ah, see I pride myself on keeping my pic out of the papers when my work is mentioned - the Torygraph were well annoyed that they could have my Linkedin pic (the only one associated with my real name) or nothing!
Then again the Heil mis spelled my name in two different ways in the same article

As I said to the nice journalist, I'm an accountant, not a model

and getting back to my DD
its about achievement more than anything else

What do you mean 'it's about achievement' ? What is ?

Long term satisfaction with life ..... which in the big scheme of things is why despite DD and I having had misconceptions about Cambridge, the meh factor cannot be removed
hence why I'm happy with what will go on her form

Then onwards and upwards.

No more talk of what's wrong with Oxbridge. If you're truly happy then where's the point? To your DD it was 'meh' and that's all that's needed.

shegot
you are in outreach
read the prospectus ; get the team who write it to get their ass in gear
talk to the experience teams ; get them to understand that they have to talk to the nave not the choir

this thread is full of people sitting in the choir
as many of the people in the nave cannot face the arguments
and go elsewhere by default
which is Oxbridge's loss as well as theirs

But Talkin many of your DD's practical objections would be dispelled by careful reading of the prospectus. If she doesn't like the course/the place I'm not sure that outreach could add any more? If Oxbridge isn't for her that's fine-many people feel the same.

One question I would have is why she was allowed to do 13 GCSEs and then 5 AS Levels though? That's a very heavy workload for anyone and in most cases is bound to impact on results and therefore the chances of a successful Oxbridge application.