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?

as long as its not medicine he will definitely get an interview and will have a chance to show his enthusiasm then.

wrong thread

despite DD and I having had misconceptions about Cambridge, the meh factor cannot be removed

And this is the thing Talkin. Ultimately the lunch / gown / tourist things are probably red herrings (from this thread) and you probably can tick some off her list. But, as I said in a previous post, 3 years is too long to spend somewhere that doesn't chime with you. It would be a great shame if your daughter did not carry on to achieve as well as she has already because she was somewhere where she wasn't happy. Cambridge has a fantastic reputation but it hasn't cornered the market in excellence.

If she had not ruled out London (I think you said she had) I would be asking if she had thought of UCL (if they do a suitable course) . She could get a "big cohort" feeling there and they certainly don't go in for arcane flim flam. But then I'm biased . I wish her well. Out of interest , where does appeal to her ?

That question mark thing was meant to be a grin.

Janet / shegot
It is very state school to do so many GCSEs. Why not enjoy life instead and do fewer?

Simple
State schools have to justify every minute of their timetable.
If its not required by law (RE / PE) then they will only do it if they can prove that the kids were in the classes working towards something.

Schools like NLCS and Westminster can do art and drama and music without having to take exams because they have budgets per pupil three or four times higher than state schools and do not have Ofsted breathing down their necks to prove the VFM of every minute of contact time.

If you have low ability kids, the only way to make them turn up for lessons is to have an end goal that might get them a job.
not and issue at fee paying schools

My school insisted that all of us doing science A levels took either art or drama as a recreational subject - but they had the resources to provide that timetable space. State schools do not

I don't think this explains why the high performing comprehensive school up the road wasn't also making students do 13 GCSEs - kids who are now entering year 13 at PS typically did 10 GCSEs in top sets at T. I think those who are entering year 10 at T this year will do "only" 9, maybe even 8?

As I also recalling correctly that OP's DD did two latin GCSEs instead of one and unusual things like this?

I am extremely sympathetic to schools feeling like they have to optimise their performance in league tables but getting somebody to take 13 GCSEs instead of 9 or 10 (with enough range in subjects to keep options open) is not in a student's best interests. Ditto bright students taking GCSEs/A levels which don't count for university admissions and taking 5 AS instead of 4 AS.

spinoa
With linear exams, the number of subjects is dropping like a stone.
DS will only do 11
(two English, two maths, three science, one MFL, Geog, Hist, one applied)
and its the point that they get examined on every timetable slot to make sure the kids attend.

Thornden does not set and has always done things its own way, but among the kids going into year 13 there are lots with 11 and 12 GCSEs
those heading into year 12, lots with 10 and 11

AS : three sciences and two maths makes utter sense
in wordy subjects it does not make sense, but in things like physics and further maths its a symbiosis not a competition

Talkin - state schools do not have to do that many exams. DD2 did her Gcses last year and only took 9 - normal non selective school with reasonable results (she got very good results). She was also supposed to do half a P.E. One but we said we didn't want her wasting her time on the controlled assessments so she was moved to the non-exam group. She also only took 4 AS levels this year, although she will be doing an extra one in Further Maths in her A2 year.
DD2 has had pressure put on her to apply for Oxbridge but probably won't. She did a one day masterclass which was quite disorganised for saying how much it cost to get her there - we stayed at a hotel the night before due to distance etc. She came away from Cambridge thinking fantastic location but not sure about the course. I also don't think the short-terms and pressure will suit DD as she is very laid back, likes to go out a lot and plays in a couple of bands/music groups. She also had 1 bad paper in her AS exams which brought one her grades down to a B - we are waiting for a copy of the paper back to see what happened. She has been to other open days and loved Leeds which also includes a placement year, and also liked Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield and Birmingham. We are going to look at Nottingham as well. She wasn't as keen on Durham or Warwick. All students look for different things in terms of the type of university, the location and the course, which is how is should be!

I can see how 3 sciences plus 2 maths works. And some schools do the later in various permutations, I think.

But talkin your DD did 2 sciences, 2 maths and French, right? That's a fuck of a lot. Particularly as there's a big jump between GCSE and AS in MFL, so a lot of ground to cover in year 12.

shegot
The language was the hardest work load by a long way. It was the one that was planned to carry on but has been dropped.
The further maths was always planned to be a single year as the A2 in that is only worthwhile for maths degrees.
But the maths and the sciences overlap and support each other : its not like in wordy subjects.
Certain bits of stats turn up in Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology - learn it once, use it 4 times

hellsbells
One of the reasons DCs school takes more is that RE is only taken by those doing the GCSE - so that frees up a timetable slot
but again, the numbers will fall to around 10 for the top sets as linear exams start to bite
which is still a really bad thing for the middling students whose brains work better with modular study, but that is a whole different discussion

I went to what is usually referred to as a bog standard comprehensive. Not a grammar, and definitely not one of those comprehensives that's in such a posh area that it might as well be selective.

I got straight As in my A-levels. In addition, I got the highest grades in the country in two of them (yes, exam boards do write to the top five in each subject). I also got the top grade in all my three S-levels. I was made to sit these and to apply for Cambridge by my school, for whom it was a PR coup, as no-one from there ever went to Oxbridge. They even called the local paper when I got in. I did the exam entry, not the interview (which I would instantly have failed, to this day I remain the world's crappest person at looking clever when I am talking).

The reason I'm mentioning this is not to boast, but because there are so many people on this thread who are insisting that if you are able, you will definitely apply to Oxbridge and that anyone who doesn't is just likely to fail and probably isn't able to get in. I just wanted to say that this is bollocks, and that you can be bright and be happy and do well elsewhere.

I ended up going to Cambridge for about 10 days on a scholarship place that I had very much earned and I HATED it and dropped out. One thing I just don't encounter in these discussions is any sense of how utterly lost you are as a working class person in this new world. I was completely unused to all of the social rituals. I turned up in inappropriate clothing which was laughed at, and I didn't know how to deal with things like being waited on because I'd never even been to a restaurant before except McDonalds once or twice for a really, really special treat. Because of the money, I was singled out in terms of my accommodation and also asked to go and talk to certain academics. Where I grew up, you don't talk about anything clever because 'you might make a fool of yourself'. I was terrified of looking like an idiot and started to be sick before each of these "introductions".

I was scared of the other students, too. I had never met people before who boasted all the time about what they'd done - my whole education had been about hiding the fact that I was bright because otherwise I got mercilessly bullied. The 'other kids from state schools' who I'd been assured would be there didn't seem to be from the same kind of background at all, but were largely from posh grammars that had things like sports facilities and debating societies and uniforms. I had never before dealt with people who just flat out told you you were wrong with utter assurance, or who never asked you what you might think or feel! Hell, I'd never even met people with plummy English accents before.

I ended up leaving and going to a Russell Group university where I was much, much happier. It wasn't like it felt normal - perhaps I had been broken in a bit by the experience of being so alien? - but it didn't feel so painful either. An older academic took pity on me, and took me under his wing. He found me a place at his uni, and later supervised my MA, helped me get into a top PhD school, and wrote references for my first academic jobs.

I don't know whether pulling out of Oxbridge was a good choice or not. In retrospect, if I'd stayed, I would have been forced to acquire those skills that are essential to survival in middle class life, which I still don't really possess. I'd also have got the right network on a plate, which (let's be honest) is why most of their graduates succeed - it's all about knowing the right people and having an 'in'. But there was such a howling chasm between the world I knew and the world I encountered, and it generated massive anxiety.

So I say to all those who don't like the idea of it - go, have a look round, and make your own judgement. You might not find it nearly as bad as I've painted. But if you don't feel it's right for you, you can be happy and successful elsewhere too.

If she had her time again, would she do it differently talkin?

As for modules. Well they've already gone and this cohort did okay nationally, no?

shegot
would she do it differently?
Million dollar question.
Can I chicken out and answer that one in four years time
Just that the language is helping massively with the direction of her EPQ and may well help in parts of her degree options ....
We've got a re mark requested in one paper which might make a difference to the grade balance and thus affect options for the UCAS form.
At the moment I'm also being hassled to buy her a car

shove, that's really interesting. Some people do manage. That Times journalist, Sikh, Sathnam S who came from a Northern comp to Cambridge seems to have managed the transition. It's a bit like the massive gulf going to state grammar at 11+ would have been for my mother in the NE in the 1930s. Suddenly you are with very different people (and she was chamelon like and able in being what you need to be in many different contexts and learned fast but not everyone is) and that was the problem of the state grammars - you moved a few very poor children into a different world and in a sense made them different from and sometimes apart from their own families (bit like taking aborigine children away from their families into white families). When is moving someone like that a good or a bad thing?

Certainly it is fairer at 18+ than as a baby or 11+ of course as the child has the choice and I am sure we all know people who steadfastly sought to keep themselves very different at university ( I graduated age 20 a teetotal virgin with prizes, virtually top of my year at university which is not the usual student experience but I had a lovely time at university - not Oxbridge - no one has ever been to Oxbridge from my school)

Musing in response to shovetheholly's post - because I can remember to this day the sheer relief of arriving at my Oxbridge college and suddenly being 'normal'.

My background is impoverished MC - very impoverished, and only recently MC, as all but 1 of my grandparents were from impoverished WC backgrounds. My grandparents' generation acquired some education through night school or through their work (one of my grandfathers learned to read as an older teen in order to join the police force). They sent my parents to grammar schools, from which they went to Oxbridge and became MC through a kind of osmosis. However, we were as poor as the proverbial church mice throughout my childhood - I am someone who can do the MN legendary 'chicken last 4 days for 5 people' thing because my mother taught me how, and it has taken MN fior me to realise that this isn't what everyone does.

So I spent my primary school days in an assortment of primaries - moved a lot for dad to find work - where I was usually the only MC child (though worse dressed, less well fed and significantly poorer than the other pupils), with the difference emphasised not only through my ineradicably 'BBC english' voice but also through being clever.

I went to a stereotypical all girls' private boarding school for secondary - on a 100% scholarship, which as my mother told me firmly when I suggested that I leave during a period when my dad was unemployed, was MUCH cheaper than feeding me at home. The voice came in handy, and the boarding helped because where and how I lived, our lack of material possessions etc was invisible. I was still not 'normal', though - being accelerated a year and still being ahead, and all sorts of niggly things that betrayed my poverty still made me all too noticeable.

And finally, with full grant in the bank account, I got into Oxbridge. Where although I did eventually emerge with the best degree result in my college in my year, I was blessedly normal. Most people had no more money than their grants. A gown is infinitely disguising of what you might be wearing underneath, and frankly, half my fellow students had spent their school years as geeky misfits and being one was more common than otherwise.

This doesn't help the discussion at all, I realise. It was just really interesting to read almost the exact obverse of my own experience in shove's post - that a place that can be a first taste of being normal and invisible to one person can be infinitely alienating to another.

(Tbh shove's post also reminded me of my absolute terror and misery on arriving at my secondary school - perhaps I had had much of my culture shock at that point at the age of 11 [I would have left after 10 days if I had dared, but I knew I was 'lucky to have the opportunity of such a good experience' and have never confessed to my parents how deeply unhappy I was] rather than at 18)

AS : three sciences and two maths makes utter sense

I don't agree.

I see very bright students from state schools and sixth form colleges getting UMS in the mid 80s to low 90s over the five and coming into interview without a deep enough understanding of their "primary" subject. I think they would have been in a much better position had they concentrated on four: they may well have had a higher UMS average, so a better chance for the top selective courses but also (more importantly) they would be better prepared for their university courses by studying more deeply and thoroughly.

As a poster above wrote, top private schools are often in a very different position because they are able to teach AS level maths from year 10 or 11, and teach AS science along with GCSE too, i.e. covering the five AS is much easier for them.

A lot of people have been talking about their experiences at Oxbridge/RG for 20 or 30 years ago. But there has been enormous expansion in student numbers and things have changed quite a bit at both. Overall diversity has improved everywhere (there are a lot of non-British academics and students in most places) and Oxbridge does feel different than it did in the 90s.

I really think it's worth bearing in mind that many of the RG universities have expanded enormously, particularly since the number caps were dropped. Unfortunately this has had a bad impact on the average level of the students, and hence on the levels at which many courses are taught. In my own field there is an increasing gap between the levels of the top 5 or 6 courses (includes Oxbridge) and everywhere else. When I was an undergraduate the top 20 or so universities would all give adequate preparation for masters/research/subject specific jobs. Nowadays graduates from the top 5 or 6 would be much better prepared and more in demand. I don't know much about biological sciences but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a similar hierarchy, which is worth looking into.

teacher, fascinating. Isn't it because of class though you fitted in okay? I was talking to one of my teenager whose friend just doesn't know the things we know. He didn't know what car hire was for example and I expect he might not have often had a sit down meal and all sorts of things my son knows just from what I've said as much as what we've done. My younger siblings went to Oxbridge and I was not allowed to try when I asked my Head - she said as I was a year young at school I was too young to be allowed which is probably rubbish but doesn't matter at all. I would have fitted in fine as the thing my school lacked which enjoyed most at university was a choir and classical music singing so I suspect an Oxbridge college on a choral scholarship (I had 4 grade 8s) rather than Manchester at peak pop music era time could have worked but I was happy where I was and it all worked out fine.

Oooh, well done on your graduation Janet, that's some achievement (at 20 too!)

Yes, I think you are spot on about moving people out of cultures, and our understanding of that not being very advanced. Don't get me wrong: some of the handful of kids that make it to Oxbridge from my background do enjoy it and get bags out of it. I suspect that's a bit about class cultures, a bit about upbringing, and a bit about personality - all three can vary greatly in terms of 'openness'. (I'm probably not that chameleon-like or open, though I would like to be both!)

In my case, gender was definitely also a factor: I was raised to be tentative in the extreme about my opinions because 'as a woman' it wasn't considered acceptable for me to speak out loudly about anything. I was supposed to preface everything with self-effacing and polite comments about my inability to give a view. /eyeroll To this day, I still struggle to articulate verbally, and am far more comfortable exchanging views in writing than in person. I suspect that many women will be able to identify with this across class barriers, though. It is by no means exclusively a working class issue.

Over the ages of 16-18 I'd also come through a period of DV and EA from a mentally unwell parent from the age of about 13, had developed and then got clean from a substance abuse problem, and had even been homeless for a bit during my A-levels, so I probably wasn't in the best place for a big social encounter - it was hard enough maintaining my sense of self as it was. When you have had all that to deal with and you're suddenly stuck with a bunch of kids who have been parented with hawk-like care and who are going completely mental as a result of having their first sniff of freedom, the difference between your background and theirs is pretty stark. I found the whole fresher think intolerably stupid and like a regression to childhood, because drinking had ceased to be something cool at the age of about 14 when everyone I knew at school had repeatedly been drunk to the point of being sick.

Fascinating turn this discussion has taken after shove's and teacher's posts. From the mention of S levels and a scholarship place, shove, I think that you must have been 18 over 20 years ago. A lot has changed since then and one factor that I'm guessing might make a lot of difference is the internet. Many students now arrive at their university already 'knowing' a lot of their cohort from The Student Room, Facebook etc etc. It's also so much more common to go to university now that maybe the very bookish feel less freaky for having that ambition and their families possibly have more grasp of why it's a good idea for clever young people to continue with their education beyond school. Finally, I think many universities (not just Oxford and Cambridge) have made real efforts to try to be more inclusive. I don't know how successful they've been but at least they're trying.

spinoa
Please make your mind up.
Up thread people were saying that everybody doing NatSci had four A2s
Now you are saying that five linked AS is too much.
Which one is it?

Four AS with high UMS followed by four A2 outranks five AS at lower UMS followed by four A2. (I didn't mention A2 above but having less than four A2 would indeed be unusual for Oxbridge STEM.)

Many Oxbridge applicants will have high UMS in five science/maths AS, particularly when they come from private/grammar schools. But somebody would not be denied an interview because they "only" have four AS at high UMS, rather than five. So it would always be a safer choice to concentrate on four rather than five - as was said many times before on this board.

I do think students from the Hampshire comprehensive/sixth form college are at a disadvantage with respect to getting advice on the optimal AS choices. The people who know them best (their school) don't regularly teach AS, and don't tend to throw AS work into the top GCSE sets, so can't optimally advise on how the student will do at AS. Meanwhile the sixth form college don't know the student and also can't make the call about what would be the optimal choices.

Janet, I do think that being MC - however precariously - did help.

However, being the right class wasn't 'sufficient', IYSWIM?

At primary, I was 'abnormal' for reasons of class, poverty, and intellect.

At secondary, although I was MC like my classmates, I was 'abnormal' for reasons of poverty, and although it was a top academic school, still intellect.

At Oxbridge, my level of intellect was 'normal' for that cohort, my grant gave me the same income as everyone else, and my class was that of the majority of other students. It was the coming together of the 3 that made me feel normal.

Yes, a system of secondary up to 16 then sixth form college is always going to struggle with that one.

There's a lot of reliance on parents knowing what is going to work best, which most don't.

5 AS in year 12 when students are also trying to settle in plus bridge the gap between GCSE and A level (worse in some subjects than others) is a big ask.

DS will do 5 but he is already at the school so kinda knows what's what and he already did AS maths in year 11 with his GCSEs.

shovetheholly I've heard from a lot of recent freshers that they hated freshers week plus one with a passion. I've a lot of sympathy for the feeling different thing but ten days really isn't enough to give it a go. I think if any of my DC arrived home after only ten days I'd do my absolute best to persuade them back for a few weeks more. If you'd stayed, I can't see how your obvious brilliance could have failed to act as a leveller (leveller isn't the right word, I'm using it loosely).

I agree with spinoa, often the experience of a couple of decades ago is of only marginal relevance today. And thirty years ago was a whole world away. Not just at Oxbridge of course, everywhere.