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?

Talkin there's a misunderstanding somewhere ... It doesn't matter exactly how many people there are in your college. Honest. Size and wealth of college might make a difference for other reasons but socially? They're not hermetically sealed. She'd be out and about all over the city every day. More than likely she'd have supervisions in several other colleges with other supervisors. The major institutions for her subject exist for everyone regardless of college. Her favoured library / lab / whatever may be at the other side of town. In short - you go back to college to sleep.

Hi - I did Natural Sciences at Cambridge many moons ago. It was very hard work and stressful at times. I had a great time though and made many close friends with whom I'm still in touch. I met some amazing people and it is incredible to see what some of them have achieved since college. The whole experience helped me to get on to my chosen career ladder and I feel like I have had a stimulating, interesting career (which I currently do part time as I want to spend time with my young family). Although I had many misgivings at the time I am really glad I went and I am very proud of my Cambridge degree.

I think some of the reasons stated above are very poor reasons for making a major life decision. Has she spent time actually really talking to students? I think that would be the best way to address these points. All the points are valid concerns but I am not sure she has got to the bottom of any of them yet.

The lunch point is a complete non-starter. I am vegetarian and didn't enjoy the college meals very much. I thought they were horrible. I just bought / made my own lunch. I had a pretty good kitchen for 2 of my 3 years. There was a small element of double payment in the first year but the second and third I didn't have to pay for college catering.

I went to very few formal dinners and wore a gown probably 10 times in my entire university career. I didn't really like all the formal, old-fashioned, traditional stuff. I found it annoying and not very me. But attending the odd formal dinner doesn't mean people aren't standing on their own two feet! In fact you usually have to pay extra for a formal dinner so I wouldn't call it 'coat tails'.

Tourists are indeed common in both towns but are most prevalent during the summer when university is not in session. I cannot remember ever having my way from building to building impeded by tourists. They are very rarely allowed inside colleges and colleges are particularly strict around revision and exam time.

The small sizes of the colleges is a valid point. I went to a small college on purpose but some of the larger colleges had intakes of over 200 undergraduates a year. I did find that most of my friends at other universities made many of their friends either through their course or their hall of residence and the sizes of the halls was very similar to the sizes of the Oxbridge colleges.

Not sure exactly what she means about tutors but by the time I was in my second and third years my supervisors were all from other colleges chosen for the specialties not the college they were in. In the first year the courses are all so general it is not necessary to have very specialised tuition.

If these are the genuine reasons she doesn't want to apply, I think she is probably making a mistake because she may have the wrong end of the stick on at least some of the issues. If there is more to it and there are other deeper reasons for her not wanting to apply then it would make sense to tease them out and it may well be absolutely correct not to apply.

A friend of mine had a (difficult) offer from Cambridge that he deliberately missed because he didn't really want to go there. His Dad went to Cambridge and I think he applied just to please his father, but he found a lot of the things there archaic and went to a redbrick instead.
My sister also came under pressure from my parents to take a gap year and re apply to Cambridge after she aced her A levels. She decided to go straight to another University because she didn't want to live at home for another year, and she went to a private school and wanted to go somewhere more 'normal' for University. In any case, there was no guarantee she would have got into Cambridge anyway.

She's ruling out Oxbridge based on the lunch arrangements? How incredibly short sighted.

None of her assumptions are correct IME.

I take it you have talked to her about what a great 'door opener' an Oxbridge degree is- long after nobody gives a sh*t what subject you read?

Thanks namechangeforissue . I did not know that.

FFS
Not just lunch. The whole "eating meals in college" thing.
And the tiny size of the colleges.
And the tiny size of the town FWIW

So, If I'm so wrong about the catering .....
Which college does not include any meals in its fees to undergrads
and provides proper kitchens?

I applied to Oxbridge over a decade ago now purely because my school processed the UCAS forms for the Oxbridge candidates quicker and I thought sod it, might as well apply so I get my application in to the unis I want earlier.

I got an Oxbridge place.

I turned it down as it was not where I wanted to go.

Retrospectively, this was a very foolish thing to do and if I knew everything I know now I would have accepted.

It's fine to consider a place, anywhere, and find it's not what you want. She shouldn't turn that into her rejecting Oxbridge, though. She can only do that if they offer her a place and she turns it down

All of this.

I was at Cambridge twenty years ago, and none of this stuff was compulsory then, except at one or two of the colleges where there was some mandatory dining in college. Don’t like that? Choose a different college.

To go through the points listed, based on my personal & other experiences:

1. I had self-catering accommodation every single year, both in and out of college.
2. Some of the colleges are large, some are small. And if you don’t want to socialise in college, nobody is going to make you - Oxford & Cambridge have the same plethora of university-wide clubs and societies that every other university has.
3. Nobody makes you go back to college for lunch.
4. Formal dining was entirely optional, but a cheap way to get together with friends every now and again if you wanted to.
5. My college closed itself to tourists at peak times for obvious reasons, so this wasn’t as bad as you’d think. Really don’t like tourists? Pick a college that’s not on the tourist circuit.
6. Tutors / Supervisors (term varies depending on where you are) were always specialists in my experience - if the college doesn’t have anyone in house, then they will bring someone in from outside. By the time you get to your final year, you’re probably being tutored by topic-specific specialists from your department anyway.

Want to know which are the largest undergraduate colleges? Go to the relevant wikipedia pages en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colleges_of_the_University_of_Cambridge & en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colleges_of_the_University_of_Oxford and sort the table by size.

I find it really sad that people reject Oxford/Cambridge for such trivial reasons - I suspect it’s more to do with a worry that the “won’t fit in” despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of people there are perfectly normal people just like them.

Trinity is huge, has proper kitchens and I have no idea what it includes in its fees to undergraduates but its room rates are very low anyway.

I was at Cambridge. Lived in college for hte first year but mainly ate at Gardys or with friends. Didn't pay anything for food unless I ate it. After that I lived out and self-catered completely.

Friends from University I know now are: drama friends, music friends, course friends, college friends, DH, his nerdy friends, his not-nerdy friends. Pretty much from every different college but not Christs because they worked too hard.

Oxbridge gives you an amazing opportunity. She should at least apply.

Which college does not include any meals in its fees to undergrads
and provides proper kitchens?

But both of these points are complete red herrings. Yes, there is a kitchen fixed charge in most colleges but the combined cost of rent plus kitchen charge is typically way lower than at other universities, because of the shorter terms and heavily subsidised rent rates.

What you do mean by proper kitchen? I ate three times per day with a kitchenette, cooking (mostly veggie) food from scratch. Most universities which claim full self-catering actually make lots of students share one small kitchen. I'm not convinced that Oxbridge facilities are actually worse in practice.

And if catering is indeed such a big deal then choose your college according to this. Also bear in mind that at other universities you may well not get the accommodation you want and end up with less than ideal kitchen facilities.

The other thing I remember about my visits was the really high standard of student "stuff" going on. From sports events to choir concerts to plays to journalism. There seemed to be a lot of money sloshing around to support this (don't know if this is still the same). At my uni there wasn't an expectation you'd be doing much outside of studying, part-time job and having a good time. At Cambridge it seemed to be expected you'd be involved in something extra-curricular. Great for those who wanted that and I imagine an unwanted pressure for those who didn't.

Some of these reasons do seem a bit 'off'.

It seems she has seen a glimpse of one? College and assumed that they are all very similar.

Looking back I'll admit that my reasons for choosing one Uni over another were spurious so I'm not surprised at an 18 yo thinking like this but in retrospect I wish I'd had someone mn to give me proper advice.

I wish my DS was Oxbridge material. He will get the grades and despite wanting to study the degree since a very young age, there is no way he'd pass the interview. He comes across far too laid back lazy

Are you from London OP? Because presumably most places will feel "tiny" after London.

FWIW I think some of her reasons are a bit silly and cleraly not very well researched

I apeak as a person who turned down an Oxbridge interview because I felt it was very elitist and I would feel out of place there. Do I regret it now? A bit. But only a bit

I don't think she seems to know much about it, but having said that, why is it an issue anyway?

Surely she is looking into the reasons she has for choosing a specific university to apply for, and applying to those,

Why all this palava about the a couple of universities she doesn't want to apply for?

This is totally irrelevant to anything, as far as I can see.

I turned down a Cambridge offer because there were other places I wanted to go to. Why would you start a thread about a place you don't want to go to?

talkin I know from numerous threads that you're pretty disappointed that your DD won't be taking the Oxbridge route.

But this aggressive anti Oxbridge stance is just silly.

Portraying it as if she was a dead cert for Oxbridge but they're both too shit for her to consider makes you look, well, unseemly.

Many of the reasons given are pretty spurious. Many are just wrong.

Trying to garner 'supporters' is pretty lame.

I do hope that her university education makes her more able to research effectively in the future. Everyone obviously has the right to choose the university that best fits them, and sometimes that choice is just made on a gut feeling that can't be properly explained, and it's still a valid decision, but to justify her decision on these "facts" is quite erroneous.

The formal dinner stuff is not compulsory, and is actually an excellent way for students to learn how to behave in the sort of formal settings that are occasionally a requirement of most professional level dinners.
Unless she is intending to go to kings and frequent the chapel, there are not hoards of tourists at any time other than summer visiting days.

Student facilities at Cambridge are not as modern as some universities- how could they be when students rooms can sometimes be in buildings that are hundreds of years old rather than purpose built blocks. But the vast majority of students who come to Cambrideg find that ancient plumbing and stairs rather than lifts are more than made up for by the access to world experts and by learning alongside other incredibly intelligent people.

I do hope she finds a course and uni that suits her.

TalkinPeace the majority of your DDs thoughts are based on what she fancies now as an 18yo and what she wants her lifestyle to be like for 3+ years.

Not thinking the course is balanced at Oxford is an OK reason not to apply although nobody will even think of that 10 years into her career.

I hope somebody in counselling her about how much more she is 'choosing' than what her undergraduate days will be like.

DD applied to Cambridge because she thought she might as well, she didn't think she'd get in and didn't really care.

After an open day and the ENDLESS application process she was absolutely sure it wasn't for her and she was wrong for Cambridge. She nearly withdrew, she had much better experiences at Bristol and Warwick and felt happier and more at home with them. She went for the exam/interview and it was totally different, everyone she met seemed 'normal' it was friendly, she liked the interviewers (well most of them). It was totally different from the open days, prospectus and reputation. She loved it.

She's going in October, so we'll see which impression was right but she is very excited, relieved and happy to have made it.

NB, if you want to find out about catering facilities for undergraduates, college undergraduate admission staff are a phone call away & this is what they’re for. Just call them & ask!

Even the colleges that are fully catered generally have small kitchens available for students to use. Usually just a hob, fridge & kettle but enough to rustle up an omelette or two :)

My DS did exactly this. And then got his results which were a perfect score, was more mature when he made the original decision, and did a u turn. He had to reapply and had a gap year. Hasn't regretted it for a minute.

Never say never.

I think my DD would like to go to Oxbridge as its as close to Hogwarts as she'll ever get. Now THERE is a proper reasoning for choosing where to apply.