Anyone whose DD or DS had a disastrous Oxbridge interview....

[Supermanspants]

..... and managed to get an offer?
Hideous interview today. Grilled on a topic she hasn't even covered in her A level course and based purely on a 7 page academic article she only got half an hour before the interview.
She is so down about it all.

So sorry for all disappointed dc. It is really harsh. [Sad]

Ds got an offer, from first choice college. My big, independent, non emotional almost 18 year old broke down in tears of relief and happiness. He really,really thought he wouldn't get in. Offer seems manageable if he puts his mind to it, a lot less than imperial college were asking for as well.
Turns out he had his email from 10 o'clock but didn't want to open it!

Sorry its tough for you and DC, mummy - I agree its all been a bit disruptive, all that cramming and practising for possible inerview questions - on the one hand he didn't go too mad, but on the other, you wonder if he'd done even more but then thinking well if he was borderline, might he have had a bit of a shit time and got left behind like I did some of the time anyway--

Don't now how he's taken it as not home yet, but I predict he'll be more sanguine than me, as is his way

I have to stop myself second guessing and asking all the 'could I have done more' s, it will get us nowhere. But it's hard, isn't it?

Well done to young pickle

no offer for DSS but he is happy as Cambridge was only a last minute thought this September and not the be all and end all for him.

I felt his English was not quite there yet and was worried how he would cope. Maybe Cambridge felt the same.

although he would be paying more in fees than my DC as a net uk taxpayer it does somewhat stick in my throat that what we should actually be doing is offering our universities to our kids and only the excess places elsewhere.

All of the world's top universities take students from abroad: this is essential for creating a dynamic, vibrant environment, in which students can learn from others with different backgrounds, different experiences, different ways of thinking. Restricting to home only students would rapidly push our universities far down international league tables and cripple our children's chances of competing in an increasingly globalised economy. Countries such as France which have not taken foreign students/hired foreign staff at universities have seen their university sector collapse in prestige, and their economies have suffered immensely.

Unfortunately the choice of the UK tax payers is to not fund university education and research adequately, but even if universities were better funded it would still be essential to take students from all over the world. (And, moreover, to hire international staff, for exactly the same reasons.)

And please bear in mind that many international students are not from privileged backgrounds: my DP came from a village with no phone lines, no electricity, in which most people picked tobacco from the fields. He travelled 3 hours per day on a broken down bus to attend high school, studied in the city library after school as he could not buy books, and took the bus home late at night.

Finally, the 3 out of 4 home Oxbridge applicants who don't get in will have wonderful opportunities at other terrific UK universities. It's only within the UK that people consider Oxbridge to be so far above all our other world leading universities. But if students can't find any other option they like (bewildering as I would find this) then students can always re-apply next year with their results in hand.

LadyPeter that was me a few years back, I laughed at your comment about the stretch marks.

Congratulations to those who have an offer. With the exception of the Cambridge mathmos the vast majority of those who have offers take up a place. Although it's not publicised both universities do sometimes take people who miss a grade.

Commiserations to those who don't have an offer but they are all of a high standard or they wouldn't have been interviewed. They will have other others from good universities and once they are at those universities they can celebrate the better night life and less pressurised terms and enjoy the new friends they make, they would have had different friends at Oxbridge.. Some will meet their partners there. They might even be at a better university for their subject.

Any system with interviews will make mistakes and quite a few of the students who get a place spend at least the first term wondering if they should be there. It's a very pressurised environment. Time to focus on the positives of other universities.

MummyMeister
I wish we had the system of no offers until after they had results. then kids could apply to the one that they wanted with their grades and personal statement and if they got rejected then move on to the next one.
^^
Me too. I think the current system is crazy. It's expensive, time consuming, incredibly stressful and unfair.

Dropping AS's and the massive rise in incorrect predicted grades make it even more unfair.

If students applied with their results - which don't come out until August - wouldn't it be incredibly stressful to have to sort out applications/accommodation/student loans within less than a month?

And bear in mind that top universities don't in any case use just A levels as selectors: in addition they would still need personal statements, aptitude tests and interviews to distinguish between applicants with similar grades. It's hard to think that these could all be assessed in such a short space of time.

So the only real option would be to move results earlier (resulting in earlier exams, and probably less covered in sixth form). But the best case scenario would probably be results in early July, which would mean that July/August would be very stressful for students. And furthermore universities just do not have the capacity to select candidates, allocate accommodation, then timetable according to the number of students entering, appoint staff to teach according to the number of students entering etc etc, within 2-3 months. The student loan company couldn't deal with the finance for hundreds of thousands of students in such a short time either. Universities have to know approximate numbers a long time in advance to make the required preparations for staff, facilities, accommodation, timetabling etc.

The current system is certainly not perfect, but it is hard to see how to change it without making it worse or impossible to implement.

When my son was in the sixth form, I looked at the Irish university system in case he might be interested. As far as I could make out, places are allocated there in the summer months after the Leaving Certificate results come out. How do they manage the logistics?

There just aren't many of them

Applications post results would be great, however as disquisitiones" highlights there are more than a few logistical issues to be dealt with. I'd go further and suggest knock on effects on Uni open days, school references, personal statement which might logically make more sense to be done after results known as well. Would be interesting to know more of the Irish system, but recognising the overall UK population is not far off 65 million, or some 13 times more than that of RoI. Difficult to believe that ratio is any less in terms of numbers applying to Uni each year.

Options might be delaying the start of the university year to January so leaving a longer gap; although quite how an academic year would be best structured within a calendar year I'm struggling with. I could see it working if we were southern hemisphere, with a logical summer break Dec&Jan or Jan&Feb. That does seem a bit of a non-starter unless the earth is about tho do a 180 degree tilt on its axis.

More radically perhaps apply post results but retain the academic year meaning course start the following September/October - eg a full 12 mnths for the selection (both by students of uni's and course to apply to, and by Unis to review application) and application process. How the initial "fallow" year would work if such a system were to be introduced might raise some challenges (but also perhaps research opportunities ????, and a chance for would -be applicants to really reflect on whether uni was the best thing for them, plus be a year older, although not necessarily a year wiser :) when starting their course); and is there a concern that for a small number of subjects, I've often heard Maths given as the example, a 12 mnth break is also a concern. Not sure how genuine a concern that might be.

Well, I did wonder that, but then there aren't many universities either! Are the course numbers much smaller? Do they do any pre-processing of offers before results day? Do they bother with personal statements and references or does it all go on results?

I used to work in a university and part of my job involved dealing with MSc applications. I could have turned the straightforward ones round very quickly indeed. No matter what the official university website said, the key piece of information in most applications was the first degree result. If that was OK, it would have taken a lot to dissuade the programme team from making an offer. Assuming undergrad admissions are the same, it could mostly be automated if aspiring students had to do something similar to secondary applications in England: viz, pick 5 or 6 universities and rank them. Your highest ranked offer is the only one you get. You don't get the luxury of receiving lots of offers and leaving the final decision to the last minute.

concern being my favourite word of the day. apologies for my vocab limitations.

Moving the university year to start in January would put us out of line with most of the rest of the world - a big problem when universities are so international these days (both staff and students).

I'm not sure it would be popular for students to be forced to have a gap year, either.

Compared with the RoI: we have many more courses and much larger numbers of students on courses (many more EU/non-EU students than they do). We have more selective courses for which school results alone do not suffice (requiring interviews, aptitude tests). There is a much bigger hierarchy amongst universities in the UK; Oxbridge candidates need to know their results before other competing highly selective courses can finish making their decisions but the Oxbridge decision process takes time.

We have much bigger fluctuations in student numbers on courses than in RoI, which affects universities' planning for staff, facilities etc. And the student loans company is a huge issue: turning around hundreds of thousands of applications in such a short space of time would require a massive input of staff and data handling (and increase costs).

Right now the vast majority of university applications are already handled by administrators (offers being automatic if predicted grade requirements are met or close to being met) but it still takes university admissions teams many months, working flat out, to turn around all offers. If applications came in after results the total number of applications would of course be lower but I still don't think it would be easy to deal with them all in only a month - and that's leaving aside the fact that for highly selective courses results are not enough so decisions would take longer/involve academics. (And recall that 50% of the job of academics is research and most of the rest of the world's academics have key conferences during the summer period.)

BTW setting up an automated system (extending UCAS) to deal with hundreds of thousands of applicants listing their top 5 courses in ranked order, such that they receive only one offer, would cost a lot of money and it would be a very complicated system....

I can't see a massive problem with the current system. The thought of a mandatory gap year is hideous and economically not viable.

Am wondering......... my DD place was deferred and she was pooled. She thinks this MAY have had a negative impact on her chances of being fished as the pool is to enable all colleges/subjects fill their quota with the right calibre of candidates for September admission....... right?

Plus there will always be some degree of variation in the quality/number of applicants each year. In that case I can't see why any admissions tutor would want to admit someone from the pool who has a deferred entry.

Really more a question/query rather than a whinge but it does seem likely that deferred applicants are at a distinct disadvantage if they are pooled.

Supermanspants my understanding has always been that it is tough to get a deferred place in general as the admissions tutors have to be confident that the applicant is not only strong enough to have been offered a place in the application year but will also be amongst the best the following year ie amongst a field they haven't even seen yet.

Your logic regarding a deferred applicant being fished from the pool seems sound to me but I'm no expert so hopefully someone with more knowledge of the process will comment soon.

If your DD was applying for deferred entry will she re-apply next year?

Supermanpants my understanding is exactly the same as Cherryburn's and the disadvantage in the pool makes a lot of sense. I hope you don't mind my saying this but I have also wondered if your DD looked frail when she went for interview because your description of her made her sound as though she might have done, and that fact can't have escaped the tutors. I know that they look at everything in the round, and they might well have had questions in their mind about whether your DD would cope physically but they clearly had a high opinion of her to put her in the pool. I know of a similar but different case where an extremely talented student was pooled this year in a very competitive subject from a very competitive college though there was no doubt about this student's ability, none whatever (I know the tutor who made the decision and they clearly struggled).

Well done to LadyPeter's DS and pickledonion's too (thick is always good!) and bad luck to all those not successful this time round, especially for those for whom the stakes were high.

DS's offer is for a deferred place, but his college made it clear beforehand that they have no problems at all with deferred entry, which is one of the reasons he chose them. His school were pretty opposed to deferred entry for the reasons given below (sorry, I'm on the app and can't check the name of the poster).

Having said that, I wonder too whether it would have gone against him if he had been pooled, and also whether it was that, plus a borderline interview, which has lead to them making him a higher offer than usual for an Arts subject.

Blimey has he been given a two A* offer for an arts subject LP?

Yes! He is a bit daunted.

I think I read somewhere that they do occasionally do that if you're borderline - and it may be that the deferred entry didn't help.

I'd like him to drop his EPQ and just concentrate on the A-levels but he doesn't really want to. His predictions (at school, not on UCAS form) are A star, A star/A A star/A so it's possible but not in the bag by any means.

Yikes LP that's a tough offer. It strikes me that Cambridge have a lot of faith in A Level markers which I really don't share, particularly in arts/humanities subjects. I am very thankful that Oxford don't require A*s for their arts courses, not because I don't think DD is capable of achieving them, but because I don't trust the marking system enough to have to bank on getting them. There were some horror stories on the equivalent thread last year where the marking was all over the place (and I know of many cases in RL too). Best of luck to your DS.

Absolutely agree Molio and Cherry
Please don't get me wrong....this isn't a whinge because she didn't get in but it seems a bit harsh especially as her email from her college was really complimentary of her as a 'strong candidate' beyond the need to be polite and lessen the blow of rejection. They went as far as to say they were impressed with her an described her as having the ability and potential to succeed at Cambridge. She applied to a very popular college but didn't realise HOW popular until after her interview when she was looking at previous admissions stats. Yes, they pooled her so clearly had their reasons for that blah blah and my DD is totally ok with that but is now a bit especially as she found out today another fantastic student with a deferred place who attends her school was also pooled and rejected.

She does not want to re apply as, in her words, 'I can't put myself through that again'. Neither can I

She has almost decided on her firm through UCAS and it really is an amazing uni..... In top 7 globally for her subject.

ds didn't get in. He was very cheerful when he opened the letter. Said he was afraid of getting in and being on a treadmill when he hadn't wanted to go in the first place and he didn't like the second college he was interviewed at. (Not the architecture - the two grumpy women who interviewed him.) I'm relieved too. He might have another go next year, and has requested feedback to see if he was a near miss or a hopeless case. Realistically I think he was underprepared and looking about 12 years old doesn't do him any favours either. He thinks he did quite well in the HAT and his grades/predicted grades are very good so it was most likely the interview which let him down. Although he says that everyone he met there seemed super-bright and they can't all get in.

No successes from his school, and he has kept in touch with fellow interviewees he met at Oxford and from a list of 20 only two got in: one very flamboyant public schoolboy and a rampant feminist.

If he does have another bash, I think he should be a bit more canny re college. I know they say it doesn't matter, but I have my doubts about that.

I agree that asking to defer is a dangerous game unless you are really hot stuff.

I don't think you're whingeing at all Supermanspants. She was obviously very close, despite having been unwell.

Rhoda sorry to hear that but he must by definition have been a very near miss too, or he wouldn't have been pooled. He can ask the History Faculty for his HAT score anytime now, since the offers are out. They're very happy to give out the scores. DS2 got his back in minutes.

Rhoda one of DS2's friends got pooled to Hilda's from a big name college first time around, re-applied and is now at an extremely pretty old college in the centre of town.