Turning down Oxford offer

[bevelino]

My dd has announced tonight she wants to turn down her Oxford place for Bristol or Edinburgh. She has friends who are studying at Oxford saying repeatedly how hard it is compared to their friends elsewhere. While dd says she will work hard wherever she ends up, she says she wants to live a little and have fun. Dd is at a highly academic school, where A* and A at GCSE and A'level is the norm. I just want her to be happy.

The only experience I have of Oxbridge graduates is at work where we recruit lots of grads from Oxford and Cambridge and I supervise them. In reality they don't perform any better under our graduate training programme than other RG students.

My question is shall I say nothing or encourage her to firm Oxford which I know I could do as all she wants to do is to make me and dh proud?

My DSS1 is at Bristol in his third year and my DSS2 is at UCL in his first year. Both are reading Economics and both work really hard! I think that all the competitive courses that open doors to high-earning careers are hard work these days.

Tutorial requirements (ie a weekly essay or two) obviously create a certain pressure. On the other hand they help to keep students on the straight and narrow. It's far easier to hide in large group seminars and to wing it on the work front with no-one noticing until it's too late. So the sustained pressure can be very positive for certain types of student who might otherwise let things slide.

Molio, yes but it then depends on the tutor, so one friend of DS' has a pretty disengaged tutor so little feedback other than some vague comments on the first year exam papers. DH in contrast had a great tutor and still goes back for reunions.

I spent an awful lot of my time at Oxford in the pub - but the Oxford assessment method (a few high stakes exams) suited me and I didn't find it academically stressful. I did a PhD at a RG uni & an MSc at an ex poly & found those harder work.

Nothing wrong with turning down the place if she doesn't want to go, but might be worth talking to people currently doing her course to get an idea of the workload. She's presumably already done that I guess. (I'm just surprised at everyone saying it was much more work). DH read history at Oxford & I remember him spending a lot of time in the pub as well. Things may have changed since then, but in my day I can honestly say that the final year was hard work, the first two years not really. Medics worked hard, but there was a lot of variation between courses.

Happiness should always be prioritised. Wherever she goes it will be less slog than getting an A* at A level!

With history you swap tutors termly though NeedMoreSleep.

Dh and I were comparing our physics degrees (Oxford for him, RG for me) and there were very few differences in content.

This may have been true historically (although I must say that in my experience it wasn't) but times have changed. From the perspective of an external examiner it is quite astonishing to see how much RG courses vary and how some have really dumbed down considerably (despite having cohorts with very high incoming grades).

And even the most disengaged tutors set work and mark it. And you have to talk about something in tutorials!

disquit true dat.

I've worked at another RG university ( though fairly low ranked and not in STEM).
The courses were incomparable.

Many years ago (but I doubt it's changed much) I knew people who were studying history at Oxford. They seemed to work constantly, to the point of exhaustion.

Work gets set and marked pretty regularly at other universities. It's not just the tutorial system that keeps students engaged.

I suspect that one of the major differences between Oxbridge and even high ranked RG universities is the degree of freedom students have to choose less demanding options as they move through the course.

Maybe it's the type of student? DH certainly did not work to the point of exhaustion for his Oxford history degree. I know this because he was down the pub with me

He came out with a 2:1 but was borderline first (& he's no genius - he worked for his finals, just not the first 2 and a bit years).

All this talk of it being such hard work was just not my experience really. It is a system that suits people who are happy to cram.

disquit, I don't disagree either. Indeed another of DS' friends is struggling elsewhere because the course is so unchallenging.

There are competitive, challenging and demanding courses outside Oxbridge. But being part of RG does not provide this sort of quality assurance. Certainly top London Universities seem to keep pace with their Oxbridge equivalents, as do departments at Durham, Bristol and Warwick and more.

As far as an individual goes it has to be horses for courses. The best you can do is think about what you want from University and what suits you.

As for the tutor, this might not be a common problem, but an Oxbridge graduate friend confirmed it is not unknown, and presumably more of a risk in minority subjects. More important perhaps is to consider whether you are more suited to the self directed tutorial style of teaching or whether you would be happier with the lecture/seminar systems offered elsewhere.

Hmmm. Rather than thinking about whether you should go along with dd's wishes to turn the place down or not, I think I would delve deeper into how she has arrived at this decision.

The reasons given in your OP for turning the place down seem flimsy to me...

Firstly she hasn't actually said which of Bristol/Edinburgh she prefers. So it seems to be a downer on Oxford rather than a preference for another specific course/place.

Secondly, undergraduates at Oxford are not all buried in work and miserable. If that was really the case, people would be turning down places in much larger numbers or not applying in the first place. Oxford want the best students and if this objective was compromised by large numbers of seriously unhappy students, they would seek to address it.

It is likely to be true that there is more work to be done at Oxford, rather than Bristol/Edinburgh. Have these friends specifically told dd that they would choose to go to a different university if they applied with hindsight? Or have they just stated an observation re the volume of work?

I would support the turning down of a place if the reason(s) really stood up to scrutiny. Students do kill themselves sometimes. Students do get overwhelmed with the work and end up on stress meds. Small numbers quit Oxbridge to go to other universities after one/two years. I know someone who failed his Cambridge finals despite his best efforts and was seriously miserable. He repeated the third year at Sheffield and got a first class degree, top of the year group. So some people will find Oxbridge to be torturous and thrive elsewhere. But I am not convinced your dd falls into this category on the basis of your op. Surely she had worked reasonably hard at school to achieve her GCSE and predicted A Level results?

Certainly top London Universities seem to keep pace with their Oxbridge equivalents, as do departments at Durham, Bristol and Warwick and more.

Not in all subjects. Standards at Bristol, for example, are in free fall in some STEM subjects. Durham is only ranked around 20 or so in my subject.

HERE are details of the numbers of Oxford students who have taken a break, dropped out of been suspended. The information was given as freedom of information request.

Not surprisingly Oxford has low drop out figures but it clearly doesn't work out for everyone.

Disquisitones
. Standards at Bristol, for example, are in free fall in some STEM subjects. Durham is only ranked around 20 or so in my subject.

I suspect not everyone agrees with this sweeping statement.

Disquis, hence the word "departments".

It is likely that had DS gone to Cambridge he would have been further down the year group than he is now. But this is not necessarily a bad thing, indeed motivation is probably easier if you are one of the stronger students. Plus his course offers greater flexibility within his degree than he have had at Cambridge. So it is likely that he will do as well if not better in employment or post-grad terms where he is. For his subject the same would be true for those going to Warwick, but less so elsewhere.

At times I feel that Oxbridge is a bit like very academic London private schools where some parents pull out all the stops to get their DC there and are then surprised that outcomes for individual children are no better than had they been to a good local state school. Some thrive in a demanding academic and often competitive culture, and find it very rewarding. Others, who might be equally bright, don't.

It comes down to what you want from University and looking closely at what is offered, and where. And all quite difficult when you are 17 and not sure either how deepn your interest in a subject is, and how good you will be when you step up to University level study.

I went to Oxford a long time ago, but to a college which was more disposed towards state school kids. I had been to a Hackney comprehensive and then a really good state sixth form college. I personally found it a huge relief to be normal rather than the spoddy geeky top of the class kid. This can be a real reduction in pressure.

I also had a friend from sixth form, who was from a middle class background, who could not cope with the culture at Durham and dropped out. I think it was all too posh for her, and ironically I found lots of mates at Oxford.

And although the nightlife was shit, it was an amazing experience.

I think the benefits to going to Oxford in terms of changing my view of what was possible, and opening doors, was much greater for me, as I'm from a very working class background. It transformed my life in a way which Birmingham or Liverpool wouldn't have. I don't think this necessarily holds for children from different backgrounds though.

Standards at Bristol, for example, are in free fall in some STEM subjects. Durham is only ranked around 20 or so in my subject.

confused shock I suspect not everyone agrees with this sweeping statement.

The latter is not controversial: it comes from league tables. The latter may indeed be controversial. I would be very interested to hear comments from Bristol academics working in STEM subjects as to why the number of firsts/2:is has increased so much, if there is no dumbing down/grade inflation involved. (Not all STEM subjects are involved.)

disquisitiones only a theory, my DD studies a Stem degree at Bristol and from what I gather a few students are oxbridge, imperial, UCL rejects ie: they got the offer but didn't make the grade. So in reality they have quite high calibre students to begin with, my DD also someone who didn't make the grade for Oxford by 3 marks, many are there from insurance rather than firm. DD says on her course students are high achieving lot, not many "waste of timers". I don't know maybe by having high achieving students/cohort in the first place they are statistically going to achieve better. Maybe I'm wrong. Just a thought. And then all this league table thing, can they be trusted, many a times I hear on HE thread that theyre just as dodgy with how the stats are made up to give the results. Maybe there should be a overhaul on how degree classification are given, use a different system. I think there's a general consensus that amount of first class and 2:1 have gone up across the board over the years.

May I add its a fair few students that are Oxbridge etc... rejects not just a few I said above

Molio dd's BF is studying a humanities type course (or should I say "reading"). I agree that a lot of the pressure is self-imposed.

Re the nightlife, it may be shallow but college bars and clubs & societies dies sound a bit limited (but will be perfectly fine for a lot of people)

Thank you everyone for all your helpful messages and there is lots of good advice. Dd has an appointment with head of 6th form and her form tutor on Monday and she will talk through how she feels. Once that is done I will support her in whatever she decides to do.

My mistake Decorhate - I'd got the idea he was a medic, obviously from nowhere!

Bristol's grade inflation has been much faster (in my area) than other places, while the level of their intake has been falling (definitely not filled with lots of near miss Imperial/Oxbridge students in my subject). I'm not particularly pointing the finger at Bristol, but making the point that the RG is not a homogeneous group and there can be quite big variations in courses.

It's very hard to figure these out from tables (which can easily be fiddled): I know a lot about subjects close to my own but I would find it quite hard to figure out how good other courses are at different RGs.