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?

She has to do what's right for her. i am hearing a lot of students are not actually enjoying uni. I think there is so much pressure and from fifteen or so these young people have undertook a gruelling round of exam after exam.

Haven't read whole thread so may have ben suggested before, but with the grade offers she could put Bristol as firm and Oxford as insurance - would love to see someone do that! Now that would flummox the school!

I turned down a place at Cambridge and went to a RG uni (Manchester) instead. My mother went mad (could not understand how/why I would do that, it's such an honour, you'll walk into a job etc etc). She has never forgiven me and still tells everyone to this day "she could have gone to Cambridge.....)

I had a fab time at Manchester, the course was great (far more practical than Cambridge), I loved student life and made some fab friends. A big, diverse, city centre uni was far more "me" than Cambridge (from what I saw when I went to stay with friends at both unis).

And I had no problem getting a really good job afterwards!

Your daughter just has to go with what feels right for her - she's going to spend 3 years of her life (and lots of money on fees!) at uni so her happiness is the most important thing.

i love the suggestion of Bristol for firm and Oxford as insurance.
😂

DS claims a contemporary of his, when asked why he wanted to go to Cambridge, replied "I have an offer from MIT. Now you tell me why I should want to go to Cambridge." He got an offer.

Nice story. Right up there with the student who, when told "surprise me", set fire to the interviewer's newspaper

Was just thinking exactly that, Twist :)

Then there's the essay question "What is courage?" answered with the two words "This is". But my favourite story is the PhD candidate who brought a bottle of whisky to his viva. When asked at the end what it was for he said "It says in footnote 245 on page 388 that anyone who reads this footnote can claim their free bottle of whisky at the viva. I'm taking it home with me".