If your dc has had an offer for Oxbridge, what grades did they get in a levels and g.c.s.e's?

[DrMadelineMaxwell]

Just gauging the 'average' level of successful applicants. Dd is applying for Cambridge and I'm curious as to what makes a successful applicant.

TIA.

[lenalove]

Tbh at the end of the day it is fairly arbitrary and largely depends on the interview! I myself had 9A at GCSE, 5 As at AS and prediction of AA*AA, got an interview at Ox but no offer. Meanwhile classmates with lesser grades did get offers post interview.

[TabbyTigger]

My DN missed her offer (due to a marking error and various financial problems that meant she couldn’t afford to appeal her remark!), but held an offer last year.
GCSEs - 3As 9As 3Bs
AS levels - 4As (all 95%+)
A2 predictions - 3As
A2 achieved - AAB
(Her offer was AAA)

DS’s girlfriend is in her first year at Cambridge studying a humanity
GCSEs - 9As 1A
AS levels - 4As
A2 levels - 3As
(Her offer was also AAA)

And then he has a few more friends at Oxbridge but I don’t really know their grade profiles apart from one who I know got 14As at GCSE and I think AAA at A level, and is now at Oxford. Most of the kids from his year who got offers were the 8As+ crowd, but DN said the other two with offers from her year had only got 6As and 2As in GCSEs. (The latter was a maths at Cambridge offer - her As were in maths and art!). DN and her friend used to joke that combined they got less As than Stormzy but still got Cambridge offers.

My own grades (back in the 90s) to get into Oxford were straight A*s at GCSE and four As at A level

[NoCureForLove]

Ds1 - Cambridge - science subject - 11 As at GCSE, 4 As at AS, 4 As at A level.

Ds2 - Oxford - Humanities - 11 As at GCSE, A in Add Maths, no AS levels, 2 A, 1 A, 1 D1 (pre U) at A level.

[IrmaFayLear]

I guess no one quite knows yet. It will be quite awkward if only “top” schools have pupils getting multiple 9s.

Of course gcse grades matter, especially now that the AS levels have disappeared as a measure. Maybe the odd person got in with one A* and multiple Bs and Cs, but it was a rarity.

Ds (bog-standard comp) got in with 4 A* at A Level (humanities) and upon arriving at Oxbridge found many with the same.

[aaaghonaut]

So in a nutshell, if you have a dc from a good selective state school (not top, but about 6 A*/As are average at GCSE), how many 8s and 9s at GCSE would be needed do you think to make Oxbridge a possible goal?

Do the dcs need to outperform their school average massively?

Is it more important to get 8s and 9s in the A Level subjects?

[Aftershock15]

The 'they' is someone who does admissions for a course at a single cambridge college. Maybe it is just the monitoring and justification don’t make it worth their while offering a higher percentage of places to independent applicants than apply, so they feel strongly discouraged to do so. If anything I think they would be more inclined to over offer to state pupils and weren’t saying that they were rejecting good applicants to fit quotas - so the pp suggesting privately educated pupils had more difficulty getting places from state one is incorrect I think. They never take under qualified students and it does all seem to balance out - the success rate (measured by getting an offer) of independent students is the same as for state school students once they have actually decided to apply. I’m sure a saw a FOI request which backed up this over more courses/colleges - places tend to be roughly proportional to applicants, apart from overseas applicants, when there seem to be a number who apply who have no realistic chance of place.

I was making this observation because a previous poster had compared the percentage of independent pupils in the UK v the percentage at Oxbridge. I was just pointing out that the places are offered in proportion to the application ratios - how much is chance and how much is deliberate I expect does vary. Let’s face it there must always be more candidates who would excel at Oxbridge than places, so every year a choice must be made between candidates and you can’t always pick the best one, because you can’t totally predict the future.

The way to get more state pupils there is to get more suitable candidates applying. Or maybe by making sure they achieve their offers.

[irregularegular]

"We" in my post was Oxford btw.

[irregularegular]

A friend was telling me that they can only make offers in proportion to the applicants. So if 40% of applicants are from independent schools they cannot offer more than 40% of places to independent pupils although obviously can offer more than 60% to state pupils. There are also overseas applicants to put in the mix so these aren’t simple figures, but if more state pupils applied, more would get places.

I don't know who "they" are, but this simply isn't true. There is no such rule. Yes we obviously monitor these % (not just for school types, also for gender, ethnicity) and if they were out of line we would be questioning the reason for that as it implies different success rates, that would need to be justified. But we simply choose the best candidates based on our criteria (not just grades) independent of school type or anything else.

Yes, if more good state school applicants applied it is likely that more would get in. But if more good applicants with green eyes and pierced belly buttons applied then more would get in too.

[Needmoresleep]

"they can only make offers in proportion to the applicants". Surely equalities legislation requires them to treat all home/EU students equally. So yes, a scoring system might give greater weight to some of the qualities state educated applicants might have, but they can't straight discriminate on the basis of background.

Some subjects have a high proportion of overseas/EU students. A (state-educated) daughter of a friend is bemused by the state/private debate given so many of her course mates come from very privileged non-UK backgrounds.

[Aftershock15]

Just a comment on the independent v state school thing. A friend was telling me that they can only make offers in proportion to the applicants. So if 40% of applicants are from independent schools they cannot offer more than 40% of places to independent pupils although obviously can offer more than 60% to state pupils. There are also overseas applicants to put in the mix so these aren’t simple figures, but if more state pupils applied, more would get places.

This is obviously for one college and one course, but I assume that other colleges/courses follow a similar pattern.

[ZBIsabella]

www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Admissions-in-Context-Final_V2.pdf
"Challenges:
A significant challenge for Bristol is the impact of grade reductions on tariff scores and, consequently, position in league tables. Bristol’s commitment to increasing the diversity of its student profile however was considered important enough to try this approach in the 2017
-2018 admissions cycle whilst closely monitoring the potential impact
on tariff."

[BasiliskStare]

LRDthefeministdragon

"I'm sorry, but this is utter bollocks."

You have cheered me up no end with this and made me laugh - and I do believe you.

It would have been so much easier to get Ds bassoon lessons ( insert orchestra / choir potential gap in year of admission of your choice ) than for him to have actually had to have shown aptitude and interest in his subject.

Heh heh.

[BasiliskStare]

Ah sorry Lonerica - I missed your point. I am not an academic nor a teacher , where I am coming from is that more of DS's peers had remarks from humanities than science subject where the mark changed. I suppose from a lay person's POV I was referring to more interpretation re the mark. That said , if those who mark or teach either science or humanities have a view , please take theirs. That said I hope you will not worry about my comment

[LoniceraJaponica]

How do you mean that humanities scoring is less predictable? Do more potential students miss their grades?

[BasiliskStare]

One more point and to echo Needmore Ds was given a place from Oxford, LSE turned him down. They are different places and have different criteria when choosing students. My DS didn't make the cut for LSE.. A disappointment but , he had to move on. Yes I think humanities scoring is less predictable.

[Needmoresleep]

brizzledrizzle - context?

Many studying maths or science at Cambridge will have regularly gained close to 100 UMS on maths exams. AAB are respectable grades but in some subjects would not get you close to interview, and why STEP is used to further differentiate. Humanities are different, and grades less predictable

[user369060]

Getting AAB at university is not scraping in though is it, it's respectable grades after all.

Students with several grades below the average incoming grades do not tend to do well on high tariff, challenging courses. They have a much higher drop out and a much higher rate of lower degrees (Thirds and 2:2s).

The current funding situation encourages high tariff universities (not Oxbridge, but other RG) to take more students at the bottom end. This is not fair to the students, when they have a much lower chance of succeeding.

AAB are certainly respectable grades. But just as a student with "only" an A at GCSE tends to be much less likely to get an A star - B at A level, so somebody with "only" AAB may be much less likely to get a 2:i in a STEM course that usually requires A star AA.

[brizzledrizzle]

^at A levels

[brizzledrizzle]

But scraping into a demanding University course as a result of winning a postcode lottery

Getting AAB at university is not scraping in though is it, it's respectable grades after all.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

It's not quite as bad as 50% (though it should be much better!).

[MontyPythonsFlyingFuck]

"However they are at an Independent School, so this probably worked against them"

What a crock of crap. 7% of UK children are privately educated. 50% of Oxbridge students are privately educated. So, proportionally, there are seven times more privately-educated than state-educated students at Oxbridge.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

A friend's daughter was told by her tutor that they looked favourably on her application (compared with hundreds of similarly qualified others) because she played the bassoon, and the current bassoon player in the college orchestra was in Third Year and leaving...

I cannot believe I missed this gem.

I'm sorry, but this is utter bollocks.

For one thing, college orchestras generally have no issue going beyond college to find people who can play, and for another, no way in hell are they going to accept someone to do extra curriculars. Why on earth would they want to?

[irregularegular]

The way it works at Oxford is there are (usually) different benchmarks applied for getting an interview for "widening participation" candidates, particularly in those subjects where a large number of candidates are not interviewed. A WP candidate must have at least two "flags", one indicating that the school is relatively low-performing AND one based on socioeconomic characteristics of their postcode. Just school or postcode alone is not enough.

This will work slightly differently in different subjects, but for PPE there is an entrance test and a recommended (not strict) cut off for interview. This recommended cut off is lower for WP candidates. However, they would still have to be predicted to get at least the standard offer (AAA for PPE).

Once at the interview stage, there is no magic formula. Judgements of potential are made based on all the information available. But yes, roughly speaking we would expect to see higher GCSE marks from some schools than others. That seems reasonable.

And everyone gets the same offer.

[comeinpax]

I don't think Bristol has done itself any favours with "the list." My DD's comp has high FSM, lots of bright MC pupils too, so is not on the list. It gets great results for a comp, in part, because of the epidemic of tutoring where we live in SE.
Tactically, also, one might look at Bristol's extensive list and rule it out on the numbers game. You'd be up against loads of students from list schools who'd have a better chance of getting in.

[FordPerfect]

OhYouBadBadKitten - looking at recent FOI requests on STEP it looks as though the S S offer (common up to 2015) has been replaced by a more standardised approach with 1 1 the most common offer now (if I have read the data correctly). The candidate I was thinking of was at the tail-end of the period up to 2015 and educated in the UK.

LRDtheFeministDragon - asking for an A in a 4th A Level is arguably asking for more than 2 grades above the standard offer of 3 A Levels.