Oh @horsemadmom, that’s awful for your DD and it makes me angry that treatment has stopped for her and so many others. I hope that the delay, besides being horrid and depriving her of health at the moment, won’t have a long-term impact. I’m glad the college is being helpful. The cancellation of A-levels must indeed feel like a blessing. Every cloud has a silver lining.
@littlenicky61, there’s probably plenty of advice in earlier threads if you dig for it, but I’m happy to give my thoughts, having (almost) reached the other side.
You’re ahead of where we were this time last year actually. I still had my head in the sand and only really started engaging in the university admissions process in about July. His school weren't much further ahead: they’d started to bandy around the word “supercurricular” by May, which is the first time I’d heard it, but for us the real work and thinking was over the summer.
First, some reassurance. I imagine it feels doubly daunting as we’re in lockdown and you may be wondering whether this will impact your daughter’s application, e.g. she won’t be able to carry out any plans she may have made. Well, this is just one data point, but there was nothing my son did to prepare for his application that he wouldn’t have been able to do in lockdown. That’s because his preparation involved a lot of reading, watching documentaries, going to museums (OK, maybe that bit wouldn’t be possible), discussions with professors at our local universities (I guess he could have done these by Zoom). But the point is, by this time last year all the extra-curriculum achievements had been ticked off (and these were shoe-horned into a couple of sentences in the personal statement anyway) and the focus was very much on the subject. So, my advice would be for your daughter to spend the time reading about her subject and coming up with interesting angles to write about in her personal statement.
Open Days are things that your DD is probably missing out on. Again, one data point, but we waited until September before going to the Open Day and by that stage it was interesting, but wasn’t at all critical as DS had already thoroughly researched the subject and colleges online. It did change his views on colleges, but this was a bit random really: at his original preferred college his guide was quite fierce and didn’t even try to hide her disdain for private school pupils, whereas at the other college his guide was welcoming and smiley. Anyway, I’m sure he would have been just fine with no Open Day and with selecting his college blind.
The only things that are different about an Oxbridge application are: a more academic focus to the personal statement, earlier admission date, an admissions test for most subjects, and interviews. OK, that sounds like quite a lot, but if you take it one step at a time it’s really manageable, I promise.