Oxbridge Aspirants 2021 - New Thread (2)

[Baaaahhhhh]

Sorry posted last message on the last thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/higher_education/3757768-Oxbridge-Aspirants-Sep-2021

Here is the new one......

Congrats @321zyx.

@OnTheBenchOfDoom @Pumpkintopf yes sadly I think that’s right. Insurance = no guarantee of accommodation. But having said that, I think the situation has historically been worse at Bristol as they have a shortage of accommodation to start with.

@321zyx, excellent news, congratulations. The grade thing is madness isn't it? Looking at UCAS figures the number of students being accepted into uni has doubled from when I went in the early 90s. Obviously there are students with much more average grades, I was one of them. Average as average could be.

@DeRigueurMortis, I am completely with you on the maths talk. I don't understand any of it either. My degree is English Lit and no matter how hard I tried I could not get either Ds1 or Ds2 to love it. They like straight forward questions and answers. They don't want to guess at least 2 different things a line in a poem could be saying.

If your son does freeze they aren't going to leave him hanging, they want the interview to go well. He'll be demonstrating his maths skills so I am sure he'll be fine.

Well on the financial front we've had some good news tonight.

Tbh DH and I are in the thankful position of having secure careers in these awful times and we were not unduly worried about financing Uni (we've been setting "additional" savings aside).

However on hearing of his offer my parents have been incredibly generous.

In short the plan is that DS will take all the available loans for tuition/accommodation. DH and I will fund his living expenses.

However my parents have said they will pay off all his loans when he graduates (given they are interest free until he earns x amount - whatever it is at the time - there's no point not taking them and my parents can invest the money in the meantime).

DH and I had planed for him not to take the loans and finance it ourselves so this is a huge boon for us, but they say they want to help both us and DS and can't think of anything better to spend their money on.

It's totally unexpected and I'm so bloody grateful to my lovely DP's but perhaps not as surprised as I should be, given they think the sun shines out of his bum (only GC) .

@OnTheBenchOfDoom thanks for your kind words

I'm very much dealing one step at a time as far as I can....tbh we don't even know if he will get and interview.

Goodness he put his all into his personal statement (as did DH/myself and both sets of GP's in terms of checking/ making suggestions etc but given its so maths oriented our input was frankly minimal apart from suggesting the odd comma etc).

But who the hell knows what they are looking for in a PS? Obviously we did our research but there's no way of knowing if it hit the spot is there?

Can anyone point me in the direction of a useful website to start to work out the costs of DS going to uni. I have been burying my head in the sand and need to get on it! Thanks!

www.ucas.com/undergraduate/student-life/getting-student-support/undergraduate-student-finance-and-support

@321zyx congratulations to your ds
@DeRigueurMortis that's great news and must be a real weight off.

Thanks Pumpkin yes it is and I know we are very lucky.

@lazyboysmum here is the link to MoneySavingExpert for the living costs maintenance loans.

blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2016/09/how-much-are-parents-supposed-to-give-their-children-when-they-go-to-university/

The table is about half way down which shows you living at home, living away from home, living away from home in London.

I hope you are sitting down

Poor DD1 was very distressed when she got her first pay and saw the tax deductions, student loan repayment, and pension payments. She was even more annoyed when she got a pay rise and all the deductions increased. She obviously earns a good salary, but renting in London as well, and she doesn't have much left to play with.

@DeRigeurMortis

From Martin Lewis MSE website .....

"How are interest rates changing?
The underlying student loan interest rate is set each year based on the Retail Prices Index (RPI) inflation measure in March of that same year. In March this year, RPI was 2.6%.

Here's how the interest rates will change from 1 September:
Plan 2 loans (ie, all loans for English and Welsh students who STARTED uni in or after 2012): While studying you're charged the rate of RPI from March (2.6%), plus 3%. So from 1 September you'll be charged 5.6%, up from 5.4% currently.

From the April after you graduate, you'll be charged variable interest, depending on your income. Based on the repayment thresholds that will apply from next April (see more on how thresholds are changing below), where income is £27,295 or less you'll be charged interest at RPI (2.6%). That rises on a sliding scale to RPI plus 3% (5.6%), where income is £49,130 or more"

I understood this to mean that interest is accruing from the date the loans are taken out, not from graduation. If it's accruing at 5.6% then one would need a brilliantly performing investments to make it worthwhile taking the loans to invest the money to produce a return rate in excess of the interest accruing.

I'm really hoping that I've got it wrong as my sums would be less scary if I have.

Thanks @DeRigueurMortis @OnTheBenchOfDoom YIKES!!

@SATSmadness

Thanks for this - I'll have a look.

Tbh we haven't done much research into the loans as we didn't plan on taking any (until today).

I'll definitely read up and did it with my parents.

I don't think they would have a problem with funding him "now" - rather they thought it was more efficient to take the loans and pay them off.

If that's not the case I can go back to them and see what they think.

Thanks again for the information

Discuss it not "did it" with my parents - sorry for the typo.

Morning everyone. Congratulations on all the lovely offers over the last week. It must be great to have something already.

DS is on some kind of Discord chat about uni applications and was worried yesterday because various people were saying they only sent off their UCAS in mid-October or the other day and got an acknowledgement within days (inc for his subject). His UCAS went in in Sept 28th and nothing. He emailed them about this but no reply.

He was worried they’d had been some admin problem so he took it upon himself to call Durham admissions yesterday. The first time, he gave uo holding after 25 minutes. The second time, he just held on speaker for half an hour until, miraculously, someone answered. She said they did have his application and didn’t know what was going on. That it. He said he was worried about missing the boat for submitting an alternative PS. She said, “if you want to send one, just send it. Follow the link. Bye.”

But what link?

His PS is fine to be honest, but because his top choices are Cambridge and LSE, it was 100% academic-focused; whereas it says in the Durham website, they want it more 80/20 (the ‘20’ would be where he includes his sport and singing interests, etc).

So god knows what Durham are doing. Apparently, he has seen on his chat forum they have now started sending offers out, though he hasn’t heard of any for his subject as yet.

Maybe they have rejected him outright as his PS was too narrow? Apparently there are less places available in his course there than normal as they provided financial incentives for 2020 students to defer. His predicted grades are AAA and A* EPQ and he has 10 grades 9s from GCSE. But maybe his PS was wrong for Durham?

Sorry, I didn’t make it clear at the outset of that post that I’m talking about Durham!

(He’s heard from everywhere else).

www.dur.ac.uk/study/ug/apply/ucas/personalstatement/substitute/

The form linked to here?

Thanks Marching Frogs. He hasn’t wanted to just send it in in that because he was waiting for an acknowledgement from Durham with some kind of application reference so it could be linked to his application / other PS. It does say there to wait for a response before submitting an alternative PS. But I think he’ll just have to send it anyway as it’s been a month now.

He did an alternative PS for Bath because it’s a combined hons there. They sent a form with his Bath ref. number on the day his UCAS went off and an almost immediate acknowledgement of the new PS.

But thanks. He’ll just have to send it off and hope it gets collated...

Has anyone has an offers from Bath yet? I’m getting worried now. My dd applied for biochemistry on 24th September and I thought Bath and Warwick would have been quick with offers as she needs ABB for both, (1 grade lower than standard offer for Bath as she did a course and project with them) and she’s predicted 3 A*s. Starting to think there’s something wrong with her personal statement. I’ve seen Warwick have been giving out offers for other courses.

A bit of bad news for our aspirants: pre-15th October applications up by 14% for UK and 20% for international .

I hope dd doesn’t see this...

Maj - no nothing here from Bath. I think DS knows someone who has had an offer from Bath though, but it’s for something very high-flown like Aeronautical Engineering. Bath are AAB for DS’ course too, or ABB if A*/A at EPQ. DS liked the look of Bath city (on Google images)! and also that it’s a campus, rather than dispersed accommodation around a city, so that’s why he applied there. Plus they offer a year abroad which would be amazing,

Irma - oh dear. Where did you read that?

Read it on the student room today.

That’s depressing news, @IrmaFayLear, especially with news of a possible second lockdown on the way. Might have to eat my body weight in chocolate today

The increase in number of pre-15th October applications doesn't surprise me in the least. The widening access coverage in the press and social media will mean more students will give it a go this year which is exactly what Oxbridge want. That's a good thing. DD is not worried at all about the increase in applications. Independently educated since 11 with nine 9s and an 8 gcses, she's accepted her chances of an Oxford offer are slim and pinning her hopes on a Durham offer instead. In the meantime, she's thrilled to have bagged an Exeter offer and now feels more optimistic she will actually be at uni this time next year!

Congrats on the Exeter offer @Jano69.