Another path to greatnesses

[chopc]

I woke up around 4:30 this morning and it hit me like a tonne of bricks. Couldn't get back to sleep so thought I will have a go and starting the new thread. Hope the title is not too cheesy

@Outlier I for one never begrudged anyone their Oxbridge place. Having gone through the process with my own DS I knew the caliber of people applying even just from his school and I knew that historically speaking 2/3 of them won't get an offer. Was just hoping my DS would have been in the 1/3rd that did make it.

A more centralised system would widen participation because you would just apply and be allocated a college. So it would help mitigate against perceived stereotypes about certain colleges eg. “Don’t apply to Trinity or St John’s as it’s all public school types there;” or “Kings is all grammar school kids masquerading as socialists.” Unfortunately, all sorts of myths abound and I’m sure it affects what college young people feel comfortable applying to. Also, there would be no issue of odds for certain subjects being perceived as better or worse at this or that college. They would just apply; their results are contextualised; assessed against the whole cohort in a given year and then they could allocate successful candidates across colleges?

ChopC - Yes good point that the Oxbridge uni ed should have levelled it up. I hadn't really thought about it before and hadn't thought that part through.

Would the individual lecturers give up interviewing though? For places at their college. There seems to be personalities involved. Would they ever accept a centralised system?

@quest1on are you suggesting they get rid of interviews?

I think there’s little chance of Oxbridge moving to the type of centralised system you suggest. The whole ‘beauty’ of the system is in the colleges being separate entities and having their own personalities. Applicants will very much want to choose which one they are considered for!

Applicants will very much want to choose which one they are considered for!

Indeed. But time and time again, many students are allocated to other colleges, who may, or may not, have interviewed them, and are then perfectly happy. So, perhaps there is too much emphasis on which student fits where.

Yes of course many get allocated elsewhere and if they go are then happy.

But they have a choice at that point to reject the offered (different) college. And they originally were allowed to make a choice in what they saw as their first preference. Going to a centralised system curtails that choice. It becomes simply a reactive choice as opposed to a pro-active one.

UnityUnited you may well not have a monopoly re. social mobility on this thread. The flaw in your argument is the big move towards access for the able but disadvantaged at school and university level which I've worked in for over a decade. Not much point getting a place at Oxford or Cambridge and then finding it rules you out of the top echelons of the professions because those keen to do good at that stage have missed the moves going on below. This stuff has to be tackled well before graduation.

I think people have missed my comment that Oxford already do consider the applications on a faculty wide basis and reallocate prior to interview to ensure that strong candidates are seen.

Yes Xenia and the point about these very large grants and scholarships are that they are open to all on merit and in the case of the Inn scholarships can also be topped up on means.

Oxford and Cambridge are often conflated on these threads SF.

GS

I’m not necessarily suggesting getting rid of interviews, no. But they could have an interview department per subject and do it that way. For instance, my DC’s schools interview 400-500 applicants face to face on a given day or days every January, with a reasonably standardised format. This is very normal for schools. Also, it’s debatable whether interviews are that necessary anyway for all subjects - many other top unis don’t use interviews and seem to still get similar outcomes? LSE take 60% international students from all types of backgrounds across the world without interview and they all seem to manage.

International students bring in more money. That is one reason why LSE and other universities to varying degrees want them.

Interviews are a crucial tool in WP.

@goodbyestranger Not for one moment did I suggest I have a monopoly on social mobility. I said I have an interest.
I acknowledge there had been work done to level the playing field, so to speak. It is frustrating to see this work move fast enough to help many young people. You only have to look at the issues raised by the lack of black students at Oxbridge to see there is a huge amount to be done.

They are also a crucial tool in identifying fit - and that works both ways. An applicant may decide after meeting the interviewers that the institution isn’t for them.

I was pointing out the need for joined up thinking UnityUnited, rather than applauding the speed of change.

Sorry, I’m not talking about Oxford, as I think that does sound more centralised. If I can be honest about our first and only experience of the C application process...

The uni advisor at the school was advising DS to apply to Homerton. The rationale for this was that the ratios of offers to independent school candidates are higher (something like 60% as opposed to 20-odd % overall, I think). There is a website they are told to engage with (Unifrog) which reports these kind of stats. I also looked at the stats on the Cambridge website and there was indeed a year recently in which this college appeared offered places to nearly all independent school candidates that applied (though they only made up 10% of total applications to this college).

Also, the advisor said to us that if students are pooled, they will almost certainly NOT be selected from the pool as nobody from the school ever is. I still don’t know what to make of that statement really. So for that reason, they said choice if college is particularly essential.

All of this kind of thing is just another layer of hassle you could do without, frankly. In fact, the C selection process was described to me as a “dark art,” by the uni advisor and this doesn’t exactly I instil confidence!

Anyway, DS didn’t apply to Homerton in the end. He applied elsewhere and was pooled and rejected.

Now, before anyone points this out, I’m not having recriminations and I’m pretty sure that even if he had applied to Homerton or another college the outcome would have been exactly the same. He had good reasons for applying where he did and that’s that.

I’m just saying that if there was a more centralised process, it would dispel any of this kind of rigmarole and second-guessing It’s never nice to be rejected, but all I saying is, the system at C leaves itself open to questions that could probably be avoided.

I see where you are coming from quest1on - that taking away the college choice will mean each subject considers all its applicants, picks the best ones and subsequently allocate them to a college

Makes total sense to me. However I think the reason is that they want to maintain their independent college system. Not sure what the benefit is as I don't know enough about it

It’s fair to say I think that definite “yeses” are not missed. If someone is pooled at either O or C then they are definitely a worthy candidate, but there are only so many spots. And there are more and more candidates every year competing for basically a static number of places.

College choice is difficult, strategy wise. I’m not denying it makes a difference, but you are going in virtually blind. You don’t know number of applicants, calibre of other applicants and if everyone else is trying to play the same game.

Agree, btw, about the anti-Oxbridge bias from some employers. Ds has been applying for jobs, and he has shown me one or two that trumpet about not wanting Oxbridge graduates. For a start 70% or so of their students are state-educated now. And also it makes a mockery of widening participation if the result of participating is that you get branded as some Bertie Woosteresque toff.

Wow @IrmaFayLear that is unexpected that any employer would NOT want an Oxbridge grad!

My DS is at O doing a fairly small subject. Applicants selected a college and stayed in that college when they came for interviews, but the actual interviews were in the department and were college blind. The department collectively chose who to make offers to, and only then were colleges finalised. So it is possible to truly centralise admissions.

I also feel a centralised system would be a much fairer approach, especially when applying from a school who do not regularly advise on Oxbridge applications. It is like a game of Russian roulette, and the pick-me dance is just another hurdle to navigate.

This system works well in Durham, why not O and C? And as a pp already mentioned, students almost always end up loving their allocated college.

The Oxford system (at least for Chemistry) does seem to be driven by the Department rather than the colleges.

DS1 applied to a large and famous college and got reallocated to a small college for interview, one he had not previously considered. He was interviewed twice at his allocated college and got another interview at a medium sized college (presumably for standardisation). This extra interview is what makes me think the university is working to avoid allowing the subjectivity of a single interviewer to determine the outcome of an application.

DS1's offer came from the small college that interviewed him. My sense was that the department wanted the strongest candidates and the colleges worked with them to make sure candidates weren't disadvantaged by their original college choice. I wanted to share that insight so that any parent with a DC applying to Oxford in the future doesn't worry too much about 'strategic' college choices.

I have been reading this thread (and the others this spun off from) with interest. No skin in the game but reading as my eldest may apply to C next year.

The disappointment is palpable. And I totally get that most posters are sounding off here rather than in front of DC. There's obviously a great deal of hard work, emotional energy and headspace invested in an Oxbridge application.

I just wanted to add my own, purely anecdotal, experience, to the employer debate.

I was not an Oxbridge applicant but went to (the much-aligned on this thread) Royal Holloway. Not sure if my A-Levels (ABB) would have been strong enough in those days (am talking 25+ years ago) to even apply for Oxford but those were the days of EE offers for successful applicants.

The people I know in real life who are Oxbridge grads are mainly mums who after marrying fellow lawyers became SAHMs and who are now incredibly invested in their own children's Oxbridge applications.

I work in senior management in a large national charity. My counterpart in the other half of our team of two halves is an Oxbridge grad. I doubt whether he knows where I went to university. I know he went to Oxford. IME most people who went to Oxbridge make sure that others know about it . I went to a mixed-sex rough comprehensive in a an extremely deprived part of the country. He went to a boys' grammar in Kent. Again, I only know this because he talks about it. We are the same age, same level in our careers, we earn the same amount. We are managed by someone who didn't go to university at all. Our accents are different but our earning power is the same.

I know that things are different these days. And I am sure that some industries are still jobs for the boys. But I wouldn't be so sure of the Oxbridge affiliation opening doors in many areas of employment as it once did.