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

I found your son's situation inspirational. Can't imagine the mental state of a year 13 with no offers come March. Only have to read the panic in student room to know. Yes he has had many knocks even after this but came through it all and is now doing something amazing

‘Inspirational’? Might be laying it on a bit thick there mate! Not to diminish Need’s DS’s achievements but he did what hundreds do each year: go to a different university after their first choice rejected them, do well in their degree and build a good career. Surely you have no doubt that your own DS or DD can do this too? If you or them really thought their career would be over after a rejection from Oxbridge then you were being delusional.

As for not imagining the mental state of a Year 13 without an offer in March, haven’t you got a current year 13? Aren’t they mentally affected by not knowing what’s happening with how A levels are assessed and living through a pandemic as well as waiting for offers? I think the level of uncertainty the current year 13s are going through is huge. It definitely top trumps that of Need’s DS 8 years ago during a non-pandemic time at a time when there was less competition in terms of numbers and as a public school boy they had more likelihood of getting a place. Sorry but let’s be real. It’s sad and hard to have to wait for offers but if that is as traumatic for a DC as you or Need is suggesting then frankly that suggests the DC has led a charmed life, and probably had an unreasonably high level of entitlement and expectation.

Thafs all academic though because actually Need’s son was not still without offers by March. Need has said on this or another thread that her son did get an offer before December, but it was from his 5th choice and he didn’t want to go there. I’m sure things were still very, very, hard for him, but he had an offer so that hopefully helped his mental suffering a little.

I was wondering if to respond or ignore to your post @Outlier

Your posts have such contempt and feels "venomous" and I get a negative feeling when reading them . No I am not expecting you to agree with everything. There are plenty of people with different opinions on this forum who don't give off negative vibes

@Outlier your post is uncalled for. This is supposed to be a thread for support.

It is not a great year for many freshers. However it is probably better than doing nothing at home - no part time jobs around, no chance to travel, no chance even to go out with friends. My twins are doing their law conversion course this academic year and although it is online currently (and presumably all the year) at least they are doing a lot of studying, progressing, moving on. The problem with a gap year in covid times is it might make a potential fresher feel even more fed up but needs to be a personal decision for each one of them. (My son who is studying away is in his rented flat at the moment but he is post grad with friends so not the same as freshers at all - in fact he shares with someone he met in halls in year 1 and who was not on his corridor in non covid 19 times).

Outlier - I have to say, I find your recent posts strangely over-invested and peculiar. Do you even have a year 13? Why do you care so much?

Apologies as an interloper on this thread.
I think readers of these threads appreciate the perspectives gained by posters sharing parental experiences from their DCs. Some posters like Needmoresleep and others here have been generous in that regard over the years, usually in the spirit of helpfulness. IMO it is much easier to pick holes in any such individual experience than to take the trouble of contributing one.

I think an issue here is that some people forget this is a public forum and there are parents reading their posts with very different life experiences to their own. I said a while ago that some posts make my blood boil. Slight exaggeration but still, you have to realise that if you publicly state that places like Leeds are not good enough for your dc you will offend and annoy other people. Many of us have dc or know dc who have been through tremendously difficult life experiences and frankly I find it hard to grasp why it’s so catastrophic that someone’s Ds didn’t get into Oxbridge. That happens to thousands of people every year. It is well known that excellent candidates have to go to other universities and just get on with it. I do wonder whether other factors are at play here OP because your response doesn’t seem to fit within the normal parameters of disappointment. If so I hope you manage to get through this time, which is clearly very difficult for you.

@chopc - I think there is a tendency on social media for the despondent to post more than the 'it's OK' people - same applies in RL. Most people just get on with it and don't bother piping up when it's OK or good.

That's why social media provides such a skewed perspective.

I do understand that some people have DC at Oxford or Cambridge and are excited about it, but this thread is specifically for those moving on from rejection from those institutions and looking at other options.

• Yes I know it’s a shit year.
• Yes I am interested to hear from those with DC at other relevant unis.
• No, I am not massively interested at this point to hear how so-and-so is currently finding Oxford; or how some madam in Cambridge considers Durham “not even a watered down version.”

Sorry to be blunt, but when your child gets rejected from somewhere, this is how it goes - you are pissed off for a few days; you wonder why etc etc and then, like anything else, you get over it and you move on. As one door closes, others open, as they say. And that, I think, is where people are right now.

DS is anxious to hear from LSE, which was always his close-first-choice. I only had reservations about that one because of concerns about the student experience, to be honest. But now that I can visualise where he would live, etc, I think this could be the best thing for him. LSE and UCL are certainly the ones he tailored his personal statement towards, so I guess that tells us something.

Other people on here are focusing more on Durham, so what is the actual point of all the comparisons with Cambridge? Yes, we know it’s not Cambridge - that’s because it’s Durham! Another beautiful town a few hundred miles away. With advantages of its own - such as a much wider range of courses than are available at Oxbridge. You could say similar for the other unis mentioned on here such as Bristol or Exeter.

The worst thing at the moment is just that the uncertainty is prolonged, that’s all. But I would like to be able to use this thread to chat to the people Aldi waiting or weighing up their options, without certain individuals using it to express some Oxbridge vs whatever other uni unhinged obsessions that only exist in their own heads.

also waiting - not Aldi

I am sorry if I offended anyone. As sendsummer suggests, I was trying to be supportive.

Several DC will have not only been rejected by Oxbridge, but are still waiting to hear from Durham, Warwick, St Andrew’s, UCL and LSE, and could well be waiting a further month or more. Difficult enough most years, but worse when sitting at home in the middle of a pandemic.

Then there are decisions to be made. Do you accept your favourite of the offers received, or do you try again?

DS’s fifth choice had just decided to expand their intake. As a result they were making offers of a B in maths, whilst he was taking FM and felt capable of a more rigorous course. He was no longer interested. As others drill down into the course content when they start deciding on what they firm, there will be courses that appeal more , and courses they are less sure about. Hence discussions about what Durham has to offer etc.

One of the strengths of this board is that our DC will have been at different types of schools and will have received different advice. DS’s school tended to advise of aiming (realistically) high, and treating applications as a two year process. Other schools seem to advocate one aspirational, three realistic and a fall back. The former can obviously be more painful in the short term, but perhaps pay off (though not necessarily financially!) in the longer term.

I will disagree with Outlier over an perceived infallibility of interviewers when spotting potential. 17 year olds are young and still developing into the adults they will become. Schools which send more than a handful to Oxbridge each year will be used to ‘surprises’ each year, in both directions.

I do agree though with what I read as Outlier’s point about confidence. DS may well have been quite wooden. He does light up when talking about his subject but perhaps not on that day. A general observation is that DC who, at 17, who could talk to anyone about anything, seem to do better. (Obvious really.) Perhaps why quite a number get in on second application.

I came on to add the CV of failures, which effectively illustrates that set backs are not failures, and had not meant to cause controversy. All that is left to do is wish your DC the very best both in the opportunities they are offered and in the choices they make.

Durham are late making offers every year. Every year posters whose dc have not had an Oxbridge offer get upset about the delay between that news and the Durham offers. It’s obviously stressful but it is the same every year

Needmore - I find your posts about LSE interesting, so thank you.

On the night before the Cambridge results, we were walking along the Southbank near the Globe and, without realising it was even there, happened to stumble on the LSE accommodation. I’m hoping it was a sign Of course he’s now on a Whatssapp group with other applicants. I’d say 80% are from the Middle East or India, but they’re already straight into some kind of epic political debate (of very ideological proportions ) and its keeping him going through this lockdown at least. Fingers crossed! Otherwise, UCL will be great for him too and is a very similar course. Both offer a year at Berkeley too (more options for overseas year at UCL).

Ha. Sounds about right. I sometimes feel a bit like an over enthusiastic flag waver. However LSE, UCL, Kings etc offer their own experience which suits some DC very well.

That said the accommodation near the Globe is new and relatively expensive and perhaps appeals more to richer overseas students. Passfield though.....

I meant the Bankside House one, Need. They are saying it’s the main LSE accommodation these days? There is that other more swanky-looking one too, but I think that’s more for postgrads? Anyway, they would have a stunning walk in over the Millennium footbridge.

@quest1on no I don’t “even” have a year 13. I made that clear in my first post. I have a year 12 who wants to apply to Oxbridge. And a 2nd year university DC so I’ve been through university applications before.

I appreciate this is a thread for support @Jalfrezi and I was actually trying to be supportive for parents of current year 13s. I wouldn’t write what I did about needmoresleep’s son’s situation if he was a current year 13 and she a current year 13 mother, but I felt it ok because his redirection was at least eight years ago and he ‘made good’. I was defending @chopc’s DC by saying they have it much tougher by virtue of being a year 13 in 2021.

I honestly think that needmoresleep’s post was as not so much about support as it was about justifying that her son didn’t need Oxbridge and that he went to an institution that was as good as if not better than Cambridge. I read it as someone reinforcing the notion the aim is for your child to go to a university that you can claim is as good as if not better than Oxbridge. I’m not sure how helpful that message is when most of the DC on here won’t be going to LSE and won’t be able to say that their university is as internationally diverse or as internationally well-regarded as Oxbridge (which I don’t agree about LSE but I’m not going to get into that).

All the DC here will hopefully go to great universities and do great things and no where they go or ending up doing may not have name-dropping potential but that is fine and it would be insulting to assume the DC here wanted Oxbridge just for the name.

I was reading a thread yesterday where the OP was asking about Nottingham and the 3rd or 4th post said that it was good but a tier below Oxbridge, Durham and Bristol. With attitudes like that, I’m not surprised parents on MN may feel that not getting into Oxbridge is a categoric failure.

And yes all of what @UnityUnited has said, particularly about many DC having gone through a lot in their lives.

So you claim to be annoyed about people talking about “tiers” of universities, yet nevertheless, you couldn’t help slipping in that you don’t regard LSE to be in the same tier as Oxbridge

Do you genuinely not see any irony there?

Anyway, lots of people come on talking about how their DC still did x,y,z via other pathways. Xenia talks about Bristol, for instance and this will be relevant to anyone now considering Bristol. I think someone else has talked about St Andrews and others Durham or UCL.

But, whether you agree with other people’s views or not, there’s a difference between posts that are generally intended as constructive and those that are not.

I came on here because none of my 5 tried Oxbridge and most have them have done pretty well elsewhere (except perhaps the van driver... but then even that depends how you define "well" - his is content, happy and content and healthy).

Of course there are tiers of all kinds of things in life and yes I get it that someone whose child gets a place at Sunderland University (my mother is from Sunderland) and is delighted because no one has ever not left school at 15 or 16 in their family might be annoyed at someone saying that's not very good compared to others or even Newcastle isn't very good or even Durham is not as good at Oxbridge. That does not mean it is unhelpful to talk about the tiers and our own views on them.

Eg why 3 of mine chose Bristol over Durham might be interesting to some ( I would have been just as happy had they gone to Durham where one of their cousins went by the way from a comprehensive school in Yorkshire - the one with 16 GCSEs!!!)

For those considering reapplying next year would they think of applying to the US as well?
Some of the most prestigious universities give financial aid to international students. They assess the parents ability to pay and the rest is funded through grants, small loans and small work study jobs.
The chances of being accepted in any particular university are probably lower than the chances of being accepted at Oxbridge but you can apply to multiple universities.
DDs experience of an early acceptance has been so positive. The frequent emails, cards and the occasional phone call from her US college wiped out the sting of Oxford rejection pretty quickly.
The applications are very time consuming but a student who has already done A levels might have more time available.

I know it is not for everyone but may be worth considering for some.

A pal of mine went to Sunderland University to study nursing. She is busily vaccinating people at the moment. Arguably a great deal more valuable to us at the moment than a corporate solicitor.

Also when my Sunderland university friend isn’t protecting us from a pandemic, she is carrying out smear tests, helping people manage their diabetes, administering childhood inoculations. I don’t think anybody should be viewing people like her as less successful than somebody who, for example studies Classics at Cambridge or Philosophy at Oxford.

I am sure we can all agree that it is harder to get into Newcastle University than Sunderland University and then leave it at that. As for who is worth more my NHS consultant doctor sibling or my grocery delivery driver son or the bankers who perhaps underpin them all who knows... perhaps the answer is in the hands of God at judgment day.

If life were a level playing field perhaps your argument may carry weight. Sadly it doesn’t. The amount of effort and talent some students have to demonstrate to get into universities deemed less worthy than others is sometimes greater than that of students who have breezed through life thanks to having been blessed with every advantage. This is why the idea of university tiers can be so damaging, toxic and pointless.

Someone has to make the vaccines.

Of course they do. I am asking posters to think about they measure how valuable people are. @Xenia’s van driving DS has probably been the most valuable person of all of us in the past year. Thank god he was prepared to get out of bed every morning and do the job he does.