Oxbridge 2021: another 6 months of fretting

[DahliaMacNamara]

Will they make the grades? How will grades be awarded anyway? What the hell are Cambridge up to with that nasty little clause?

Also in accommodation; by August, there may not be very much accommodation left. For example I heard of Bristol University in extremis having to house students in Newport. By making students make a last minute diversion (through the university’s lack of planning, not the student’s lack of grades) they are negatively impacting the range of choices open to the student.

Cambridge and Oxford probably have the EASIEST job of all the universities, given that they are probably the 1st choice of the highest percentage of applicants. Other unis have to guess.

I just think this crop of Y13s have had WAY more than their fair share of stress and therefore mental health impacts; it is very unfair to expect some of them to have yet more stress; the universities need to find a way to avoid this.

It’s interesting that Oxford do not have a similar clause. Does anyone know of any other uni that has chosen to deal with this year’s uncertainties in this way?
I know deferrals have regularly been used as a mechanism by C for addressing overcrowding without the need for this clause. Back in the day, my best mate at C was deferred a year, as were quite a few others, and she was definitely not one of the weaker ones!
I don’t agree with some of the posts that DD should be flexible with any of these terms on the basis that C is worth anything. DD would not want to choose C over her second preferred uni (which can’t be an insurance due to grades) if she was going to end up doing a different course or in an all girls college (she is adamant about that!) or another uni so it’s hard to firm up without really knowing what you are letting yourself in for.
Her offer is AAA and she is predicted 4As; it’s such a shame that although she doesn’t need to worry about the grade conditions, she still doesn’t have peace of mind.

Elsewhere23 Oxford has tended to have more confidence in its aptitude test/interview combo whereas Cambridge has tended to be hung up on A level grades (hence its crossness at AS levels being abandoned). Each to their own but in the brave new world of CAGs/ CAGs Mk 2 the Cambridge approach throws up more problems than the Oxford approach.

@FlyingSquid
I'm sorry she's anxious.
DD went for middle of the road (poor kitchens in the first year but decent after that) and has been given an ancient college with no real kitchens for all three years - but the historical buildings are making up for it in her mind.
And I suspect the fact that we can't possibly "expect" her to cook for herself is also feeling positive
I hope your dd starts to get excited about the new college!

I'm feeling pragmatic about the clause. It really seems that so many fewer offers have been made that it's unlikely to have a big impact this year but might have more of one in future years when they refer to their normal over-offer levels. It feels a bit like they have taken out pandemic insurance - much in the same way that travel insurance will now mention that for the next 100 years even if it never did previously.
If I was them I'd probably have done the same thing!

Ah, thanks, Chill! It feels a bit self indulgent to be anxious over her getting in - the snag about being an ‘outside chance’ sort of candidate who hadn’t expected it!

@FlyingSquid - maybe your DD can do some de-stressing baking with a friend who has kitchen facilities. It’s not the same as being able to cook meals, but I’m sure that someone would be happy to oblige (and share in the )

I think @goodbyestranger has nailed it - Cambridge have traditionally placed more trust in A level grades than Oxford, which is why Oxford used to set their own fourth-term exam during sixth form and offer EE at A level. It was a way of saying that they preferred to make their own judgements rather than rely on those of public examiners. Those were the days...

Cambridge also did entrance exams and then EE offers. I was a lucky recipient much to my DD’s annoyance when her offer was AAA!

I think it might be time to revisit the entrance exam/EE offer, especially given that the Oxford Aptitude Tests and Cambridge STEP are introducing it by the back door in many cases anyway. It would give applicants and the universities some clarity and help other universities by ruling out a number of insurance offers etc.

The old entrance exam was grossly unfair. It really did require special preparation, it was referred to in private schools as the 7th term exam rather than 4th - I couldn't do it because my state school didn't give any help (they had in previous years when it was still a grammar). DH couldn't because he was at a mediocre private school which had a poor success rate and he couldn't countenance asking his parents for an extra terms fees, the rest of the year off when he had no confidence in the school. (He tried to get information on the exam content etc by writing to a Cambridge college - answer came there none.)

So, the current mix of a test based on A level syllabus which is intended to require no more than doing past papers plus standard exams seems to me a vastly fairer system. It was even better when there were AS grades - I think Cambridge was right on that. Obviously all unis have problems with offers at the moment because of the CAGs etc.
I'm curious to know how the likes of imperial are doing things this year.

7th term was very unfair and I believe was stopped before 4th term exams because it allowed private school pupils to have a whole term to prepare exclusively for the entrance papers. We were told at school that the S level syllabus was the appropriate way to prepare. Certainly for English we were just told that we had to base answers on texts not studied at A level but to use the same techniques. So lots of individual reading but no teaching provided. I can see it might be more problematic with STEM subjects.
You were always able to opt for A level entrance (after interview) instead of the entrance papers. Some of my friends did this, but then of course you had to get absolutely top grades.

My comment was about the Cambridge approach in the past decade in particular since the A grade was introduced at A level. The university sent a furious letter to a large group of HTs when the proposal to uncouple AS levels from A levels was mooted, asking for their support in lobbying the government to oppose the idea. Our HT showed me the letter which he thought was quite funny (it really was very cross) but since he was hugely in favour of getting rid of AS levels he was only ever going to lobby in favour. A tutor from Churchill College had come to the school a couple of years prior to that to talk to the Y12s about Oxbridge entrance and she said Churchill would be looking for an average of mid 90s at AS level ( which of course in the days of coupling would give a strong indication that an A would be achieved at A2). Cambridge was pretty much forced into aptitude tests once the die was cast with ASs but it doesn't seem to have Oxford's appetite for these. Anyhow, the reliance on high A level grades continues (strangely less so at GCSE than Oxford) and of course that bit Cambridge badly last year and mid admissions process this year they then got the 2021 exam announcement. Out of all admissions processes last year at all the top unis, Oxford's was the one leading to the least chaos in the 2020 situation. I can see why unis like Durham and Bristol which have expanded hugely can't revert to interviewing as a key tool of selection but I can't really understand why Cambridge can't be a bit more confident in its interviewing process and general selection procedures, especially this year.

Anyhow, the clause seems to be their antidote to that.

Thanks Stranger & Fly. That does make sense. Where it leaves the current offer holders is another matter. I was thinking that at least Offer Holder’s Day will give an idea of whether a subject/college has offered conservatively or wildly and I will try and save any further fretting until then!

@ErrolTheDragon at least in my DD’s case Imperial seem to be giving ridiculously high offers (AAA* for Physics).

@ErrolTheDragon I disagree regarding entrance exam fairness. I got in from a mediocre city state school and many of my peers did the same. I don’t recall meeting anyone doing at Oxford who had taken it in 7th term - in my day (mid 90s just before they scrapped it) it was clearly pre-A level.

I got hold of a few past papers, did my best and got an EE offer. Luck played a part for everyone, as it does now - it helped if you ‘clicked’ with the interviewer and they saw some promise in you.

I remember plenty of inverted snobbery at Oxford in the nineties - a general belief that students from a ‘good’ school wouldn’t have got in following a different school experience. It may or may not be true but students themselves have small control over where they go to school!

With a typically more relaxed attitude to GCSE profile and admission test results than Oxford and interviewing a long rather than a short list, it is the final hurdle of high grade offers at Cambridge that is the bit of the process that is broken for Cambridge with regards to CAGs/CAGs Mk Il. Given that fewer offers have been made, I think the Clause fairly mitigates against the tiny possibility of getting the numbers wrong.

One of my siblings in a school which did send a few to Oxbridge every year had 7th term Oxbridge and my other sibling (different school with no 7th term) applied in upper sixth in the usual way today - both back in the 1980s when 7th term was being phased out as unfair on schools which did not have that system in place for post A level students to apply and have a gap year.

@Xenia Presumably the seventh term exam followed A levels so was not the system that led to the EE offers? I wonder if fourth term and seventh term exams ever existed at the same time. In my day it was just fourth term as far as I know.

In what way would the exam some of you envision differ from the existing entrance tests? DD did the first ones (for engineering) , so there was just one set of example papers, it seemed to be pitched about right as far as I could see.

[quote Flyonawalk]@Xenia Presumably the seventh term exam followed A levels so was not the system that led to the EE offers? I wonder if fourth term and seventh term exams ever existed at the same time. In my day it was just fourth term as far as I know.[/quote]
I don't know, my school was so useless that I didn't know if it would have been possible to do the test in the fourth term then (late 70s). I guess they tried to improve things in the 80s.

[quote Flyonawalk]@Xenia Presumably the seventh term exam followed A levels so was not the system that led to the EE offers? I wonder if fourth term and seventh term exams ever existed at the same time. In my day it was just fourth term as far as I know.[/quote]
They definitely coexisted. When I did 4th term (1985) my school also had 7th termers sitting.

@LarkDescending That’s interesting, thank you. When I got in (‘94) it was after fourth term and I was unaware of seventh term. Perhaps it had gone by then. To be honest when I first saw The History Boys, which features applicants sitting an exam after their A levels, I assumed the plot was based on a mistake as I didn’t think this was ever a route to entrance.

I could be wrong, but I think mine may have been the last year of 4th term/7th term overlap. I don’t recall any of my year staying on after A levels.

Another change which Oxford definitely made at that time was that academic scholarship decisions were postponed until after Mods or Prelims (rather than on entrance), to even out the playing field somewhat between applicants from different school backgrounds. We were the first intake to which the new rule applied.