Oxbridge admission

[Sejal22]

I am looking for a good tutor who will help with the preparation for Oxbridge admission for my daughter. I am planning to use Oxbridge Admissions consultant firm to prepare her for entrance test, personal statement and with interview however they are really expensive. Does anyone use this firm? All reviews will be helpful to get a decision.

What a lot of hypocritical patronising rot from some of the posters on here!

Paying upwards of £25,000 per year for private education, excessive tutoring and paying to be in the catchment area of a great school are just other means by which parents buy advantage for applicants.

You are doing nothing worse than this OP, you're just doing it a bit too late in the day, rather than from the age of five like a lot of them will have done.

Anyone would think their little darlings had dropped out of the womb spouting Proust, such is the contempt for more obvious forms of preparation.

The top up prep you are considering is no less vulgar than paying for prep school - the clue is in the name there!

Some of the candidates applying for Oxbridge will have had years of debating prep, so when it comes to thinking "on their feet" the replies will naturally appear to be spontaneous and unrehearsed.

And don't tell me that the academics have some form of supernatural ability to distinguish between merit and polish.

I certainly think not!

Potential is laid down in the genes at birth - all the rest is polish of one form or another.

Some folk have the greater means with which to add more shine.

ccxxzz I strongly suspect that OP is already paying lavish fees. This is extra gilding, not a substitute. I bet.

Also, rein in the accusations a bit. Some of us have kids who didn't move (ever) to get into a particular catchment, didn't pay fees and didn't even once buy in additional tutoring.

OP's DD proposes to apply to study computer science. She won't require coaching in debating. She'll be better off spending her time on past MAT papers, as pps have suggested. She will need to talk through some tricky maths problems, for which she will be relying on her own aptitude.

Fair to say our local school (local to the house I've lived in since long before my eldest DC was born) is very good indeed. But I'm hardly going to move to get away from it am I?

Some of us have kids who didn't move (ever) to get into a particular catchment, didn't pay fees and didn't even once buy in additional tutoring.

Yup, same here — though in fact, though we lived in catchment for an ‘outstanding’ school, my kids preferred the kinder vibe of the ‘good’ one a couple of miles further away and went there instead.

All credit FlyingSquid. I just pointed my kids to the nearest school and didn't really bother to give them a choice :) (the next nearest school is in and out of special measures, so there were pretty good reasons not to give them a choice).

It was a good place to grow up. Scruffy 70s buildings, scruffy sweatshirt uniform, but just a nice, friendly school with plenty of opportunities and encouragement.

@ccxxzz

What a lot of hypocritical patronising rot from some of the posters on here!

Paying upwards of £25,000 per year for private education, excessive tutoring and paying to be in the catchment area of a great school are just other means by which parents buy advantage for applicants.

You are doing nothing worse than this OP, you're just doing it a bit too late in the day, rather than from the age of five like a lot of them will have done.

Anyone would think their little darlings had dropped out of the womb spouting Proust, such is the contempt for more obvious forms of preparation.

The top up prep you are considering is no less vulgar than paying for prep school - the clue is in the name there!

Some of the candidates applying for Oxbridge will have had years of debating prep, so when it comes to thinking "on their feet" the replies will naturally appear to be spontaneous and unrehearsed.

And don't tell me that the academics have some form of supernatural ability to distinguish between merit and polish.

I certainly think not!

Potential is laid down in the genes at birth - all the rest is polish of one form or another.

Some folk have the greater means with which to add more shine.

What a hilarious post , love it!

No-one gets in without genuine talent in and passion for their subject. These are things which cannot be manufactured.

However, there is no test for which some preparation does not help, even if only to create familiarity with the format and approach. Likewise, it can't do any harm to spend some time with an unfamiliar adult with good subject knowledge working through the sort of thing which might come up in interview (which obviously varies considerably according to subject- some will be problem based, some text etc.). If school is not providing help of this sort, then I think it is worth paying for and it can be procured quite cheaply and effectively through, for instance, online tutor searches. My son (v. different subject) got some help from school with the reasoning and essay sections of the test, which we topped up with tuition and interview practice. It helped him confidently to articulate his passion and knowledge.

Advice on the "process" is unnecessary. There is so much information on the Oxford and Cambridge websites, that one can work out for oneself what do do, what college to choose etc.. Admissions and subject tutors at colleges are also unbelievably helpful. They're genuinely interested in attracting talent- there is no esoteric hidden agenda

Even some state schools have specific Oxbridge programmes to give their students the best chance of success so it isn’t just a feature of private schools. Loreto College and Xaverian College in Manchester both have very well-established and successful Oxbridge support programmes. Interestingly, both colleges were created from grammar schools and adopted the schools’ Oxbridge support programmes into the colleges when they became a 6th form. The success has built success and now these colleges have some of the highest Oxbridge success rates for state schools. So clearly these programmes of support do make a difference to students.