Oxbridge Aspirants 2022 part 3....Will they or won't they make it to interview? Our Mum nerves are in tatters!

[TangoWhiskyAlphaTango]

New thread for us, lots of lovely support whilst we wait. Some of our lovely DC now have interview dates whilst the rest of us hold our breath and try not to hassle our teens into checking their SPAM folders at least several times per day .

November 30th?! Oh well, we may be waiting a while longer!

DS still not heard anything and it's less than 24 hours until the assessment for his subject. No reply to his email chasing it up either. Bit disappointing tbh, I've sneaked a look a TSR and he's not the only one, seems to be a problem with his college/subject combination.
Sigh

Friend’s DS heard about interview for Maths and Computer Science on 3rd December last year and by end of the month was convinced it was game over.

@Volterra thanks so much for posting and for the information :)

Gosh Volterra!

@printmeanicephoto DS heard late yesterday afternoon re his engineering interview (he's applied to Downing)....he still has 2 friends at school waiting on Cambridge engineering interviews too, but I'm not sure which college....they are coming albeit slowly! Good luck.

Fantastic news Panicmode1. Must be quite tense at school when others still waiting on same course

Thanks! We'll continue to wait patiently for Engineering then.

To those still waiting, two years ago DS (now Oxford, physics) got his interview invite at about 9pm on Sunday 8 December. He was on a plane less than a week later as the interviews ran from 16-18 December.

Most of the physics invitations came out that year on December 2 or 3. It felt like a long wait since the PAT which was late October! We did wonder why it took so very long…

Is anyone's child applying for English? It seems to me that it's completely fallen out of favour and the children on this thread seem to be much more STEM orientated. And economics and HSPS - these so weren't as popular back in my day (approx 1850s). My friend got an economics place at Cambridge after having done her A levels with ABC (this was not having done the 4th or 7th term exam, purely on her grades).

I was dithering between applying for history and English and opted for history partly as I thought I would be far easier to get in but my son tells me that wouldn't be the case now. (That sounds overly pragmatic - I did like history too and ended up doing the artier options which had an overlap with English).

Which comes back to @TomelettewithGreggs - your DS is as amazing today as he was two days ago. I suspect that more children will have been rejected for an economics interview than the total that applied for other subjects.

PS big congrats @Panicmode1 boy!

@ealingwestmum

Fantastic news Panicmode1. Must be quite tense at school when others still waiting on same course

They are all in the same friendship group too so I feel as though I'm going through it x8 on behalf of all of his friends!!

@Valleyofthedollymix Not on this thread, but I've discovered that all subjects are not equal. DS always thought he'd do pure maths but fairly recently decided to do classics. He changed his mind after attending an online Oxbridge event at school where ex pupils spoke about their experiences and without exception they said to do a subject you're passionate about. And while he's extremely good at maths it isn't his passion. It's amazing that when he used to tell people he wanted to do maths everyone was universally impressed. When he tells them he's going to do classics there's a bit of a silence and then ... "oh well, you could always become a teacher ... or a lawyer". And the number of people who assume he's switched simply to have a better chance at Oxbridge is amazing ("Oh, you'll walk into classics at Oxford"). It's really annoying.

Ha ha @Horace123 - was that the one DS1 spoke at?

To be fair he is passionate about his subject.

@MillicentFaucet

DS still not heard anything and it's less than 24 hours until the assessment for his subject. No reply to his email chasing it up either. Bit disappointing tbh, I've sneaked a look a TSR and he's not the only one, seems to be a problem with his college/subject combination. Sigh

Oh ffs, about 2 minutes after I posted this DS messaged to say he received an email telling him he has an interview but the date & time are tbc. He needs to do the assessment tomorrow morning at 9:30, good job his school is closed for inset What a palaver

@SandyBayley Oooh, maybe! It was the online one held towards end of last academic year where the students were clearly in their college bedrooms! We thought it was really good. So if it was your DS we can blame him for the change of heart which DH took a while to come to terms with ... Actually I do think it is really good advice and always thought DS was being unnecessarily influenced by family to go with maths.

At our DC's school there are a lot of Oxbridge applicants. I will never forget attending a coffee morning the year my DS joined where people were talking about whether or not they were going to watch the boat race. I didn't realise that there was A Boat Race which everyone knew about and naively asked who was boating and where were they boating. There was a bit of a deathly hush ...

Same here with the assessment tomorrow MillicentFaucet MML? There has been no word of the interview date or dates yet, just that they will be interviews. It’s not clear whether there will be an interview for each language. Sure they will hear soon!

Yep. That was him in his Oxford bedroom @Horace123 😂

@HotGingerPudding

Same here with the assessment tomorrow MillicentFaucet MML? There has been no word of the interview date or dates yet, just that they will be interviews. It’s not clear whether there will be an interview for each language. Sure they will hear soon!

It's for architecture, he's hoping the essay question is about something he actually has an opinion on lolol

@MillicentFaucet....Fab news well done to your DS

Well done to him on the interview!

Oh that's brilliant Millicent Faucet well done him. Have been keeping my fingers crossed so hard for him.

[quote Horace123]@TangoWhiskyAlphaTango Sorry! I keep forgetting that it isn’t a synonym for twit (which I thought it was for ages rather embarrassingly!)[/quote]
Same. I called my Dad a “silly twat” it did not go down well.