Oxbridge aspirants part 4......Hold onto your nerves interviews ahead....!

[TangoWhiskyAlphaTango]

Part 4 - A friendly supportive thread for those with DC applying to Oxbridge, its an arduous process to say the least. I suspect we will need some handholding and alcohol for the couple of weeks ahead as our dc have their interviews. For those still waiting to hear I hope news comes soon

@Eightytwenty

Happy New Year all! *@TangoWhiskyAlphaTango* are you Helena Bonham Carter? Sound of separate accommodation I suspect is a recipe for a happy marriage. Know a few other people with variations of that and it works brilliantly.

January is a big month here - waiting for the Cambridge news, Admission to our preferred secondary school for Dc3, and possible new job offer. Should be placing bets on chances.

😂😂😂😂😂 I only wish I was although DH and I did know of her and her DH living separately. Most people don't get it and think we're bonkers but it works for us 😊

Odds for DD very low only 17% get into her course. After the second interview she was dejected and just felt she wasn't really pushed like she'd expected. Of course you can never know until you know but I'm really glad she isn't pinning hopes on an offer. I'm sure she will be slightly disappointed but she has offers from Unis she loves so is in a good position.

The odds for DD (Oxford Medicine) are about 35% after interview. It's a slightly one as there are 3 girls from her school who interviewed for medicine at Oxford so we're assuming only one of them will get an offer.

In reality the three applications have no bearing on each other but in my head is can't help thinking DD isn't the strongest applicant of three so won't get an offer. They all applied to different colleges...

Whispers ...

@Piggywaspushed

Whispers ...

If we lived together we most definitely would be divorced!

@SandyBayley Not long to go now though until O applicants find out. As with all of us who have written it off you really don't know until the day. Fingers crossed!

Sandy that's not how it works. DS1 got an offer along with one of his best friends although the third person to interview from school didn't. At our school it often seems to follow that pattern. Your DD has exceptional grades, even for Oxford Medicine and seems to have had good interviews. DS1 was in the same position and it didn't really cross my mind that he wouldn't get an offer. He was less confident. But.... sounds to me as though she should be in a strong position to get an offer. Hate to say this but it sounds more likely that she'll get her college of choice rather than her second college - but fingers crossed for the second one, if she now prefers it.

I'm talking exclusively about Medicine at our school - other subjects are much more random in terms of ratio of interviews: offers.

I know that's not how it works @goodbyestranger but it would feel too weird for two or three of the girls to get offers so I'm trapped in the 'which one of the three' thinking. And all of the three have the same grade profile...

They may well all deserve places Sandy, all three, if they all have those grades.

We've been having various conversations about the merits of DD's other choices given uncertainty over offers. DS just back from his first term at O is full of sweeping unhelpful statements about other uni cities with no evidence. What has though come out of all this is that DD is very keen to live in the EU long term and a friend suggested Trinity College Dublin to help get Irish citizen. Looks a fantastic uni and a good academic reputation and Dublin is a lovely city.
Does anyone have any recent knowledge of Trinity College Dublin?

sorry "citizenship"

DD is applying to TCD Juja. CAO points driven with offers post A level results; not interested in PS etc. If you’ve lived 3 years of last 5 in EU country you’re charged local fee rate so UK applicants are not subject to international fees. So tuition fees low, but cost of living high, with accommodation challenges after 1st year, though this is an issue with many UK unis also.

I don’t think it’ll be DD’s too choice due to the wait post Aug 18 but its language faculty is well regarded.

Too = top

@ealingwestmum - clearly our DDs think alike - or perhaps we do I've done the conversion of A Levels into point for TCD and it seems quite possible. As you say modern languages look good and low tuition fees offset more expensive living costs

Less driven by me Juja but, originally DD was interested in TCD’s dual BA programme with Columbia. I kept pointing out the offset would be you lose your 3rd year overseas (at a hefty £) for years 3 and 4 in NYC. The penny finally dropped that it wasn’t worth it when she did a solo week last summer in Barcelona, where most US students at the language school were aged 20+ and all had lost their placement years. And were surprisingly poor at spoken Spanish.

I think it’s good to have alternative options in this climate, because there are no certainties at this stage.

sandy So funny - I’m just like you. 3 in the year have applied to Oxford to do classics and I keep wondering which one will get an offer. Even though I know that they may all get rejections or all get offers or any other combination I still think about it. And like your DD, the other two applicants have similarly excellent grades. One is doing A levels while DS and the other are doing IB. One is doing Greek but the other one and DS aren’t. And I’m slightly driving myself around the bend contemplating whether that’s a factor.

It’s a good thing I’m back at work tomorrow so will have less time to waste thinking about it all.

I thought I wouldn’t be worried about this at all but I am very stressed now, dd has had an exceptionally difficult year with a family bereavement and other issues, I think she isn’t as resilient as normal and might take a rejection very personally. I wanted her to apply in a year for this reason but she decided to apply now, so here we are.
UCL haven’t sent anything other than “we are still considering your application “ so I’m assuming she will now be in with all the later applicants which doesn’t bode well. Her grades are incredibly good, (14 top grade GCSEs, 4 top grade AS ) but the first interview in particular went badly so I am not very hopeful as they seem to be ignoring grades this year.
I am saying nothing to dd as I don’t want her to pick up on my anxiety about it, at least I can vent on here !

Horace DD says lack of Greek where Greek is offered at school could be a negative at certain colleges and a positive at others, depending on the other subjects taken in Y13 and the reason for doing those as opposed to Greek. So, college dependent. She says that the tutors at her own college (very good for Classics) would be fine with it given that your DS had intended to apply for Maths, provided that he was completely up to speed with literary analysis etc.

goodbyestranger - I have heard that too. Depending on my mood (!) I hang on to things like that or dismiss them out of hand. I think when an applicant is rejected, it is reassuring to think "It's because I did IB, not A levels" or "I didn't do Greek" or "I went to a private school so that counted against me" or "I went to a state school so didn't get the support some private school applicants got". When the truth is the majority of applicants are very bright, do very well, have a good chance of succeeding there but there just isn't enough space.

sirvix - were the interviews for UCL? I didn't realise they did them for most subjects? DS has offer there for classics but all his friends who applied haven't heard (and they are kids who got interviews at Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial) so I am sure it is probably subject specific? Sorry your DD has had a tough year.

No the interviews for Oxford, sorry that wasn’t very clear.
She had an offer from Edinburgh in October, then Oxford interviews, neither were great ( her mind went blank with the stress, v unlike her) but the second better than the first.
UCL sent a message saying they are still considering her application.
She is a year younger than everyone else and they had sent various things about that, not sure whether that will stand against her.

It does seem to be course dependent for UCL. DD got a UCL offer in mid December, but has now decided she definitely doesn’t want a London based university.

From recent discussions, it’s clear DD is still very much hoping for an O offer; the interviews don’t seem to have gone that welll though, so I’m more pessimistic. She has a couple of other really good options - including a course I actually think may suit her better than the heavily literature based one at O, so trying to gently remind her of that.

Only one more week to wait…

.

MFLMum wishing your dd all the best.

DD came running down the stairs yesterday excitedly OMG OMG OMG I've got an email from Clare College.....wondering wtf it was going to say and deducing she may have been pooled nope it was just a bloody survey on how she found the admissions process.....

It may be a better idea for them to send these emails out at a later date to save our poor nerves!