Oxbridge Aspirants - Part 6

[HoneyMobster]

The offers are in but there is still a long way to go...

@CurlyhairedAssassin
@Panicmode1
@PermanentTemporary

@kitnkaboodle Congrats to DS1, very pleased for him! Which one is his top choice?

Hope everyone's DCs are doing ok? DD is doing alright, working a lot as prepping for STEP plus the A levels. There have been some stressed friends and she absorbs that a bit.

She has now had offers in from the non-C 4 - Warwick (maths and physics), St A (maths) and Durham (maths and physics) are all 1 A star, 2 x A so she needs to pick one of them for insurance. (Manchester (maths / physics) is 2 x A star, 1 x A so same grades as Cambridge Maths so she won't insure with that (though a great city for university life!))

She's waivering, I think it will end up Warwick or Durham. She has put in her college choices for Durham. St A - still a possibility but I'm worried a bit about costs there (travel up and down, accommodation).

When do they have to pick by?

Really pleased to hear about the offers for your DS1 kitnkaboodle.

Colleges always get in touch about accommodation directly after results are out.

I should add that not all colleges have price banding. Many just allocate (with special requirements taken in account) and the student finds out where they are when they arrive.

@Genegenieee DS thought long and hard before rejecting his St A offer as he really liked the place. It was two A star and one A so the same as Cambridge without STEP so would have been a risky pick. And the other problem was that the term there starts much earlier so he would have had just 2 weeks after results day to get his head round going there and make all the arrangements.

He chose Bath for insurance in the end.

@goodbyestranger agree - well certainly at both DC colleges there is no price banding.

My DD decided last night not to wait longer for Edinburgh to offer / reject - now 6.5 months so she withdraw from Edinburgh and has firmed Oxford (AAA) and insured Bristol (ABB) though her preferred reserve choice is Trinity College Dublin - a complete Sally Rooney fan. Cousins at Edinburgh have had quite poor teaching provision in Covid and now very disrupted by strikes also unlikely to offer ABB or less. Durham was AAA and Newcastle AAB.

DS finally got an Edinburgh offer, but it was AAA, which is the same as Durham. He's a bit stuck now as his lower offers are for places he's now not keen on, but there's not a lot of point putting AAA as insurance. I wish he'd thought about it all a bit more carefully back when he put in his application, but I really don't think he had an inkling that he would get a Cambridge offer. Ugh!! A lot of thinking to be done asap here!

@nolongerpetitebleu - Well done to your DS on their Edinburgh offer.

This year has it seems been unpredictable in terms of levels of offers. DD wouldn't have predicted Bristol offer would have been less than Newcastle's and it seems Edinburgh has increased lots of their offers above the standard offers to manage demand. So really hard for many DC and hindsight is always so useful. I suppose the learning point is try and choose a uni likely to give a really achievable offer.

Are Durham / Edinburgh offers lower than Cambridge for your DS? -If so then may still be worthwhile as an insurance? In DD's case it wasn't. In the past Edinburgh were more likely to be flexible on results day than Durham but past practices no longer seem a guarantee for future 🙂

Good luck to your DS in making their decision.

@Juja yes, Cambridge is a higher offer, but DS is as confident as he can be about the A* and A, it's the third subject he's most worried about, so it's likely that if he misses the Cambridge offer then he'd miss the others too. Cambridge was a last minute decision for him so everything was rushed and he probably didn't choose as wisely as he should. He has an AAB offer from Newcastle but that's within walking distance of home for him and now he's in the mindset of going as far as Cambridge, he really doesn't want to be local - even Durham is too close to home, really.

Roll on August!

Yay to @juja and @kitnkaboodle for their good new updates!

My DS is working really hard but luckily doesn't seem too stressed. I don't know if anyone remembers but he missed his A* in his Further maths A-level mock in January. He had insisted that he wouldn't need to do any past papers as part of his revision, in fact it was his opinion that he would be detrimental to do any because there weren't many of them and he didn't want to be left with none to do for the real things. I think he got a very top B grade, not even scraped an A so it was a massive wake up call for him.

He didn't have any meltdowns or anything, has just calmly applied himself ever since and I know he is more than capable of getting the A, which obviously Cambrige could see otherwise they wouldn't have offered him a place. It's just so nerve-racking as a parent onlooker though when you know how desperate they are to achieve their dream.... Thank god he came downstairs yesterday and announced that he just did another past paper and only dropped a couple of marks and easily got an A so is feeling very confident now.

One funny thing, he's been thinking about the accommodation at his Cambridge college. At the offer holders day they were told that if they're 6 ft 3 or over they go into an early ballot for accommodation and have priority for a double bed so they can stretch out more. We measured him yesterday and he's just under 6ft 2 so we were having a laugh about how we could help him grow another inch so he could make the early ballot.

don't know what happened with the bold there. That should have read that he needs an A star in his Further Maths. Not just an A.

@CurlyhairedAssassin @nolongerpetitebleu we have a similar issue in that it is possible DD will exceed offer in 2 subjects and slip in one ie end up with A star, A star, B.

Well done @CurlyhairedAssassin to your DS for picking themselves up after mocks. Sounds was though all is going as well as could do.

It seems a long time until August - well does to me. first exam last week and last exam on 24th June, then another eight weeks until the results.

At the moment it is just heard down and steady away with revision. DD still has her job one day each weekend, she says she will not go if she haas an exam the next day but it does provide her with some contrast to revision. She is so excited about her year out and busy trying to organise her visa for France. This country has literally gone back in time until the 1970s that an 18 year old needs a visa with endless forms, a contract etc to spend 10 months in France.

That's Brexit for you, I guess! Frustrating for our children's generation. Good to hear she's excited. I was supposed to take a year our working in France but I was a right wet lettuce and chickened out! I always admire any youngster who has ambitions and is motivated to get there.

@CurlyhairedAssassin we had the opposite with DS's A in his FM mock - he was told he'd achieved it, but then they changed the grade boundaries so he was 6% off it..! His teacher is confident he can do it, but DS says that it will just come down to how it goes on the day - he can be a bit erratic; finding questions hard in the exam, coming out and realising that he could have aced it if he'd read/approached it differently. Hey ho. It is what it is - he's certainly revising hard, but as he really likes Bristol, and is confident he'll get the As he needs in Maths and Physics, I think he's fairly relaxed about the outcome.

Interesting about a) offer holders days - DS swears he hasn't been invited to any, and b) the height thing - he's 6ft 4, so it may be worth putting that on a form!

Just had a heart attack reading @Jujas post about visas for France as DS heads off to Mont Blanc with a group of friends at the end of June and hasn't mentioned anything along those lines...but I see that is for a longer stay, not a couple of weeks. I hate what Brexit has done to our children's horizons - I lived in Brussels as a young adult and spent my time waltzing off all over Europe at the weekends/holidays without even thinking about it.

Sorry - no idea why there is random bold in the post!!

@Panicmode1 I've got caught by MN's funny 'bolding' It seems all the text between two * gets put in bold so A stars are almost impossible to do.

Sorry if I unnecessary alarmed you. Brits are now allowed only 90 days in the EU in each 180 day period. So your daughter will be fine.

As @CurlyhairedAssassin said these restrictions on travel are one of the many 'costs' of Brexit but I'll hold off my views on that subject on this thread....

I could rant for weeks about Brexit....!

I'd forgotten about the bolding with the asterisks....will have to write A star going forward.

@Juja and @Panicmode1 i could weep when I think how restricted our children who have grown up as Europeans are now…

anyway, just came on to say that ds has just received his student finance letter.
he is disappointed to learn that he will need to pay back both his fees and maintenance loan, neither are grants.
and also, when I expressed surprise that they hadn’t emailed him said “yes they did but I couldn’t log on to the account, it was too complicated “

give me strength

How on earth he’s got offers from the top 5 uK universities is beyond me 🤔

@Ifeelmuchlessfat - your comments on not logging to the site in reminds me of my DS and his aversion to admin (now 1st year at Oxford)- I am repeatedly tearing my hair out but interestingly he rang up over the weekend saying he thinks he needs some support to help management in this area - time management / learning to read and remember rubrics for exams / focusing on requests in admin mails. He was wondering about an ADHD assessment. Has anyone any experience?

He realises he is missing out on opportunities and not performing as well as he good with some more focus. Quite a relief he has come to this conclusion himself - best time to stumble in Year 1 when nothing much matters.

Hmmm @Juja that’s interesting. Yes I can see that there’s an inability to process what he sees as unimportant detail.
I hope your ds can get the help he’s sensibly asking for. My ds is still too young to realise he needs it. Where will you look do you think?

DD (also first year) had an ADHD and/or ASD assessment suggested to her by her tutor. Not that she’s got round to organising it…

Juja your DS needs to make an appointment with his College welfare team to start putting support in place. They will be able to give him some names for private assessment (ranging from around £300 to £2000) or suggest he speaks to his GP. Oxford NHS has a great new ADHD support service, but he may have graduated before he's able to access it.

@FlyingSquid Your comment did make me lol - so typical of the behaviour!

@HewasH2O thanks for the advice - we've found the contact for his college welfare fellow and the Uni disability services that say they support ADHD. He is also emailing his tutor tonight to ask for specific support.

@Ifeelmuchlessfat it seems there are both college and uni welfare support teams as well as GPs. I see my role was supporting him to make the necessary contacts as of course even though he acknowledges there is an issue taking steps to address it is another big step.

So fingers crossed

Just wishing all DC all the best with their A Levels / Pre Us etc in the coming weeks.

Dd had her first written paper yesterday and seemed to go okay so that's a relief ...

Good luck with the start of A levels to everyone! My DD had her last day of school today and came back very cheerful despite the exams starting for real for her next Wednesday. Hope everyone else (and DC also of course) is keeping calm and carrying on or feeling the fear and doing it anyway!

DS is oscillating between the two. First A level on Wednesday and STEP shortly after half term. Good luck everyone!