Is Oxbridge no longer worth applying to?

[Ericasdog]

I have been meandering around the uni threads and am coming to the conclusion that Oxbridge universities are no longer worth applying to. I would like to have a conversation about whether my observations are correct.

Getting in - The process seems random and obfuscated. People apply in good faith only to be told that, in fact, they were applying just for one place on their course after all. Applicants with perfect credentials don't get interviewed whereas applicants with lower credentials do. Socio-demographics are a huge factor but nobody knows how they work. The process requires a lot of investment on the applicant's part, yet, seems whimsical on the part of the institution.

Getting out - The drive for state school recruitment has coincided exactly with big corporates going 'university 'blind' why is there this correlation now and what does it say about 'elite' institutions, two of the three top careers for Oxbridge grads are teaching and healthcare, yet, the workload is huge I'd want a career that I couldnt get from any other uni for the efforts, and the slightly eyebrow raising associations with certain alumni, staff and initiatives.

Thoughts?

Please stop using strikethrough, OP. It makes your posts incredibly irritating.

I will only pick up on your thoughts on money. Of my Oxbridge contemporaries, many are making serious money, mostly in law and finance (although the one who works for Gazprom has gone very quiet). Many more of us are on more modest incomes in what you might call 'passion' or vocational careers: medicine, teaching, international NGOs, Foreign Office, charities and non-profits, and journalism. In my wider circle of acquaintances the highest earners went to Imperial, LSE, assorted redbricks, or international (specifically MIT and Stanford).

My theory is the Oxbridge tutors accept the candidates that they want to teach for three or four years, and are very good at spotting those with genuine passion for their subject (as distinct from those who have tried to game the system by applying for Physics at Newnham or whatever). These are then also the people who tend to apply their passions and their degree knowledge to their chosen careers, hence the less stratospherically-paid career paths. I would still consider myself very privileged in terms of being able to make a career and a decent living of my passions, and being able to count on an incredibly well-connected social circle, but this doesn't always translate to cold hard cash. If this is all that is important to you then you may find that Oxbridge might not want you either.

I am not sure I agree. When I was at the LSE back in the dark ages, we were confident we were pretty employable,. It was all pretty sink or swim in a very urban and international environment. Even back then I was the only Brit on my course, and some of the guys can from pretty chauvinistic cultures. We swam and many went on to international jobs, some, but not all, well paid. My year produced two MPs, curiously given LSEs reputation at the time, both Conservative.

I think the same is true now. To get the most from LSE, or Imperial, or UCL or Kings, you need to be a self starter, flexible and resilient. There is no tutor, college system or even porter or bedder to keep an eye on you. Both mine thrived at LSE and Imperial respectively. There is nothing quite like being at specialist research-led international institutions if you are absorbed by your subject. Equally there were others strongly motived by the prospect of a well paid job at Goldman Sachs. My neighbour's son went to Oxford and then worked at UCL, and now works for a prestigious international institution. He feels he would have enjoyed UCL more. Interalia he was astonished at how sheltered some of his peers at Oxford were. By 11, London children have their bus pass and Google maps and they are off. Perhaps not to night clubs and teen parties but certainly to go to friends houses or Saturday afternoon trips to Westfield. At Oxford, he claims some of his peers had never even used public transport.

When the related thread was active, I asked DS whether he regretted not getting accepted by Cambridge. In some ways, apparently (it does not help that we live 30 minutes walk from LSE and from the top of the building you can see our house, the hospital he was born in and his nursery and secondary school) but generally not. He feels he did better at LSE as the teaching approach suited him. He does not enjoy essays, and LSE let him opt for a lot of maths instead. He also has a great and international network of contacts similarly aiming for economics research type jobs. Ditto at Imperial, DD was bowled over by the range of research happening in her field, the course organisation, the strength of the academic staff, and the quality of the equipment. As a dyslexic a weekly essay would have been torture, so DD never applied, and instead was seriously impressed by the help she got from Imperial's "essay club" designed for those for whom writing in English does not come easily. Perhaps the difference with Oxbridge is that both got good support because they were absorbed and engaged. Without a weekly tutorial, and college support perhaps it would be easier for others to start drifting.

I went to LSE and we didn’t think to much about whether we were employable. I applied for three graduate schemes and got offers from each of them.
DT’s graduated in 2020 (DS did another year for his masters) from Warwick and York and both went through a graduate recruitment process to get their first jobs. They are working in Amsterdam and Brussels but the process was as competitive as the UK .
Their degrees got them their jobs not where they got them from.

I don't disagree. What I really meant was that when applying via the Milk Round we did not see ourselves as disadvantaged compared with, say, Oxbridge. We assumed we had employable skills, both subject wise and things like resilience, adaptability and so on. I don't remember Oxbridge being such a thing, and I did not apply though in fact have better grades than DH who got a scholarship. It was only later when I started meeting people who had been to Oxbridge that I realised that some, at least, thought being a graduate was special and should open doors.

Either you are attracted to the Oxford/Cambridge tutorial/seminar systems, international reputations as centres of excellence, college systems, locations as places to live for a few years, course quality and content, extra curricular opportunities, opportunities for bursaries and scholarships, like minded people you might meet or be taught by, etc, or you aren’t. They are certainly not going to harm your job prospects, unless you fail to achieve a reasonable degree, as per any other university. You need to have an astronomically large chip on your shoulder to waste time arguing over whether or not they are “worth applying to.” Obviously they are worth applying to.

@Needmoresleep whilst I accept much of what you say, your comments about public transport only apply in urban areas. I live in a small hamlet. The nearest train station is 5 miles away. The nearest bus goes once per hour from the next village which is a 20 minute walk along unlit single-track roads with a 60mph speed limit. My DDs did get the bus to school on days I wasn't working, but I took them to the bus stop. They couldn't really get buses to anywhere because there aren't any.

My DD at Cambridge has friends from London who cannot believe that DD has a driving licence, let alone her own car. Round here, it's a necessity. Even though fuel prices have rocketed, it's still cheaper to drive into the city and pay for parking than to get the bus.

Using public transport depends on whether there actually is any, not on what sort of school or university you go to.

Yes I was going to write the same Malbecfan but then got sidetracked. That was a very urban perspective from Needmoresleep and has nothing whatsoever to do with Oxbridge. I think a lot of those living in towns and cities have no understanding of how patchy rural public transport is after years of cuts, especially given that it started from a low base anyhow.

Interalia he was astonished at how sheltered some of his peers at Oxford were. By 11, London children have their bus pass and Google maps and they are off. Perhaps not to night clubs and teen parties but certainly to go to friends houses or Saturday afternoon trips to Westfield. At Oxford, he claims some of his peers had never even used public transport.

As PP have said you can’t take public transport that doesn’t exist. No doubt that boy
would have sneered at my DH, who grew up on a farm and only took public transport when on holiday until he arrived at Cambridge. Nevertheless he was driving (both cars and tractors) off-road at thirteen and performed his first breech delivery whilst on a study break from his GCSE mocks during a particularly busy lambing season. I wouldn’t call that sheltered just because it didn’t happen in zone 2.

Another person here who can vouch for this . We are quite a large village but the first bus to our local town is at 3.15 pm . Bizarrely we have no buses back in the afternoon but we do have a bus back at 9.25am . You couldn’t make it up.

however my dc have driving licences and volunteer in various things in the village and also have been used all their lives to us giving lifts to other people . They now do this themselves, they also volunteer in the local community shop. They have a strong sense of community, so whilst they may not be off to nightclubs via Google maps they are not as sheltered as you may think.

Well, that’s a fine example of how sheltered some people who grew up in London are. So much on tap, yet apparently some think they are resilient when it just fell into their laps. My children love a day trip to London - it’s just so easy to get around, either walking if pretty central, or on public transport. It’s the expense of everything in London that’s the problem, if you don’t have friends’ houses to go to, not the supposedly terrifying prospect of comprehending a bus route, tube map, or Google Maps. I would be more impressed by a young Londoner who had the confidence and resilience to get on a train and bus, or bike, to the middle of nowhere, with no phone signal, and used an Ordnance Survey map to go on a country walk, tbh.

Yes quite. It would be an interesting test of resilience to see how the supposedly robust young Central Londoner fared when faced with a bunch of stile blocking cows mooing very very loudly and giving no quarter at all.

I have known extremely privileged teens living in major UK cities who have never used public transport for socialising purposes, before heading off to university. They'd have a meltdown at the prospect of having to use a bus, tram or train to get from A to B, so used were they to their parents delivering them everywhere (or paying for taxis for late night trips).

Thought you might be interested in this Times article, published today: 'Privately educated pupils to lose places at Oxbridge, vice-chancellor warns'

it does not help that we live 30 minutes walk from LSE and from the top of the building you can see our house, the hospital he was born in and his nursery and secondary school

How parochial. Positively sheltered.

Good grief, another one of those articles, and no thread about it yet?

FFS, I did say SOME. It was an observation made by my neighbours son who went to Oxford.

Please all of you who live in hamlets, or smaller towns and villages. Do you really no know kids who lead surprisingly sheltered lives? They are out there. Perhaps it is not town and city but something else like working mothers, who may be more common in cities, with kids who got used to having to get themselves around and to mucking in. In particular we used a variety of sports, language and holiday camps, as well as grandparents with the kids getting to and from them on their own.

I had been replying to Zoyathedestroyer who seems to think that Oxbridge tutors are particularly gifted in spotting those with a genuine passion for their subjects, presumably in a way that London admissions people are not.

The thread title is silly. You apply to where you feel suits you best, where you think you will thrive, and, obviously, where you think you might be accepted. I reject Walkarounds implication that it is only Oxbridge that offers international reputations, like minded people, course quality, congenial places to live etc, as if two universities are somehow always the best, or at least the best in Britain. It is simply not true, though I have met quite a number of Oxbridge graduates who share that view and get over invested in their children following the same path. People need to relax. Oxbridge is shifting its recruitment priorities so that some, including those from higher performing parts of the state sector, who previously might have expected to get places, now won't. Luckily there are plenty of other institutions that offer world class courses, and other environments, be it London or elsewhere that might provide a better fit.

I had been replying to Zoyathedestroyer who seems to think that Oxbridge tutors are particularly gifted in spotting those with a genuine passion for their subjects, presumably in a way that London admissions people are not.

Chippy.

It has nothing to do with ‘gifts’ and everything to do with opportunity. Oxford and Cambridge routinely use interviews as part of their admissions process, pretty accurately replicating the teaching format of tutorials and supervisions respectively and giving the tutor a
preview of what it will be like to teach that candidate. The admissions tutors therefore get a really good chunk of time in conversation with the candidate to assess their passions. So too, incidentally, do Imperial. LSE make no use of interviews at all for admissions, King’s rarely and only for specific subjects such as medicine. No doubt these admissions tutors have a much harder job of identifying the genuinely passionate and talented and it must take significant skill and experience.

To be fair to @Needmoresleep some DCs who have little experience of big cities might struggle to navigate them, just as some DCs who have little experience of the countryside might struggle with unmarked paths and fields of cows. But ime it's more down to parental behaviour than location as such. Most mums on this thread are clearly sensible enough to realise that trying to give our DCs a mixture of these experiences is ideal, if sometimes easier said than done.

We live in the country but less than an hour out of central London and my 3 have been travelling into London on public transport, with friends and on their own, since they were 13 or 14. Other parents around here wouldn't dream of allowing that, and were quite shocked that we did, which is absolutely their prerogative, but I'm not sure it did those DCs any favours when it came to going off to university.

@goodbyestranger
I know exactly what the city children do in the country. They all come by us on DofE! Some know where they are! As for a herd of cows? Maybe find an alternative route.

My DDs went into London regularly from around 13/14. I suspect we don’t live far from @thing47

They also went to London with friends directly from boarding school. Taxi to the local station and then stayed with friends in London. Both of mine went on a school exchange to SA on their own when they were aged 13. We waved them off at Heathrow for 3 months. So we don’t have buses here but they were wonderfully competent at 13.

Only on Mumsnet, even country/city survival skills turns into a competitive sport.

Only on Mumsnet, even country/city survival skills turns into a competitive sport

Apparently in the house next door to Needmoresleep too, so not only on MN.

@Needmoresleep - I reject your somewhat weird assumption I was saying, or even implying, that only Oxford and Cambridge have international reputations. The OP’s question was whether Oxford and Cambridge are worth applying to. So why on earth would I mention other universities when giving reasons why people might consider applying to Oxford and Cambridge?! I think maybe you need to take your own advice and relax a bit, rather than revealing your own shoulder chips through your negative references to unworldliness, as though this doesn’t exist in students attending the London universities that you are trying so hard to bring into the discussion, despite the opening post only asking whether it is worth bothering with Oxbridge.

My thoughts?

You don’t really know much about how universities work and the specifics of how Oxford and Cambridge work.

Your views on the admissions process are borderline offensive in the implication that the seasoned expert academics and professional services colleagues don’t work to transparent and carefully developed, published criteria.

Are you one of the parents realising that you can’t buy Oxbridge entrance by paying 13 years of school fees?

Huge wishes of good luck to your DD @MoiraQueen She sounds fantastic. Any university would be lucky to have a student like her.

@ExMachinaDeus
Thank you. Oxbridge is totally out of my comfort zone, but I'm very proud of her.

I think the OP raises an interesting question and I suppose it depends on what you think the role of university is.

I would imagine Oxbridge would like to think they are producing the next generation of academics with the absolute focus of instilling knowledge in a subject area regardless of where the talent arises.

I don't necessarily think Oxbridge is a staging post for the next generation of investment bankers.

If employment/remuneration is a consideration then there are many other universities which offer great potential career prospects. University blind application processes are being normalised and so there is a reduction in institute weight when applying for roles.

I think the reduction of public school numbers at Oxbridge will not lead to the demise of public schooling in any way and there are still high proportions of public school alumni in elite professions. I think what will be of interest is whether it not they attended Oxbridge on their way to the top.