DS wants to drop out of Oxford - and it's largely my fault

[Distressedstudent]

My DS is a fresher at Oxford and not enjoying it one bit - the intensive work load, the lack of contact hours, the general 'nerdiness' of it. He had wanted to go to York but, as he was predicted (and got) 4 x A star, we urged him to apply to Oxford (where we went - he had no intention of applying) and then, when he got his offer, to firm it. He very reluctantly agreed after talking to his teachers who said he'd be nuts to turn down Oxford, even though his heart was set on York.

He sees his friends from school having a blast at other universities whereas he has his nose to the grind at Oxford. He is now planning to see his Director of Studies and to see if York will take him from September (to read the same humanities course). He is not interested in my advice as DH and I 'got it wrong' and gave him 'duff advice' (his words).

I am not sure if I am up to replying to anyone kind enough to offer their thoughts because I feel so miserable/disappointed/guilty on his behalf.

I did Latin O level - I'm that old too - and got a B. Don't suppose I've thought about it from one day to the next since, though I did enjoy the course and the teachers.

Of course, back in the day the internet didn't exist and not Mumsnet of course. It's amazing to think that you can take just about any subject and research it via Mumsnet - erm, I don't mean historical battles, but stuff about whether you want to go to Oxford, or what you fancy studying, from that to what kind of lighting you want for your kitchen. Back then, if you didn't Oxford - or wherever you were at - you just had to suck it up, it had to be your fault for not fitting in.

I hope you've learnt your lesson. Oxbridge is INTENSE, lots of people that had attending Oxbridge as their dream haven't been able to handle the reality. You've got to really want to be there to have a hope in hell of managing

Why is there so much hyperbole about Oxbridge on MN? It's so deeply unhealthy. A poster upthread said that I was perhaps 'too close, for too long, albeit by proxy' to Oxbridge but if that means not being starry eyed or hysterical about it and passing on those deficiencies to my DC then perhaps that's no bad thing, since all eight seem to have survived, or are surviving and I don't think for any it was their 'dream'. To that poster (sorry, can't remember the name), I would just say that the tutors posting on this thread (not close by proxy but by the actual real thing) seem to say very much the same things as I do, about nerdiness, traditions etc. As for another comment from a different poster about the Oxbridge work ethic having to be set at primary school: just what planet is this on?

There was that recent book on how the Oxford elites have taken over the Govt - Chums by Simon Kupar. It seems to sum up your concerns, @goodbyestranger You can look it up on Amazon.

The rituals are redolent of a cult. Not bad if you are in that cult, but distasteful and bewildering if you feel you don't belong.

Dame Cressida Dick of the disgraced Met Police was at the same college as Boris Johnson around the same time I think, they all know each other. We are only now finding out the extent of misogyny in the Met under her watch, and arguably it took a murder to get to that point, a murder they couldn't hush up. Johnson didn't sack her, it was the Labour major who forced her hand - last I heard she was looking to sue him over it! Lucrative pension for life, natch. Assuming she's retired, I'm not sure she has.

Verging off topic, but yeah, Oxford is a 'thing'.

Incidentally, it being a bit of a cult may explain the hyperbole about some of the responses - you call it out and one sign of it is that they do come for you!

@RampantIvy & @lieselotte I was trying to say it's best to let kids make their own choices.. its ok to provide an opinion but ultimately the choice is theirs. OP's son could have stood firm on York... he didn't.. I didn't get the sense OP 'made' her son go to Oxford rather she advocated heavily in favour of Oxford.

I certainly don't blame my parents for my 1st uni choice not working out.. I couldn't make a decision, whereas one had to be made..

It really isn’t a cult, you know. It’s a perfectly ordinary, very good university with some gorgeous architecture and admittedly oddball traditions — absolutely you could point to some circles within it that could be viewed as ‘cultish’. ‘Dining’ societies like the Buller, Cardinals, some Union Tory zones etc. But I went to a traditionally deeply posh college, and the vast majority of people there were quite ordinary, and went to lead perfectly ordinary lives.

Waves at @goodbyestranger from another planet.
Looking back when did you realise your kids were sporty/ musical / academic/ perfectionist.

I know a few of the Oxbridge applicants from the primary years. I would have done well if I'd bet on their application just based on their attitude when in year 6.The one that applied but didn't get an offer - absolutely, always confident but never quite nailed the work. Nothing to do with their parents

I didn't mean there was such thing as a distinct Oxbridge work ethic more a long-term joy in academia and probably not something you can pull out the bag just in sixth form.

I can't answer that question Enviromont, because I don't recall any moment in time I don't think. I remember being astonished that my eldest was predicted a full sweep of A* at GCSE in the days when only 2% or so achieved a full sweep, and then the next one was the same and after that I began to think they really were all pretty bright. Perhaps with #3 it was earlier because she suddenly took her Reception reading book from me as I was tracing my finger under the words, and she just read the whole thing straight off, as though she knew how to read without any help. But for the most part nothing special and no moment and certainly no work ethic drummed into them or very obvious at primary stage - I always left everything to the school and was glad none of them had any homework at primary school. The one thing I did was do the reading books early on, which is why I remember #3 suddenly reading Dick Whittington and 'Go to London town'.

Well, indeed. Bizarre to call its rituals “redolent of a cult.” People can and do leave Oxford at the end of their degree without being ostracised for doing so 😂. It’s not wearing sub fusc, punting, bops, formal dinners, or promising not to kindle flame in the Bodleian library that is the problem with the likes of Boris Johnson et al, it’s their personalities.

I'm not sure how my saying the same thing about Oxford - good uni/ pretty grounded about it - translated into my having concerns about it or comparing its graduates to a cult.

It was me who said it was a bit like a cult, I think the quotes have intermingled. I do think a lot of unis are like that really because it has some of the hallmarks - impressionable kids with an academic background uprooted from a) Their hometown b) Family c) School friends and thrown into a new make or break environment, often on a campus. If you don't like it, and exude that, you won't be Mr Popular because it's not the thing to say, once you're at uni there is nothing else really outside of that. You may as well sidle up to someone and say 'I don't like life...' it's not a conversation starter. So someone saying they don't like Oxford Uni may rub some up the wrong way, which it has done on this thread from Oxford graduates.

I hated Bristol Uni but it was hard to talk about because for years it was the last big thing I did and many who went to uni and don't want to hear how someone didn't like it. It runs counter to their beliefs. It's not like 'Oh, I liked Pulp Fiction but you didn't, fair enough' type thing. It seems to threaten identity.
Of course, if someone liked Oxford Uni - or Bristol for that matter - I don't argue with them, what's the point.

I have no problem with people saying they didn’t enjoy their experience at Oxford - I have friends who have said exactly that. The same applies to the school I went to (a state school) - some of my friends were unhappy there. I loved it. It is only a “cult” if you want it to be - either to explain to yourself why you didn’t enjoy it or fit in, or because you over-identify with it. If you are arguing that this is what makes universities a cult, then you might as well argue that any group of people that get together for a common purpose, whether that be academic study, to go fell walking, to watch Doctor Who dvds, to play board games, to play in an orchestra, to set standards for joining a profession, to join a political party, to worship under a particular faith, is a cult.

I think the cult, if there is one, is in the status we collectively accord to 'Oxbridge' (why do we even have a compound noun for it?). It's in the teachers who talk about 'Oxbridge material' (not 'Imperial' or 'LSE' or 'Warwick' material), it's in the journalists who obsess over Oxbridge entrance demographics but not over the same demographics' GCSE attainment, it's (yes) in the parenting websites where there are dedicated threads for Oxbridge, it's in the political class that pretends to believe that an Oxford PPE degree means you'll be good at running the government despite acres of evidence to the contrary. As a country we're a bit sick in the head when it comes to Oxbridge. I'm 100% guilty of it myself, of course.

DS1 (academy school and state sixth form) loves the Oxford flummery and the wonderful buildings and the history and the traditions. Most of the (absolutely, resolutely normal) kids he knows like it too. It's just personal preference, nothing more profound than that. I was looking at the thread about Durham accommodation and it looks like there's a large cohort of Durham offer-holders who actively seek out the 'gown' colleges. It's just flummery, it's almost all optional. It's just dressing up.

If a young person finds it genuinely enraging then they probably won't like Oxbridge (or quite a few other older unis) but that's ok. There are lots of other good ones. But the idea that Oxford (or anywhere else) mandates chapel attendance or beating your scout or trashing curry houses or wearing plus-fours in the quad every Wednesday morning in February is just wrong, and one way to avoid sick-in-the-head disease is to disregard these myths.

Well, yes, the idea that academic study makes you a good leader of people is bizarre. Power hungry people who crave influence or who already have it and wish to retain it will always congregate somewhere. Oxford University is an academic institution, it is only a finishing school for the elites if they want it to be, it doesn’t actually create them itself, with the exception of the academic ones.

Reading the original post - I think the DS is finding someone to blame. Or something. He wants more spare time. He thinks York will offer this as it’s less intense. So he should go. However he tried Oxford. Didn’t like it. Left. Moved on. He shouldn’t blame others for their honest advice. That’s a bit immature. Maybe that’s the real issue.

Another example, my youngest brother was also a straight A A level student, he wanted to go to Cambridge.. everyone at his school wanted him to go to either Oxford Oxford as his school prided themselves on always having their brightest student go on to do Natural Sciences at Oxford. He applied to both and received 2 unconditional offers one from Oxford and one from Cambridge both for Natural Science. He went to Cambridge to do Natural Sciences, his choice not everyone else's. No one could convince him to go to Oxford.*

Impossible. Unless this was in two different years. SInce some time in the 1980s it has not been possible to apply to both Universities. And there were no A* then.

Gah. Messed up again. Whole of first para was supposed to be a quote. Those A* really mess it up!

I also agree that this country would be a better place in many ways without the obsessive singling out of Oxford and Cambridge as somehow completely distinct from other Universities. There are many excellent universities in this country and a sense of proportion about these two would be helpful for both sides of the divide! I think most of my Oxford academic colleagues would agree. We don't want to work somewhere that is perceived from the outside as "cultish" or receive applications from young people who have set their hearts on Oxford or nothing (or their parents have). It's not healthy! Nor should anyone think that we have some magic lense that allows us to perfectly identify some notional "Oxbridge material" in a 30 min interview and a UCAS form.

Why does it cost so much more to educate a student at Oxbridge than at any other UK uni? Where is the excess going?

That's an easy one. Very small group teaching. And the "excess" is mostly paid for out of College endowments. So in that sense it is very good value!

As I said, it was a rhetorical question, although a tutor explained very fully upthread which was useful to anyone not aware of how much more it costs per student at Oxford and Cambridge. Generally speaking, things which cost more are better quality.

@Pinkyxx , are you some kind of fantasist?

You cannot apply to both Oxford and Cambridge - this has been the case since at least 1980.

There is no NatSci undergraduate degree at Oxford - only Cambridge.

@mast0650 You have a lot more info than that!

@TizerorFizz not really much to distinguish. Many more applicants with the right academic credentials than there are places. It's a bit of a lottery who gets the places at the end of the day. Not always the highest fliers by any means.

There are additional tests. Exams already taken. Interviews after selection criteria have been examined in great detail by more than one person. Even PS might be read . Far more than a computer will do.

There are not additional tests for every subject. There are many DC applying with 10 A stars at GCSE and four A stars predicted at A Level. Many of those will be rejected and others with the same grades will get through. PS is not a great indicator and as the PP says "Nor should anyone think that we have some magic lens that allows us to perfectly identify some notional "Oxbridge material" in a 30 min interview". Apart from the standout top 5-10%, it is a bit of a lottery.