Oxbridge 2024 Entry

[Lightsabre]

Thought I'd start a thread for parents of dc considering Oxbridge applications for entry in Oct 2024 (I don't think there's a current one)? Past threads have been so informative and supportive and hopefully this thread will offer that too. Please feel free to add to the thread if your dc have recently had experience of the process, good, bad or ugly!

Re which college - I'd advise finding out how admissions are organised for your course. We went to the open day with a strategic list of colleges to look at based on how many people they have on DC's course vs number of applications but then the admissions talk made it clear that for that subject admissions were at departmental level i.e., irrespective of which college you apply for, the top 100 applicants receive an offer.

DC then applied for a college not on the original list based purely on how grand it looked on the day as we walked by and were suckered in for a tour. In the end, their offer was from a completely different we'd never even heard of but luckily ticks all the boxes for things they wanted.

Thank you @SpringRumba. I know she is thinking of an open application- I think partly as she knows you may not get the college you apply for even if successful.
Especially as many colleges don’t always take anyone for history and mfl

Thank you @ClarasZoo.

I wondered about an open application too but I think we'll look at the stats for each college for the course ds decides he wants to do. To be honest, I think he'd be delighted with anywhere although he is a fussy eater so self catering facilities would be better.

His school are running an Oxbridge evening talk this week - they had a lot of offers this year, substantially up on the last year or two (around 40) so hopefully they can give good advice on the process. Unfortunately no offers for Chemistry at O but a few for NS at C. I'll encourage ds to speak to one of the NS offer holders.

DD heard from someone that Oxbridge don’t allow you to have a part time job if you’re studying there. Does anyone know if this is true?

Why would anyone choose to waste their time and money on a degree which wasn't properly full time? DD did engineering- I'm not sure she'd have had time for term time work at any of her ucas choices.
But she got good paid internships in the summer.

Oxbridge colleges have the resources to help students who would otherwise struggle financially - some more than others, of course.

Now a proud member of the Oxbridge Rejects group of parents I'd say give it a go but be very aware of the downsides if it goes wrong, which statistically it's likely to. It's all very well for @SpringRumba to make snide witty comments about the failures all being the next Mother Teresa but her child was successful, so she didn't have to deal with the fallout of a rejection and then the fact your child may later get detailed feedback (though you may also not get any at all) that confuses you as to why that rejection happened, as the process is so mysterious everything you do can look great on paper yet still not be deemed to be good enough.

You may think you and your dc will take a rejection in their stride and you're going to be cool and hands off throughout the process (I certainly did and made it very clear to dd from the offset that there were no guarantees, which she seemed to accept). The reality is it's extremely demoralising for a child to go through a long and torturous process like Oxbridge entry (the fact they now do the interview in your home makes it worse not least as we had tech issues on the day), which in our case involved tests, submitting written work, two interviews with the chosen college and then an extra one with the pooled one - and if you're pooled you can't help but have your hopes buoyed. Oxbridge entirely dominates the autumn term - you could go into it without any preparation but everyone on here is saying how much reading their dc is doing etc , how passionate they are about their subject, so it would seem unwise.

As a parent you can't help be invested in your child's disappointment and how they move on from there - the successful applicants have offers in the bag and can more serenely towards A levels, many unsuccessful ones are still waiting for offers from their second choices and have no idea where they'll be this time next year.

DD's from a school that only sends a handful to Oxbridge every year but this year that handful included her two bffs - looking at experiences on the Oxbridge rejects thread those kind of incidents aren't uncommon, I'd guess because Oxbridge applicants tend to flock together.

My take from it all is if my dd2 wants to apply (and I fear she will) I am going to strongly encourage her to do all her uni applications post A level with grades in hand, then to only go for it with straight A stars, and to go into A levels with a great gap year to look forward to, rather than having had a massive confidence knockback at a key point in their education. If in doubt I'd suggest people do the same - obviously gap years don't work for everyone though, you need to be sure you can fund them and your dc is doing a subject that would allow this.

Good luck everyone

@LanadelSlay, that is very sage advice and I have read the recent thread about the dc this year who were 'redirected'. It has made me really think about whether ds (and me too actually) have the resilience for the whole process. St the moment there's a sense of 'why not give it a go'. It must feel awful being the only one without an offer amongst your friends.

I think the problem with Oxbridge, Imperial etc is the stages - that dc become ever more invested the further they get into the process and hopes are then raised. Worse then to be declined when your feedback states you did really well - it's difficult to make sense of that. I will definitely encourage ds to ask how they view gap years for the sciences as I can see the advantages of this on a lot of levels.

Give it a go is the spirit in which the vast majority enter this. By the end it's taken on far more importance as it's consumed so much time and energy. Good luck again, I hope if you're in the lucky camp you show a bit more grace to the unlucky ones and don't mock them for being upset, because you won't know how it feels.

Oxbridge entirely dominates the autumn term

It really doesn't have to - though perhaps it may depend on the subject to some extent. Iirc DD revised her year 12 work towards the end of the summer hols and got her PS pretty much done then, which she'd probably have done anyway. She was perhaps fortunate in being in the first cohort to take the Cambridge engineering aptitude test, so there was just one sample paper to work through (I guess now there are quite a few actual past papers, but again they could mostly be done in the summer vac. The test itself was apparently quite fun. The interviews ... she'd some idea what the general format was, and that the practice interview at school was really not anything like reality. Not sure anything could have prepared her for them tbh, one was almost farcically bad ... so she was fully expecting rejection, which she'd always known from the stats was the likeliest outcome anyway but 'nothing ventured, nothing gained'.
Anyway... it really did not dominate the whole autumn term.

Understood @LanadelSlay and I hope this thread will be kind and supportive.

It depends on what subject you're doing - for English, which was dd's, it meant a lot of extra reading, there was the PS, the tests, the interviews (three in her case over different days), plus the admin of choosing a college, selecting written work to submit etc. That was "her truth". Of course others will find they have a different experience.

I would imagine essay based courses are more time consuming in preparation. Choosing what work to submit and doing lots of extra reading on top of normal school work is time consuming.

However all that work and interview practice could be very beneficial for some in bringing success 2nd time round though.

Friends success, I think, probably makes a difference with the confidence of those who unfortunately did not make it . At DS's school very few who applied got in (circa 20% of a very small number- so quite average really). Amongst those that were rejected some, I believe, are thinking of reapplying because they are not down hearted at so many of their friends getting in . At DS's offer day he found that for some courses (eg Computer science) there were mainly second time round applicants (from those he spoke to). This has been fed back to some who were thinking of reapplying. I think all circumstances and children/applicants are different. The course I did at uni (decades ago !) had a lot of second time round applicants.

Friends' success.... sorry typos

Hi everyone. My DD (child 4) has been resolutely anti oxbridge as we live in Oxford, so that is all very boring (!) and she says Cambridge is “just the same but smaller”. None of mine have been the slightest bit interested in applying, for that reason. However she has now decided she wants to read Arabic and does not want to be in London and suddenly she has literally 7 unis to choose from, 2 of which are oxbridge (and 2 in Scotland).
So she has reluctantly agreed to go to the Cambridge open day and not reject it out of hand.
She knows she wants a gap year so she could do an application with grades in hand, but since there is no exam to do (unlike modern European languages) it will just involve the UCAS form and almost certainly an interview (I think they interview pretty much all Arabic applicants who have good gcse grades and predictions and a language A level). Accordingly I don’t think there is much risk in her being derailed or getting too invested.
She has studied Arabic this year at school (2 hrs a week in a club, no exams) and will have to do wider reading but (a) she would probably have to do that for a PS for a very competitive integrated masters at Exeter anyway, and (b) as she says, if she can’t get interested in reading around the subject she probably won’t enjoy studying it for 4 years.
So pencil me in as a provisional member of the group and let’s see what she thinks after the July open day.

@Delphigirl I think the approach your DD has is great. I applied to Cambridge due to lack of universities doing my course (I had to fill a space on UCAS!). It was all about the course and not about where I was studying.

Ah thanks @yoyo1234 . There is a lot to be said for very limited choices, it certainly makes decisions easier!! What was your subject?

Wary of saying as may be outing. Only 6 unis did it at the time 😅and you could then use all 6 UCAS places (but were warned against it). I did have the teacher in charge of helping those going for Oxbridge and other competitive courses say "you're the only person applying to Cambridge who dosen't want to go". On my course there were people who turned Cambridge down (other unis were more respected for the subject). I think though the focus on the course was important for wellbeing , I didn't take a rejection personally (it was exceptionally competitive) and it was more just "please may I get in somewhere.....anywhere......"

Certainly made decisions easy 😂

No probs, I respect that! Yes on paper I’m not sure Cambs is the best course for her, but you can never quite tell until you get in the departments and give the tyres a kicking…

History and MFL does offer the potential for some semi-extra bites at the cherry. A friend's child applied this year for History and French, then was asked after interview if she would consider MFL instead, then was offered an interview in a language she didn't study (she has two MFLs), and now has a place for french and an ab initio, for a language she had never thought about studying. Obviously, requires one to be willing to switch, but can be a handy extra set of options.

Following - I both work at Oxbridge and my DC is considering applying for 2024 entry.

I think the high level of support is both a pro and a con - students are well supported, but some students say that they find it slightly infantilising. Some students definitely feel less self sufficient than others at non-Oxbridge institutions.

On jobs, undergrads are not permitted to work apart from working for a college.

I've just checked for the date for the TSA which DS would need to do and it's on a date during half term when he is actually away with school. Does anyone know if they can do it at another time?
I got the date from this www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/applying-to-oxford/guide/admissions-tests

Thank you! That is really interesting.

I'm not sure @spacechimp79 but hopefully if you email the admissions team they might be able to help. I would imagine they have contingency dates for sick candidates but no idea how this would work unfortunately.

@spacechimp79 I think he might have to not do the trip - Oxford treat these like public exams, they couldn't guarantee the integrity of the paper if someone sat it a full week before or after the test date. I think in very urgent circumstances someone can start the paper late (eg if medical emergency etc) but otherwise you have to submit your reason for not sitting it and see where your application lands. I suspect an optional school trip would not be seen as a good enough reason - but no harm in asking.

Agree with @PacificState - our school moved half term trips to avoid a clash with admissions tests.