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!

Some useful insights thanks @LanadelSlay and others.

Ds throwing his hat in the ring just about sums it up really - why not give it a go of you like the course and the set up and think you'd cope. We really liked Bath too so I do t think ds would be too disappointed if he didn't get an Oxbridge offer. However I can see what pp mean when they say you get more invested as the process moves on. I think it's almost kinder to get rejected pre interview than further down the line.

I also seem to recall you saying that at least some of your eight (?) children didn't bother putting a second choice after Oxford, deciding if they were rejected they'd just give it another go. That seems hubristic in the extreme

Extremely rude given that you are 100% incorrect:

DD1 five choices selected for Law
DD2 five choices selected for History
DD3 five choices selected for Law
DS1 four choices selected for Medicine
DS2 five choices selected for History
DS3 five choices selected for History
DS4 five choices selected for Biology
DD4 five choices selected for Classics ab initio

I don't know why people on MN can't ascertain their facts before being offensive.

The only possible accusation of hubris could be levelled at DS1 who didn't use the fifth choice as he's been clear he wanted to be a doctor since he was in primary school, so felt there was no point putting in a non Medicine option and would have reapplied for Medicine had he got no offers.

None of my DC are in the least arrogant. None went for an 'insurance' option for any of their choices but they'd agree with you that anyone only putting Oxford down on the UCAS form was a bit of a dick.

All you had to do was ask me first if my DC only used one choice but no - straight into being rude with absolutely not a shred of justification.

The landscape has definitely changed for economics in recent years. Well qualified applicants cannot expect to get multiple offers for the most competitive courses

No but those with straight A*/ 9s (which was the premise) can be pretty confident of getting one offer beyond Oxford/ Cambridge (obviously aware that Oxford doesn't offer pure Econ before someone picks me up on that).

From what I can figure, if you apply to Oxford for an AAA course you might need an extra insurance choice - AAA would be a good insurance for two of DD's potential choices which have higher standard offers. But if she applies to Oxford it would be good to have something lower than that

That's been the difficulty for years singingstones, given Oxford's policy of lots of pre offer screening/ relatively low offers. But the issue is that a student who narrowly misses an Oxford offer could then end up somewhere where they really don't feel challenged/ happy/ whatever, simply by playing the 'safe' card.

My DC mostly took the view that they only needed one offer so might as well go for five high tariff unis. DS3 was a bit more cautious (his grades were slightly lower than his older siblings') and asked Bristol and Durham (his second and third choices) what their policy was if he slightly missed their offer (both gave him offers at A*AA, higher than Oxford). Bristol said they would still consider him if he narrowly missed his grades; Durham said their policy was not to consider any applicant who had merely used them as insurance. This was specific to the History departments though but it's worth getting a feel for what would happen to an applicant in that situation. DS3 obviously insured with Bristol on that basis and on results day rather weirdly got confirmations from both Oxford and Bristol....

Apologies, it wasn't you, it was someone else.

We can all agree it would be a d* move to not put down five choices

@lightsabre good luck to your ds! :)

But the issue is that a student who narrowly misses an Oxford offer could then end up somewhere where they really don't feel challenged/ happy/ whatever, simply by playing the 'safe' card.

I suppose the trick is to find somewhere 'safe' that is also appealing. I don't think there's much point in applying if you don't want to go there. I guess if a DC misses out with AAB then an AAB university would be an appropriate place for them to study. Probably no need to go lower than that for someone with an Oxford offer, I bet not many miss AAA by more than a grade.

The number of top students getting rejections (certainly for Economics, Maths, Computer Science and Medicine has gone up). The Oxford stats for Maths offers over the last few years does show that it's become even harder to get an offer than say 5 years ago. Part of the reason is probably that we have the birth peak of the mid/late 2000s starting to hit 18, so there are more 18 year olds than 5 years ago. The current cohort going into year 13s at least have actual GCSE results to back them up. If you look through the threads over the last couple of years it isn't unusual for high ability people applying for competitive subjects to get rejected from Universities such as Edinburgh, St Andrews, LSE, Imperial, Durham,Warwick as well as Oxbridge with top A level predictions (sometimes getting Oxbridge offers but rejections from elsewhere). Maybe some of the candidates are getting a full sheet of offers and the others 1 or 2 if they are lucky. The use of the extra subject specific exams is probably contributing a lot to this. I think @goodbyestranger you are probably using information from a few years ago. I do think it has changed from 7 years ago when my eldest applied.

we Are at the point this year where you need 8 or more 9s at gcse to even get on the pile to be considered for Bristol/Leeds economics- even with 3 A** predicted at a level.

Seems unlikely it's quite that extreme.

Well... maybe these ambitious would-be economists should be able to figure out supply and demand etc.

mushroom3 I still have two DC at uni, I'm pretty current.

I do know when my DS started primary all the local primaries were full and several had bulge classes and this wasn't the case with my older DC and was the picture nationally. It will mean in general it's likely to be even more competitive than a few years ago to gain a place at the most highly regarded universities. (unless the new student finance package puts many 18 year olds off from applying!)

There seems to be a woe is me vibe on these threads where the parents of each cohort seem to think it's tougher and tougher to get offers. The mood music has shifted perceptibly in terms of widening participation which has a knock on effect on offers for some applicants from the independent sector but that's all. The broad picture is very much the same as it has been for fifteen years. Perhaps the vibe on MN is slightly skewed because of the over representation of independently educated DC.

Well... maybe these ambitious would-be economists should be able to figure out supply and demand etc

In terms of birth rate, it's possibly more instructive to look at the official statistics for the period 1990 to 2005 than to make a generalisation based on local primaries. If you look at the actual numbers involved and then work out how small a proportion will be applying to the specific unis mentioned, it's at least arguable that the effect in terms of increased competition is minimal.

Well, fairly minimal.

Hi
My DS considered putting down only Oxford in his UCAS application. He was going to take a gap year, and then in the last moment he decided to apply to Oxford straight anyway to have two goes at it. In the end he included five choices but he had not visited the other unis and did not think about them too much, he would have reapplied post-A levels and then considered them carefully. I don't see why his putting down only Oxford would have been a d*k move in that case.

I think the issue at play is almost certainly that the offers for most of the excellent courses are very high which does rather negate the concept of an insurance offer without your PS sounding irrelevant if you make 4 applications for say economics and the one for history…?

At a graduation last week (Russell group) the head of the law school told me a few interesting points which may or may not be of help; 1. that they have no space for anyone (IB or A levels) who misses their grades this year. 2. That by removing their interview requirement before making an offer their applications from lower socio economic backgrounds rose sharply.

DD advised informally not to add Nottingham to her UCAS as apparently the fact that the form has been submitted early indicates an Oxbridge application and will likely result in a rejection. No idea if this is the case tho?

Hm, not sure.
Simplifying....
If there is an excess of ambitious applicants with top grades all making 5 choices the same half dozen or so top unis, then there will be a distribution in number of offers from 5 down to 0. If the number of applicants increases at all simply due to birth rate (or any other factor) then unless the number of available places is increased proportionately, this has to change the distribution to have more at the lower end of the spread.

DD advised informally not to add Nottingham to her UCAS as apparently the fact that the form has been submitted early indicates an Oxbridge application and will likely result in a rejection. No idea if this is the case tho?

I can't believe this is true. Why would they reject a good applicant because they might or might not have applied to Oxbridge? Almost all their applicants have applied to four other places 🤷‍♀️

DD advised informally not to add Nottingham to her UCAS as apparently the fact that the form has been submitted early indicates an Oxbridge application and will likely result in a rejection. No idea if this is the case tho?

Certainly didn't apply to my DD (Nottingham was her 5th choice, lowest requirements for her subject, only one to offer discount for EPQ). I've only ever heard of this, anecdotally, about Durham , but that doesn't seem at all short of students who'd hoped for oxbridge so I'm not convinced.

I don’t see any woe is me vibe on this thread, I see some parents giving their experiences and those of others to help applicants manage expectations – up to parents of people about to dive in if they want to listen to these experiences or disregard them.

The child in question was told by both those universities directly that’s why they didn’t get an offer (despite getting a Cambridge interview - sadly screwed that up)….so it’s 100% likely. Ended up with 1/5 offers (and this is from state school) - and their 5th choice was one they really didn’t want to go to.

I think the 2021/22 and 2022/23 cohorts had particular challenges through the application process because they had teacher assessed GCSEs, and the universities were reluctant to place too much weight on these, so offers may well have been a bit more random depending on individual university approaches.

As our 2023/24 cohort actually did write GCSEs, my guess is those with lots of 9s and predicted 3 or more A stars will fare rather better.

The proportion of Oxford candidates receiving offers for Maths has been sliding, that is a fact on their website

Maybe the application rates have become more polarised towards certain universities and subjects.