School given y12 a list of RG unis, by subject, to apply to!

[HecticHettie]

My friend’s DD is at a highly selective school where they are all, pretty much, highly academic. When we met for coffee today, she mentioned that she and her DD have been emailed a booklet, produced by the school, that sets out which top Russell Group unis year 12 should apply to, according to subject.
(Ofc Cambridge and Oxford are included for every subject.) Year 12 have all been advised that they MUST apply to at least one - and preferably two - of the very top RG suggestions or explain to the school their reasoning!

She showed me the booklet and it had suggestions like this (sorry if I have misremembered or mixed up)

Maths (which is what her DD wants to study): CO plus Imperial, warwick
Law: CO, UCL, KCL etc
Languages: CO, UCL, Durham, York, Warwick

i am astonished that the school are being so prescriptive - my DD’s school weren’t when she applied but she was at a normal school, not a hot house. Do others have similar experience?

Do they also tell them which companies to apply to after graduation, where to live and who to marry ?

Sounds as if they've not realised one of the key aspects of an education is to teach a child independent thinking

you do realize this what their parents are paying for?

They also aren’t obligated to attend, just apply.

I don't think it's unhelpful to direct high-achieving students to the most highly regarded courses for their subjects.

Lots of families have no idea of this kind of info, especially parents who didn't go to Uni themselves or who or aren't from the UK. You might as well get the most bang for your big bucks, surely?

If you can reason why a place is not for you, then they can't make you apply.

They also aren’t obligated to attend, just apply.

So you’re fine with school pressurising them and DC using 1-2 of their UCAS choices up, purely to keep the school happy?! How different we are!

Agreed! And what about the non RG unis who lead the way in certain subjects (Bath - business, Loughborough- Sports Science for example). List was purely RG unis because the school have to declare as a performance measure I believe

This.

It's possible you may be misunderstanding / misrepresenting here OP. Fwiw, mine were in various very selective schools and nothing like this at any of them. But anyway, so what? RG unis are hardly secret info! All anyone has to do when researching any degree course is go in the Complete Uni Guide, type in the subject and ta da... there's the ranking of all the unis for that subject, RG or not. This 'list' from this particular school is neither here nor there. And if, as you say, it's a very selective school (by which I assume you mean 80% A to A star at A-level) - well, they're hardly going to be applying to ex-poly unis (unless it's a very specific course).

And everybody knows Bath, Loughborough and St Andrews are not RG and it means absolutely nothing. Loads apply to these unis from the most selective schools - depending on the course. Lots if students also apply to the US.

If the school publishes a metric about how many of their children go to RG universities then it makes complete sense that they pretty much demand all children at least apply.

School wants to attract parents to send their children and pay the fees. School publishes data that appeals to parents. School then needs to make sure data looks good.

You don't need to agree with it. Its what you sign up for when you send your child to a school that puts that sort of info on its website.

I suspect they produced it after parents requests. Isn't the usual recommendation to apply for 1-2 aspirational Unis anyway?
They have 3 other choices for others so I don't see the big deal.

I don't think she's misunderstanding anything at all. It all seems peefectly clear to me. It just makes me roll my eyes and once again wonder why some parents are so in love with the English private school system.

DSs school advised them which Oxbridge college to apply to for different subjects. They monitored the applications so that although my son and 3 friends all applied to one college, they were not in competition as they applied to study different subjects.

She hasn't said it's a private school - she said it's a 'very selective school.' Could be a grammar or an academy like Brampton Manor. Regardless, if it is a very selective school, you can expect most of them will have all A star / A predictions. Di why wouldn't they be applying to RG and others such as St As and Bath? Where else would you like them to be applying? I don't see the issue?

@ffafffaff - there's no real issue as such.

But wouldn't you expect these 17/18 years olds to be capable of independently researching their own lists of universities and courses, with the school reviewing/advising upon choices as they progress their applications.

This approach is spoon-feeding them - something they won't get once they get to university and beyond.

Any college or sixth form worth its salt should be providing some guidance. At least this approach is very explicit and offered uniformly to all students. At my DC's comp, advice was provided by individual form tutors - so very variable and often not very informed. In an ideal world, the advice would be about aspects for students to consider eg sourcing of ranking and other data and why this should be interpreted with care, possibly matching their own academics to the likely academic profile of the subject cohort, thinking about the physical setting in which they want to study and whether that matters to them, what they hope and plan to get out of their uni years and how a degree is simply a stepping stone.

In reality, the advice given is often a mix of that which is sensible and fact-based and that which is merely prejudiced assumption (or based on facts relevant to a previous era). It can therefore become very reductionist eg Oxbridge the pinnacle (without any clear idea of what can be different about the Oxbridge approach), Russell Group a must (often with a lack of understanding of who is in and who is not in the RG), that university 'name' is absolutely key (when recruitment, assessment and promotion practices have moved on). However, as others say, students can choose to ignore it and, even if blunt and plain wrong in parts, this kind of thing does at least encourage the raising of aspirations.

If a London selective school, whether state or private, many of the parents will not have been educated in the UK. These are probably questions they ask. Russell Group on its own does not tell you much.

And they are right. A very strong mathematician should be considering COWI. (Cambridge, Oxford, Warwick, Imperial.)

To be honest similar information might be found in the Complete Universities guide subject tables. (Especially if filtering via UCAS points on entry as this essentially lists over achievers, and there is normally a sharp drop off between points achieved by those admitted to the top 4 or so Universities and the rest.)

I doubt this is the only thing the school do. For example my son's selective school gave them a whole day off timetable when they were in year 11 and gave them a briefing and then sent them to the library to research courses and the A levels they would need in order to put in an effective application. This was then followed up with individual counselling, group briefings and parental briefings.

"But wouldn't you expect these 17/18 years olds to be capable of independently researching their own lists of universities and courses, with the school reviewing/advising upon choices as they progress their applications."

But who is to say they're not doing that? A school giving out a list of RG unis is hardly 'spoon feeding.' Nor is is giving anybody any special insight. Most people know what the RG unis are anyway (more or less) and if they don't, a quick Google will reveal this in 5 seconds. If you want to know what unis are highly rated for any course, you just go in Complete University Guide and that's it.

The OP didn't specify that this was a private school. There are selective, academic state schools too.

We had 5 children in private day school but the parents know exactly which are the best universities so I don#'t remember the school suggesting which ones to choose. It is pretty obviously to everyone - you try for Oxbridge if you have a chance and then move down to places like Durham

Parents scrutinise the list of leavers’ destinations so of course an academic school wants its pupils to go to the most sought after unis.

There are also parents who don’t seem to know that it is important to go to the best uni your DC can get into. The phrase ‘a degree is a degree’ regardless of the institution gets trotted out, but I’m afraid it is absolutely not true.

I went to a school like this. I actually think it lets young people down, the emphasis on the top grades, top universities, top careers etc makes it hard to understand the huge range of careers out there, and what might be important in thinking about the work you want to do - or it did for me, anyway.

I was telling my DC just yesterday, if I had said I wanted to be a physio I would have been told that with my grades I should be a doctor.

I went to York and loved it but I have to say , these days, it isn't even considered all that good for Languages...

Did this list seriously not include , for example, Bath for economics? Or Loughborough for engineering or sports studies? Or St Andrew's??

Read the original post @fafffaff - they're giving short lists of universities per subject.

That's spoon feeding as far as I'm concerned - the kids should be using the CUG and other sources of information to work out for themselves which place has what courses

But Xenia, how many parents had actually been through the UK education system. I assume a minority. Many will really only have heard of Oxbridge and a handful of London Universities. Part of the briefing will also be aimed at getting parents to think about Warwick for maths or economics, or Manchester for Physics.

By the way, schools don't have to declare anything. They choose to...

I challenged my DS's school for pressuring brighter students to choose at least two 'facilitating' subjects and even creating a 'pathway'. This was after the phrase even got discontinued. They were quite taken aback that any parent knew more as much as thyme did about universities and admissions.

Funnily enough, the next year, they dropped that bit.

That was a non selective state school - I think it was just a self set target.