naive parent - advice please

[WhyCantPeopleBeNice]

My daughter is in year 12 and we started looking at universities the past weekend. The entry requirements required an A*, A, A for law
I was a little surprised she was pushing so hard when she mentioned she'd been predicted an A, A, A combine that with the potential of contextual offers (due to where we live, disrupted learning and parents having not been to uni) it seems suddenly as though any university is a possibility.

Initially, I was under the impression we look round, see which she likes and she applies for her preferred ones.
The open days however made me realise this isn't just about the university she likes, but also the potential employers engaging with the universities, how the courses are taught and also the other students position...e.g. at Durham, we didn't meet any students who worked whereas Leeds, lots of the students worked.

Financially we can just about afford her accommodation but nothing more so as much as I don't want to restrict her ambitions, I feel if shes with students who also balance work and learning they'll be able to support each other better.

However, shes mentioned both Cambridge and Oxford this weekend and now im thrown, I simply don't know how to support her, what we should be doing or looking at. Especially as it seems there is so much coaching and preparation that goes into Cambridge or Oxford applications years prior to where we are now.

Can anyone offer some wisdom of how I can best help her?

Oxford and Cambridge do seem very cheap (potentially) for living costs (though the Balls etc seem very expensive!). On visiting jobs during term time (unless potentially arranged within the college) seemed a big no go ....BUT they placed a big emphasis on bursaries and funding availability from the college/Uni. They made it clear that if you get in they do not want you to turn it down due to finances.

Hi OP

have you checked how much your DD might receive through student finance? It’s worth doing to go check if she might receive bursaries at some universities.

If the OP earns too much so her DD would only get the minimum loan, would she qualify for any bursaries???

PS I'd just like to add that DD is at Cambridge, has not been to a ball, but has been paid to clear up afterwards!

To be honest @Kilopascal he wouldn’t care where he is in the cohort. He’s just not made that way in all honesty.

Fair enough! I mentioned it as my Oxbridge DC found it a somewhat hard place to be in. As others have said, most students there have very high grades, and DC was towards the lower end and felt it.

It’s helpful for you to have mentioned it @Kilopascal. I have another dc who would have struggled with this but I genuinely don’t believe it would be a problem for this one!

My advice would be - for law, aim as high a university as possible. She can always have a couple of backups, but have a couple of aspirational universities in there.

Oxford - you definitely can't work in term time, but the holidays are long (although the summer term is actually longer than most other universities at the moment).

Oxford accommodation works out fairly cheap. Students are a real mix of backgrounds.

DS tells me that the lawyers at Oxford work ridiculously long hours. In my experience, the first year of a law degree anywhere is a baptism of fire, but the Oxford lot do seem quite intense.

She's got absolutely nothing to lose by having a go.

If you are willing to pay for accommodation your DC will still have £4.5 -£5k available to live on from the minimum maintenance loan. It's only an issue when parents refuse to top up the minimum loan and their DC discover that rent often exceeds the minimum maintenance loan.

My DD has just completed her finals at Oxford. She received minimal support from her school and did all the research herself. She was lucky enough to win a place on UNIQ, their widening participation scheme in Y12 which helped set her heart on it. Only 11% of applicants for her degree got a place, but someone gets them!

The Oxford system is brutal. Each week she has written essays which were ripped to shreds in her weekly tutorials. There is no room to hide. She has spent most holidays catching up on what she learnt in the previous term, ready for exams in the first week back after her holidays. She did work last summer, but it would have been out of the question at Christmas or Easter. Her entire degree was examined with 8 exams across 15 days with no coursework or % awarded in her second year.

@PacificState
Thanks that is helpful. My son is also looking at engineering - so it all seems to be As and/or A stars wanted !

Oxford makes standard offers for each degree, whereas Cambridge will change their offer depending on the applicant. AAA is the lowest offer Oxford makes & that is for humanities. The offers are clearly stated for each subject on their websites. Most offer holders will have been predicted grades higher than their offer (eg 2 x A* 1x A).

They also have to sit subject specific admission tests for most subjects at Oxford. For DD's degree course only 1/3 of those who applied were interviewed and then 1/3 of them received an offer.

It's easy to find out the admission stats for Oxbridge as they are very transparent in breaking down the detail in many different directions.

Good luck to him @HessianBlanket Engineering offers are a bit terrifying. For context, DS2 has an Oxford offer but was rejected by Bristol and Bath! So for engineering I think it is worth including something less ambitious - not necessarily in terms of the published minimum offer grades, but just sheer popularity. In retrospect DS2 did go exclusively for very popular unis (Oxford, Manchester, Warwick, Bristol and Bath). There was no 'banker' in there.

Oxbridge is just about the cheapest due to short terms but is the hardest to get a place.

Bear in mind half of lawyers do a different first degree (although then even for potential solicitors doing the new SQE post grad exams you usually need to do a law conversion course before your SQE courses). It may be easier to get into Oxbridge doing a less popular subject than law so spend huge amounts of time considering all these pros and cons - it is all there on google to be looked up.

Finally if she does want to be a solicitor she needs to be aware that first want to you know your marks in every moduel in year including year 1 of university and that she needs to put in applicatinos for paid vacation schemes in university holidays on the dates on the law firm websites and look at all those well in advance (you don't wait until you graduate - it is a process during your law degree).

My son is at C he got a 5 in Maths GCSE 9 in Eng Lang and then 6's and 7's. His school told him he wasn't an Oxbridge profile, he applied and got in. The colleges are very generous to those from low incomes - his partner is in this position and will have saved about 10,000 by the end of the course due to the generous bursaries. It is not uncommon for him to receive 1000 because someone has died and left money to the college. That said you can't get a job during term time and there are expectations around balls etc

@WhyCantPeopleBeNice re finances, living off their maintenance loan should be plenty, it would be around £150 a week term time only or £87 a week if eked out over 52 weeks based on this year's minimum maintenance loan amount. I don't know about course materials @Xenia would possibly be able to advise more on that front. Sorry Xenia I can't remember if any of your children did straight law degrees or conversion but you are always very helpful in these matters. Ds easily lives on £100 per week for food, laundry, socialising, travel home but his course has no outlay for materials unlike say English would have. His food bill is around £38 per week.

Durham accommodation is a standard fee no matter which college you are in for catered or self catering but slight increase/decrease for shared room, shared bathroom, en-suite and 3/4 bed. Leeds has a variety of different levels of accommodation and costs vary wildly.

Lots of videos on Youtube about the LNAT that may help too. Over summer your DD needs to work towards showing her love of her subject so that she can put things on her personal statement. Her sixth form may be able to give her some good advice but also Google law personal statements, lots will come up and you can both look at what other applicants have written. She will be considered early entry if she applies to Oxbridge and she can only apply to one or the other, so Oxford or Cambridge. Deadline for early entry (medicine, dentistry etc) is 15th October whereas the usual deadline is mid Jan. Any more questions post back and ask. We knew Ds was academically capable but were shocked when he was put on a Cambridge outreach program. It wasn't even on his radar or ours.

A big thank you to everyone who has taken the time to respond and offer advice.
The college are going to Oxford so she's managed to get herself booked onto that, the transformation and change in her in just 2 weeks since starting to visit universities is phenomenal - shes even asked the spare room is set up as her personal study space so she can keep everything all in one place, provided us with a ridiculously long list of books to work through this summer and shes really engaging with the college councillors and support team.

Hearing here how so many have made it really does spur me on to encourage her, because as we've said, we don't care if she gets in, we only care that she tries

She sounds terribly well involved in it all and keen which is just the right attitude.