Current Oxford/Cambridge students support/chat continued

[Panicmode1]

New thread.....!

@juicy0 DS (who is 6ft 4) emailed the accommodation office because he could see on the website that some rooms had v sloping ceilings and he would struggle!

(Meant to add - he didn't really mind about bed size but didn't want to be hitting his head every time he got up from his desk or sat up in bed....he was allocated a large double room with v high ceilings!)

DS's room in college came with duvet, pillows and mattress protector; all newer-looking and in better condition than anything we could have brought from home. The rooms are let out to non-student guests in vacations and are kept to a high standard.

Thank you @Panicmode1 @PermanentTemporary the ceilings would def be more of an issue. He tends to sleep diagonally from corner to corner with feet hanging over

The quality of mattress protector, pillow and mattress at DS’s Cambridge college was very good. His set was always cleaned to a very high standard too at the start of each term.

The quality wasn’t so good at DD’s Oxford college but it was at least clean (and the scouts were lovely according to DD).

@Ironoaks @ofteninaspin I wonder whether it is college specific and then whether or not your set is used for conferences etc?

DS's college provided bedding wasn't brilliant - it was indeed put in a big black bag and placed under the bed during term time - but the advantage of the slightly less good bedding was that he didn't have to clear his room at the end of every term because it wasn't used for external visitors.

@Panicmode1 thank you for all of the info!

No problem @HereWeGo2023 - I found this thread a lifesaver last year because DS was so casual about everything and is super independent so didn't want any help really, but I wanted to make sure he had everything he needed!

(On drop off day, he practically shooed us out of his room - he had plans to meet his friends from the drinks party he'd been to in London a couple of weeks before term started. So after a scoot around the college, and a very quick visit to 'Parents' welcome tea', DH and I pottered around Cambridge and had lunch on our own - not quite what I'd envisaged at all!)

DS will be going into second year at C and waiting to hear about his ‘child’. Accommodation last year - he got an email asking if he wanted high medium or low price band. He picked low and the room was fine - en suite but quite small. He could access a photo but he also emailed accommodation people as couldn’t see bookshelves. The lovely accommodation woman went to the room and took extra photos and sent them to him. His is an ‘open’ college and he did get tourists staring in his ground floor window so asked for and got a move to a different room after Xmas. Much bigger and nice but no en suite which he wasn’t fussed about. This year he was last in the ballot and got a really expensive room. He asked for a cheaper one as is on full maintenance and bursary and he has got one slightly cheaper but is still on the wait list for even cheaper!

His Puffer jacket is worn all the time. Gown was ordered in advance for home delivery to show grandparents who paid for it.

When DS went to Ryder and Amies last year on move in day to get his puffer jacket they were running v short on some undergraduate gowns for some colleges.

DD always had a fridge in her room. M&S & JL will be stocked up with mattress toppers. There is also an out of town Dunelm. As others have said, look for their specific college fresher's handbook, which may already be online.

@Panicmode1 your DS sounds very much like mine re independence (unlike his Oxford sister who was always available for a free lunch with the parents!).

DS was able to keep his third year rooms during the vacations although some of his friends had to switch rooms so I never figured out the logic.

@ofteninaspin I can answer that one. The "nicer" rooms at that C college are used for conferences. The 1st and 4th years live in a modern and recently refurbished block with en suite rooms. It is quite expensive, but very nice, so is used for conferences. Rooms in the main court are also used for conferences, but they have shared bathrooms - 2 toilets & 2 showers per 10 rooms. In DD's 3rd year she had a room in a Victorian house on the college site. It was all rather shabby, but it had a full sized kitchen with oven and freezer, so DD loved it, and it was very cheap - half the price of her 4th year room. Foreign students who were not returning home for vacations had to leave their nice rooms so they could be let out for conferences, and some of them moved into the shabby ones. If the shabby ones weren't being used, students could leave stuff there. Maybe your DS's room was not one of the pristine ones.

I bought DS1 a mattress topper for arrival in Oxford and found a brand new mattress and topper there (still sealed). That was the covid year though and i got the feeling that they'd deep cleaned and started again with lots of stuff.

His room was in a former (17th century) brothel...

@godessofthunder this is your second snarky comment on this thread, which is overwhelmingly supportive. I'm not sure why you are here if you haven't got anything positive to add? There is nothing wrong with parents of children off to uni wanting to make the transition as easy as possible, regardless of the institution they are going to. Perhaps hide the thread if it annoys you so much 🤷‍♀️

GodessOfThunder it's the absolute norm at any uni for a parent to drop their kids off. Usually parents also help do something called lugging boxes. Inevitably one sees what's in the allocated room after one's dropped the box on the floor, straightened up, recovered from multiple fire doors whacking one in the face etc. I'm not sure the intellect of the kid makes a difference to those practical aspects at the start of uni does it?

Well I am finding everything on the thread very useful.
DD is very excited and having us involved in finding everything out and buying stuff is fun.
We could leave her to do everything for herself but that’s not the way most supportive parent work.

I would also add that checking bed sizes is one of those things that parents consider but perhaps their newly adult offspring don't. As an example, DD1's college rooms in C always had single beds. When we looked round DD2's accommodation in a completely different university, all their beds are 4 feet wide (stupid random size!). Had we taken her single fitted sheets from home, they would not have fitted. Double ones would need a lot of tucking in. Because we knew in advance, we could locate some and take them with us. There were a lot of parents trawling round the large very conveniently located Asda close to the student accommodation trying and failing to find suitable sheets on fresher drop-off weekend. Both DDs have admitted that it wouldn't have registered with either of them to check up.

For those of you lucky enough to have all the shopping etc to do, there were some lists on a previous incarnation of this thread from last year.

It's possible to have a high level of cognitive ability and also have disabilities/SEN which affect one's ability to navigate everyday life. There are plenty of students at Oxford and Cambridge who need some additional support with life skills and organisation.

I followed DD's wishes and left her to it to a great extent when she was shopping for her first year. And now it seems as if every spare corner in the house is filled with mistaken purchases, year round. I hope they'll be of use to her when she finally has her own place.
I have very little patience with the helpless and impractical professor stereotype, but @Ironoaks is perfectly correct to point out that academic intelligence doesn't exclusively belong to the neurotypical.

Ds leaving home was an absolutely huge rite of passage for both of us. I had unpleasant voices in my head talking about not getting involved too much with the minutiae, and sometimes that helped me find a balance - there are definitely times to back off or just to say 'oh dear, tough decision, what do you think?' to your dc. But do you know what? I doubt there is a functioning adult out there who says 'what would really have made the difference to me as a grown up was my mum not finding out what kind of bed I was going to have at uni'. Knowing a bit more about what ds's room was like helped me with the difficult bits of him leaving and did no harm.

DD needs a new laptop as she’s been using an old one of mine since lockdown that is on its last legs. Is there any advice re windows vs apple? I think a Mac would be her preference (as she has an iPhone) unless there’s a reason windows would be better.

She’s doing biochemistry if that makes any difference.

Apple will have student offers.

@Malbecfan your explanation does make sense as DS had to move out of his lovely second floor rooms in second year. However in third year he could stay on in his equally lovely rooms on the same staircase but one floor higher. His neighbour had to move to a room in Cripps Court. DS was just lucky I guess.
He is now looking for a room in London and is missing his Cambridge accommodation!