Oxbridge 2025

[SnowFairy2000]

Let's start the journey here !!!

I have heard this before @boobashka but I don't get the logic. Surely his grades reveal whether he could have been an Oxbridge candidate, and no university would penalise you for excellent grades and choosing not to apply for Oxbridge (in fact, you may be more likely to consider the other uni your first choice?)

Well done to your DS for his early Edinburgh offer. I think he got it on his own merit! My DD is hoping for an offer from Glasgow, but hasn't heard yet.

It's reassuring to see quite a few others' dc applying to Bristol. This was a completely out of the blue choice for ds and not one he'd ever mentioned before he came home one day and told me he'd applied having previously been mentioning Manchester and Sheffield for his non-Oxbridge/Durham choices. I seem to see a lot of negative comments about Bristol floating around online so if anyone has any positive experiences in case it does end up being where he goes that would be great!

I'd like to hear the negative comments please! My daughter liked it but did not love it. She found the course unimaginative. She has an offer though. . Manchester had student ambassadors and the one she talked to said she'd chosen the course as she thought it was easy to get into, which put my daughter off (she's applied though). Leeds and York super engaging lecturers at open day. Edinburgh fab. Durham was disconcertingly non diverse.__

@coffeerevelsrule my DD has spent a very v happy 4.5 years at Bristol and loves the place. As do all her friends. It's a fantastic city, the Uni have been great (especially during Covid) and she's had a wonderful time. So good in fact she's job hunting there now.

My DC had a Cambridge interview invite yesterday for a humanities subject…nervewracking times ahead!

Congratulations @flowerdress

On Bristol - every uni attracts negative comments. It’s meant to be a fantastic uni. My dn went there and adored it, as does another friend’s dc in second year. My dc has their only offer to date from Bristol. For some reason they didn’t love it when they went to the open day and it’s their final choice but still thrilled to have it

Thanks for positive feedback on Bristol.
congratulations on the interview @flowerdress !

Thank you! And if it’s of any reassurance, it is very much college/subject dependent - my dc has friends who I am 100 percent sure will get interviewed (think highest possible predictions and amazing test scores) who haven’t yet been called, so…

Congratulations Flowerdress, best of luck!

It's nice to see some positives about Bristol, thank you.

Well done and good luck @flowerdress !

Fingers crossed for your DC, @flowerdress!

Well done @flowerdress jnr !!

I’m sorry if this comes across as combative, but this is out of date advice. Oxford has made a lot of changes in the last 25 years to make sure that college choice doesn’t affect chances of admissions. And it just isn’t true nowadays that the “big” colleges are anti state school.

Cambridge is a bit different as there is no common framework for admissions so each college does its own thing. I would expect college choice to matter more therefore. But my own experience of Cambridge is limited to friends who went there 20 years ago so is not reliable.

YP submitted their written pieces today. Now the wait begins…

Well done to @flowerdress DC!

Thanks you for the congrats! I am sure we are the first of many on this thread 🤞🏻

Best of luck to everyone and wishing you calm in this lull.

https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/apply/statistics

On this link I can see that 35% of applicants overall (or maybe just those interviewed?) get offered a place for the course my DS has applied to (History).

However one of the least popular colleges (ME) its 100% but for the college he has applied to its 16%.....can this be correct?

On this link I can see that 35% of applicants overall (or maybe just those interviewed?) get offered a place for the course my DS has applied to (History). Yes, last year they had around 600 applicants and made a little over 200 offers.

However one of the least popular colleges (ME) its 100% but for the college he has applied to its 16%.....can this be correct? Acceptance rates will vary across colleges. Some colleges are more popular than others. For example, G&C last year received I think 39 direct applications and made 11 offers. Presumably they have eg 9 places and expect a couple of students to not meet their offer conditions. But it's not as simple as them picking the top 11 of those 39 to make offers to. Some people they offered to may have been pooled from other colleges. They may also have had candidates who they thought were excellent but didn't have room for who they pooled and who were picked up by someone else. If you click "identify winter pool offers" you can see that they made 2 offers this way. It also appears that 2 students received offers via the pool from other colleges.

Hi there, looks to me that they only took one person who they 'had' (direct or open allocated) but then took most from the winter pool. I think that happens with colleges that are seen as less competitive to even it out. For example, Trinity will never need to take from the pool for maths but somewhere like Girton or Newnham will.

Thanks - I hadnt looked at other layers eg winter pool etc so will assume it all comes out inthe wash

Some colleges (the less applied for ones) end up taking none or close to none of their own applicants, instead taking all/most from the pool. It makes looking at crude offer rates in terms of total offers/total applicants quite misleading. Also direct offer rates (offers to people who applied to them) - some “unpopular” colleges appear to have very low offer rates which makes them look madly competitive, but actually they just have a low quality applicant pool. One can drown in the stats……

Thats helpful thankyou @Revengeofthepangolins @sunnycoldday and @Okayornot

One can drown in the stats……

This is very true. Having spent hours ruminating over them last year I could only conclude that there is no point in trying to game the system. They'll find who they want regardless of the college you apply to. I have seen some people say you are better off applying to smaller colleges to have a chance of standing out, but the flip side is I have also seen it said that being pooled by eg Trinity for maths might give you a better chance of being picked up because they are so strong for maths.

I'm just glad O doesn't publish equivalent stats for the course this year's applicant is going for. Will save me quite a lot of time!

Oxford does publish those stats.

Not in the same detail, at not at all for smaller courses