Cambridge. Things we don't know we don't know.

[Sorenlorrenson]

My son is set on studying maths at Cambridge. We are working class and don't know anyone who went to Cambridge.
I have recently found out that Magdalene and Caius are not pronounced how they are spelt. There must be loads of stuff like this, stuff we don't know because we are poor and common.
If you know something you think we don't, please share.

I think you have to emphasise to him that its an imperfect admissions process - to say the least. For instance, one if mine applied twice. First time, didn’t get in, second time she did. Same student, different outcomes. And she wasn’t ‘marginal’ academically, she got a first every year and didn’t feel she was struggling in relation to her cohort once there. In fact, she thought her school had been more pressure than uni. The reality is, there will be loads of students every year who could have been towards the top of their Cambridge cohorts but they just don’t get in, but it’s not about anything they do or didn’t do. I have another one applying probably and she knows all this, but it will still be hard on her if she doesn’t get in.

Re. kicking people off the course after the first year, I don't think this is true especially not in Maths. At the open day, they were boasting about how nobody drops out after the first year at Cambridge. I think they said it's because they select their entry so much.

It is good to have ambition and very good for all of us to try and fail at things as that tends to make us how we are. I didn't try for Oxbridge but did have best A level grades in my school in NE England and my younger sibling was first person from our school ever to go there. Not going has not held me back as a lawyer now in London by the way. None of my 5 children tried even from the private schools where they went and 4 of the 5 are now London lawyers (last 2 qualified this year). They have cousins who went there/are there now.

My main advice to the boy here is realise you can be really really good and just not get in for all kinds of often unfair reasons and that is life. You might think only people who are black got in this year or only girls or only posh people from Eton, but in fact loads of very good people from all groups don't get in and it does not matter at all. 3 of mine went to Bristol and one of their cousins to Durham.

Also realist is can be wise to see it as a 2 year process - try first year, don't get in, but get brilliant exam grades and then try the following year if you really want to feel you have given it your best shot.

I always advise teenagers to work backwards from their chosen career too rather than see university as some end in itself. My son's friend is very good at maths and is a quant in a hedge fund in London or something like that - I think that boy (British, Indian) did maths at Warwick. Not going to Cambridge has not held him back for his career and his is very good. Another of their friends does tech stuff in cyber security and was at Bristol. Again not Oxbridge but very good job.

Sometimes teenagers think life is linear. I was asked to write about my 40 year legal career recently and I wrote about my failures and there are many. It is how we dust ourselves down and carry on that matters. There are not prizes for all and life is very unfair and learning to deal with that and not be resentful and just find another way to your goal can be good.

I don't have any insight into dropout figures but from friends' experiences I believe it's much more common at Cambridge to encourage students who have struggled with Part 1 of a very difficult course to consider switching for the Part 2 of the tripos and this can help to avert drop-outs. DH was encouraged to switch from NatSci to Arch & Anth, which I think is quite a well-trodden path.

Thank you Ineffable for coming back again. About this: Very very few Cambridge candidates miss their offer on the basis of their A level results though - really miniscule numbers.

Is that because the applicants tend to make their grades (Cambridge has enough experience to typically back the right horses and pretty much all the kids they deal with are self selecting high achievers) or is it because even if a student missed out on predicted A levels Cambridge would try to be flexible over a lower result than they’d asked for (within reason).

I will try to take the advice to research all 30ish Colleges myself (had to Google that-;for some reason I imagined there were 100s of them) but even so that’s a huge investment of parental time and with everything I have on I probably couldn’t do all of them. or, I would have to make it my new hobby (I don’t have time for hobbies much less a secretive one, given I am bringing up disabled children). No child is born with a passionate self starting desire to go to Cambridge. That is coming from somewhere. I can see how that can be school but it’s harder to try to instil that as a parent when chances are your kid won’t get in statistically.

That way I would be building a spreadsheet and getting very emotionally invested in Project Canbrudge + researching all the other essential fall back university choices, which might not be helpful to my child, if I am at the same time going to be saying ‘it doesn’t define you if you don’t go’, to protect their mental health.

I agree that I don’t think it defines you if you don’t go. But it certainly define you if you do go. What I can’t say to my child having worked in the public sector all my career is that you are given absolute legs up constantly and a great deal of unearned respect professionally because you did go to Oxbridge. It’s like a members’ club that follows you decades after it’s professionally relevant and must do wonders for your confidence and earning power. So that’s an advantage I would want for my children because I will not be bequeathing them much else as a cushion. They will have to make their own way as best they can.

Again realising this is a further weeding out factor of parents or even teenagers trying to create their own sorting hat of where will suit their child and choice of subject and factoring in all the variables that posters have mentioned. That’s a complex algorithm (for me anyway) when you factor in everything that pops have mentioned. It’s probably not advertised on the searchable websites that certain colleges still have a Bullingdon club type student body (I know that’s Oxford) but you get my drift. I know I wouldn’t have had the resilience at that age to have arrived at a place and pulled my socks up and accepted I would not fit in with my peers if I had to be living with them for at least three years. I don’t think I would have had the resilience to apply at all, come to that- the thought of failing to get in and disappointing my parents would have been too much for me. I’d have pretended to find some other more achievable place or job much more attractive. I don’t want to create that pressure for my children. I have to say I blame this on the college application system.

If I was building the application system from scratch I’d say you could make an application centrally fo the university, then get grade offers back from three colleges from which the candidate chooses pre A levels so there is a favourite that you get in to on grades achieved. Mop up stage comes after A levels through cleaning like every other university open to anyone and based on actual A- level achievement not hunches about aptitude.

That seems fairer. I can’t believe that many kids get fluke stellar A level results that are unrepresentatively amazing of their future capabilities, whereas I do know of several kids who didn’t get the A levels they were more than capable of, for reasons no fault of their own.

So on balance a post A level system seems fairer and more likely to encourage applications from families who don’t have time and stamina and confidence to acquire the knowledge beforehand, and would have the advantage of leaving kids no more significantly burdened than they currently are through following the application process they are already doing to go to other universities.

All these posts and nobody has said "Pass the port to your left" yet?

Thanks for the links July that’s very helpful for future mathematicians.

This.

DD's friend got 4 A stars at A Level but was ill on the day of the STEP exam. She still took it but obviously didn't score highly enough so is now (happily) at Durham. You get the STEP result at the same time as A Level results.

For Oxford Maths you do the MAT before interview so the offer is based on A Levels alone and seems less brutal.

I think if is crucial to show your dcs the admission statistics. And a Maths applicant should understand these!

When ds went for interview, the Admissions person spoke to the assembled crew (this was Ox, Cambridge you don’t see the competition) and said, “There are 40 of you here; you’ve all done really well to get this far but we have 8 places, and those 8 places may not go to people applying to this college.”

Often applicants are the most brilliant at their school, and have been bigged up by the teachers and parents - but there are other brilliant kids, including international ones, so it is vital to hope for the best but know that the competition is brutal, particularly in Mathsy subjects.

I really don’t think you are judged on small talk. If so my dcs certainly wouldn’t have stood a chance. Ds was a thorough social disaster at that age: raging blushing, gawky, stuttering…

@LastMinuteSubstitution - The colleges have far more in common with each other, then differences. Any differences are just surface. They all do the same degrees and will meet people from all colleges and and have tutors in other colleges too.

Probably just choose a college that isn’t far from the subject department (nothing will be that far) and that has reasonable acceptance rates for your DS’ subject. Just Google ‘Cambridge admissions stats’ and have a look at the interactive graphs, but don’t overthink it.

Having gone through this twice, I can summarise -

Hughes Hall, St Edmunds and Wolfson are postgrad only, so rule them out.

Murray Edwards and Newnham are all female.

Largest colleges in terms of student numbers (I think) are Trinity, Christs, St Johns, Jesus (central) and Homerton (a little further out).

Smallest colleges are Peterhouse and Corpus Christi.

If it matters, Churchill, Robinson, Murray Edwards, Fitzwilliam all have 60s / 70s architecture. Christs College, although very pretty from the outside, has ‘the typewriter’ in its midst (an accommodation block).

For colleges consider:
. Old or new architecture (corridors or staircases, facilities eg ensuite or not)
. Location
. Size / intake for subject

Also, Trinity Hall is one of the smallest Colleges.

Strongly agree that it’s important for your son to consider other options so he isn’t devastated if it doesn’t work out. It sounds like he has a great chance - but as PP have said, the competition is fierce and for Maths you are up against a truly international field with brilliant mathematicians from China, Singapore, India etc. A lot of young people applying to Oxbridge are used to effortlessly being the best in their school and if they don’t get in it is their first experience of academic things not working out for them and this can be very hard if they have made it into the be-all. (For a lot of those who do get in, it can also be a shock to find they are suddenly quite average when they get there.)

There is a silly obsession with 2 universities in this country - and I say this as someone who went to Oxford as a student and have been a tutor there. They are great places to be, but they are not the only great places. And as others have said, the admissions process is not perfect- how can it be when candidates and tutors are human beings? For all the information tutors get to work with, they only have a small window of insight into each applicant. Everyone tries to do their best to be fair, but you are making hair-splitting decisions between very bright people for a handful of places.

What is certainly true is that no one gives two hoots about the candidates’ social skills, small talk, whether they know the jargon. The only basis for the decision is academic ability, suitability for the course, motivation, and potential.

I agree that a lot of the cultural elements of colleges seems to be something that you know or you don’t. When I applied it was a paper prospectus and I chose a college to apply to for a random reason. I had no idea about what sort of factors I might consider and was doing the whole thing without any input from school or parents. I ended up at a college that I didn’t really fit in at. BUT I just made friends outside my college. People do that. Your learning is across the university, many clubs and societies are. Some people make their college the centre of their experience and others don’t. I missed out on some elements of it all as a result no doubt, but I made some lovely friends and it pushed me to try new things. The most important thing to consider, and looking back this would have been really helpful for me, is the wealth of the college as I missed out on a lot of financial assistance I could have got in one of those. That’s an empirical thing you can find in one Google.

The pool system also means that many applicants end up with offers from a different college to one they applied for. In a sense, getting too attached to one college isn’t helpful. There is also a form of clearing for those students who qualify.

I would strongly though suggest that it’s your child who does the legwork on this. In the many years since my prospectus, there is now a lot of accessible information. The Student Room website is heavily used to find out about universities, and on there you CAN ask things about culture, accommodation, activities etc. I know there are parents who take on this sort of research but it’s far, far better for it to be the person who’ll actually be attending. They need to engage and think about this stuff.

Just to clear up one thing that seems to have landed wrongly, each college does not have different offer grades. It’s each student. There is a standard offer for Oxford and Cambridge as an indicative for applicants, and this can actually be lower than some others as there are other entrance tests for the admissions team to bear in mind, as well as performance at interview. But each candidate will get their own offer, and this won’t depend on the college but on their own circumstance. It won’t vary hugely but may mean that only an A rather than A star is required for example because performance in the additional tests has been so strong that they are relaxed about a grade being dropped. This isn’t something you can plan for, or look up. Of course it’s always possible to apply after A levels but not desirable for lots of young people who don’t want a year out.

Year outs before a maths degree are considered not very desirable these days as skills go too rusty.

Some colleges are more amenable to gap-years than others, and say so on their websites.

@LastMinuteSubstitution you’re really overthinking the college thing. All students go to the same lectures, it’s basically a place where students live and eat. A way of making the vast place more friendly and manageable. Yes, they do have slightly different vibes, but it’s hard to predict and it’s not like “all the evil slytherin kids go to THIS college and all the friendly bumbling kids go to THIS college”. Key things to differentiate on - big college or small college? Living in modern style buildings, very old, or somewhere inbetween? Proximity to department where they’ll spend most of their time? And then there’s a table of “applicants to college ratio” - I was applying for natural sciences and just looked for one somewhere in the middle - I didn’t want to apply for the most popular place as it’d be harder to get in. I also liked that it had a laundry service as I am very lazy. It doesn’t need hours of research and you’re pretty unlikely to get it “wrong” - they’re all good. And if they really like you but have no space you go into the pool.

I am sure there are some people who go on about their “oxbridge education” all the time and pull on it for progression, but many many people just leave and get jobs and get on with it.

Other points I have heard from the kids about colleges -

Kings College like to be a bit ‘different’ in that they don’t wear gowns to formals and rather than having a black-tie May Ball, they have the ‘Kings Affair.’ But the Kings Affair is just a ball with a fancy dress theme and actually ends up costing students more because they have to buy random costumes they will never wear again - eg. this year, the theme was something about anti- mythology which nobody really grasped but they just went as a weird pixie or something.

Also, at Kings, not all first years live on site - Kings own various accommodation above / around shops etc nearby. This is fine and great to be so central, but it can mean that not everyone knows (or even knows of) each other by the end of the first year. On the other hand, at colleges who house all first years in the same block - eg. Homerton (which, although a bit out of town, has guaranteed accommodation for all three years) - everyone tends to know everyone., even though it’s one of the largest colleges because they see people at breakfast or just around the college grounds. So it can be worth looking at which colleges house all undergrads on site.

Another important thing about Oxbridge is that EVERYONE panics during the first term and thinks they will have to drop out, they can't possibly cope. But then they adjust and they do manage. It's probably as well that their terms are quite short - but they pack a lot in.

Also it's often a shock for high achievers to suddenly go somewhere where they are pretty average! I think that gives some people a bit of existential crisis.

That's another shibboleth, actually, if you are still collecting them. NatSci is pronounced 'nat-skee'.

Everyone who applies will be of equal ability to him. It really is a bit of a lottery who gets in; all applicants will be highly able and have loads going for them. Do try and make it clear to him there are multiple applicants for every place and there is a high chance of not getting in. There are lots of amazing unis out there. I was totally in love with Cambridge like him but would also have been happy with my second choice of Birmingham.

Can you get him into some activities where he’s a small fish ina big pond, or at least hanging out with other maths heads? He may find that gives him a new and helpful perspective. A summer school would be ideal - and not at Cambridge. I think Warwick do a good one as their Maths degree is world leading, as is Imperial’s

Also it's often a shock for high achievers to suddenly go somewhere where they are pretty average! I think that gives some people a bit of existential crisis.

This.

Does he thrive with competition and collaboration with equally bright or even cleverer peers?

Or does he prefer being the top all the time?

if the former, then he will adjust, if the latter, it may be a struggle at first!

I am thinking about my DC with IQ of ‘moderately gifted’ range as assessed as such in SEND assessments confirming autism and ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia etc. DC has very low executive function as you would expect with those conditions. There is no way DC will be researching the Oxbridge admissions process independently in what this thread shows is the necessary way. School wouldn’t look at my child in that way, because they are focused on attendance and my child’s performance is not strong all round, DC is not obviously personable or confident. I don’t see school supporting this or having the know how in this DC’s context anyway.

In an environment like Oxbridge sounds, where there’s acceptance or even pride in being obsessed with your subject, I think this child would absolutely blossom. And would have more chance of finding a future job suited to their interests, with the stamp of Oxbridge on their cv.

So any researching would have to be down to me. Decision making by the child, not by me.
I get a picture of Oxbridge as a structured small-college haven for subject obsessives, which would be ideal. However DC definitely isn’t going to also be a community leader or publishing a book in their spare time. Spare time at secondary school is about decompressing at home from the overwhelm and stress of attending a busy school.

I don’t even know if DC will make it through school to A levels, given all the additional stress the school environment adds to trying to gain an education. I’ve always said to my DC that school might be hell- but university would offer academic choice, interest, focus, living surrounded by other people with a similar attitude to their subject. It offers DC a bit of hope to think in these terms and me too I guess. So, does it sound like I should try to do this research for Oxbridge, or better focus on other less stringent universities for the subject based on their SEN support?

Gently, @HassledSENmum, if your child does not have the executive function to understand the Oxbridge admissions process I fear that they are unlikely to cope with the expectations of managing their own studies once they arrive. It has to be something that they want for themself. I understand the impulse to help find the path for them but this is something you can’t do on their behalf.

You might find that a small, campus-based university suits them. York comes to mind.