Current Oxbridge students - continued again...!

[Panicmode1]

Think the other thread is full....!

Hello, another newbie to this thread. DD got her offer for Cambridge confirmed so she will be joining this year to study History and Russian. Looking forward to joining the conversation and learning as much as possible from you all :-)!

@3Muses my DD has been accepted at C. Her move in date is 4th Oct. which she was told ages ago. We haven't had any further info though so don't know what accomodation or anything.

@3Muses
Our letter states " You, as a new undergraduate, must be in residence by 6 p.m. on Sunday 5th October. You may arrive from Wednesday 1st October but no earlier "
We will be arriving on the 1st.

Congratulations and welcome to all of the newbies! I was another with a son who needed to be sat on to impart any information so reiterate getting them to read everything carefully!

Enjoy the journey - it goes fast so if you are lucky enough to be invited by your DC to a formal hall or evensong, or rowing etc, do take it! DS is just about to start his fourth year at C and I swear it feels as though he's only been there for a year

@3Muses We've been told to arrive by 2pm on the 4th October (St Johns).

Hi another newbie here my DS has had his place confirmed at cambridge to study NatSci (it still feels so strange to say that) I have no experience of Oxbridge but my DH is an Oxford grad so you can imagine the father/son conversations 🤣. My DS is 18 tomorrow so it feels like he is very young to be leaving home and he will be approx 5hrs away from home so feeling very emotional about the whole thing. All he has received so far is his congrats email so looking forward to getting more info.

My DD heard really late about start date from her Oxford college (one of the non-central ones). It was infuriating!

Hello, please may I join too? DD off to Cambridge, and it’s all new to us.

She had a brief welcome email on Thurs and a date for moving in, but that’s it so far.

Thank you. Ours has now been confirmed as the 28th of September and parents get to have tea with the Master which is exciting!

Joining here hoping to find out more than DD is telling me. She is going to Cambridge. She says she has received very little information yet, and has told us a moving in date but this seems to be plucked out of thin air. It could be disappointing all round as both DH and I work away from home and have made our work plans based on the info DD has shared so far! I will ask her in a bit more detail today.

Besides that, she’s very excited and I’m thrilled for her. She has worked incredibly hard and I can’t think anywhere else would suit her better.

I’m a little bit sad that she will not be continuing her sport at uni, which she has done very well at and I know Cambridge would have offered her support to continue (she has been a British team member for the last 3 years and competed in 2 World Championships.) Cambridge have a club though for a related sport and she intends to join this, albeit in a much less competitive way.

For me, I’m hoping to pick up tips and advice as to how best support her, although so far she seems to have done most of this process entirely without me.

@backinthebox have you tried googling your DD's college name and freshers information. Lots of colleges have at least some of the moving in information opens available on line.

Can anyone advise on the driving/parking situation in Oxford for drop off when moving in?
The college suggests using the park and ride - does anyone actually do this?

We moved one DC into halls at Imperial last Sept and the uni info said - limited parking, can't leave the car unattended etc - none of which applied at all!

Unload at the college. Allow your DC to get their bearings whilst you go back to the P&R. Leave your car and come back in. There will be hoards of 2nd & 3rd years to help carry everything to the rooms.

Yes, there’s nothing! She received an email back in March saying that subject to exam success moving in date was scheduled for 3rd Oct, so that’s what we’ve been working on. Now I’m just starting to get a bit worried it might not be that date. I have work on the 29/9-1/10 in India, DH will also be away with work 1-2, and I have a training weekend on the 4-5th. All of this was movable until a certain point but we’ve been asked to form up on dates so said we were both categorically unavailable on the 3rd. Fingers crossed, eh?

Not actually bothered at all about the hows and wheres of moving in, just the when.

My advice is ancient, but if she's going for the Victorians, please make sure she reads as much Dickens, Hardy, Eliot, Brontes, Stevenson, Collins, Trollope etc as she can before the end of summer. I remember our tutor saying 'Dickens this week, Hardy next' and some people going white with alarm as they hadn't done the reading in the summer. It's not enough to have read a couple from each of the more prolific ones.

Can I recommend that she stays where she is and switches to an online delivery service like Pharmazon. She can change her term time address through their email system without losing her current arrangement with your home GP.

Not D1 who was at Oxford, but my D2 who is elsewhere was advised to stick with her home GP because they told her she would probably have to start again on a waiting list for the local clinic. She can order her px online from the clinic to be collected at a local pharmacy and also email the home GP if necessary.

My D1's college had a college nurse who was in attendance I think every day, you could make an appointment to see her or just drop in.

It is a pain for students generally that they can't be signed up to two GP practices to cover them when at home and away at university.

My DD2 stuck to her home GP but then had to switch when she needed a referral once in Oxford. The colleges do all strongly suggest/require getting an Oxford GP. Presumably repeat prescriptions can just keep repeating after the switch? Maybe that’s naive…

Agree with reading the set text list before going up. I spent the summer lying in the garden reading mine with dad pottering in the garden and the cricket on the radio.

I was very glad I had when we were dumped face first into week one!

Disclaimer, advice from the 90s.

It's not so much the GP (you can switch if necessary, D1 had to do it, a pain but can be done) as the clinic you have been referred to in in your local NHS area (with or without shared care with the GP practice). D2 had to wait 4 years to be seen at the clinic. They said if she transferred to another GP out of the area (at university) she would have to go through the referral and waiting list process all over again.

This. The park and rides are excellent value and very convenient, but not for transporting a carload of stuff. At DD's college you get a half hour permit from the porters to cover you to unload (this is barely enough, depending on how far the room is from the entrance and how many stairs are involved) but then you do have to go elsewhere. City centre car parks are extortionate, the parking wardens are very good at their jobs, and the city is absolute mayhem on Freshers moving in weekend, so it's best all round to go straight to park and ride while your DC settles in. It's much less frenetic in later moving days as people are more spread out. But as advanced warning, the college may have a deadline for moving out - ours is 10am, which means travelling and staying over the night before. Or, of course, moving out earlier if teaching for the term happens to have finished, but if your DC are anything like mine, they'll want to eke out every last drop of uni life they can.

My advice for Oxford would be that the porters are extreme relaxed. Maybe try to stick to an allocated arrival or permit time in a vague way, but definitely don’t let it oppress you.

Also, make friends with the porters. They are lovely. When my parents blew a tyre on the way to graduation so didn't arrive in the for the picnic we'd planned, Brian mopped me up in the plodge, bought me a twix and stayed with me until they got there. He'd spent 3 years letting me and my friends in at silly o'clock, sent me to the hospital when I walked in soggily saying I'd fallen off a punt into the cam to check for limes disease, he was a surrogate dad.

@JamNittyGritty can help with Classics queries too. My DC is going into 4th year.