AIBU - gutted for them regarding early entry subject rejections (non-oxbridge)

[westerdays]

I teach a STEM subject at sixth form level. in the South West of the UK.
I'm also involved in the UCAS process for our school's applicants.

Our school extends support to would be medics/dentists/vets etc who don't get a uni place on those type of courses first time round.

Some pupils resit an A Level (or 2), some just need reassurance that many very able applicants do take more than one UCAS application to get a place or advise on their chances given their UCAT score/likelihood of increasing that score, or a realistic opinion on their chances.

I've noticed that the non ethnic lads at our school are having the toughest time securing places to study medicine/dentistry/vet sci, no matter how good their academic track record or how high their UCAT score, the interview performance seems to trounce all of that. I had one lad who, having applied for a third and final time for dentistry last year was rejected again post interview. He's going abroad to study dentistry and his plan is then to return and work his way through all the processes required of "non uk trained" dentists before they can fully practice dentistry in the uk. He's always been an extremely able all-rounder and I have no doubt that he'll pick up enough of the local language quickly enough to assist with his studies.
We're fortunate enough to have enough parents who are doctors/dentists/pharmacists/vets etc volunteering to do multiple practice interviews, but it's generally the girls/ethnically diverse boys who seem to have most chance of getting the offers after interviews these days even though our "mock interview panels" haven't found any major distinguishing factors between many of our school's applicants when it comes to feedback to aid interview performance in the real thing.

why?

You are crap for your use of the word ethnic

An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of peopleewho identifyy with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups.

So why do you refer to anyone not white as ethnic?

What you mean is boohoo wah wah. My white dc aren't getting the favourable bias I got when I was young and it's them ethnics fault. 😑
Must be horrible feeling discriminated against for the colour of your skin. Gee. Wonder what it's like.

But as next to everyone applying to Oxbridge will have the same stellar applications you aren't choosing a lesser candidate. You are choosing the candidate with equally good grades and offering who isn't the one with the lifelong advantage of being a wealthy white man.

From my mixed good state school the four kids who got into Oxford this year were all white boys. It has varied more in previous years but this year girls with same results and good extra curriculars didn’t get offers 🤷‍♀️

@tipsandtoes No, they don’t all have the same qualifications. We’re now being asked to take applicants from state schools with much poorer results and test scores (say 5s-7s at GCSE with a couple of 8s), purely in order to increase numbers of students from less advantaged backgrounds, while rejecting privately educated boys with 12 straight 9s and top of the range scores in our own tests.

Obviously it is right to take account of the discrepancy in educational opportunities and to adjust candidates’ profiles and expected grades accordingly. This has been the case for a long time. Some candidates with stellar grades don’t always perform well in interview or seem like they have the right kind of potential; whilst others who haven’t had much educational privilege can be obviously much more talented in interview than their grades suggest. We’re used to evaluating that and always have been. Many privately educated kids are proficient at turning in good grades but aren’t naturally especially bright, so our admissions process is designed to filter those out.

However, now we are being told to outright reject really good applicants who are not just a bit better qualified, but a lot better qualified, in order to meet admissions targets for access. That’s a recent difference; and what more are candidates expected to do if they already have perfect grades, and do well at interview and in tests, but still get turned down? They will probably be fine in life, and there are plenty of excellent universities out there, and many on here will think they don’t really care if a few rich kids don’t get in, but it probably isn’t that fair, to be honest.

I struggle to believe that you don't get enough state school applicants with straight 8s & 9s and Astars applying that you would be having to take those with 5s and 6s

It's as it you expect people to believe that top grades are rare in state schools 🥸

This is exactly my experience too. I have been doing Oxbridge admissions for more than 20 years. Throughout most of that time we have tried to admit the most talented students and done so taking into account their background. We are now admitting students because of their background. It is not simply a case of admitting candidates with lower scores but in whom we see potential. It is unequivocally the case that we admit candidates that we expect to perform more poorly (because our internal tracking data predicts this) than candidates we are rejecting. They then go on to perform more poorly and there is a growing attainment gap. There are a lot of us who are worried about this. It devalues the experience and qualifications, does all of our students a disservice and is unfair.

According to @cityofgirls there are so few applicants from state schools with top grades that they are being forced to accept students with 5s&6s at GCSE's and modest a-levels 🙄

Weird that as everyone I know who went or have dc that went to oxbridge from state schools had perfect grades.

It is not state vs private. It is about the measures that we track.

The rich, white kids will do just fine in life.

But this is actually illegal!

You can’t legally discriminate against people based on race or sex. So you can’t choose a lesser qualified BAME person over a white person. If they are both equally qualified, then and only then you can choose the BAME person on the basis of widening diversity.

This would be a prime case for a whistleblower.

Just to add, I think people are getting muddled between offering opportunities for under represented groups and outright discrimination. The former is legal and the latter isn’t. Is this a case of universities/employers “getting ahead of the law”?

It is possible to target under represented groups for special open days/work experience/internships/summer camps/mentoring/guaranteeing a 1st round interview, but it is not legally possible to then choose these candidates over better qualified candidates when it comes to offering places at university or offering jobs. That is illegal discrimination. Perhaps some institutions/outreach programmes have not understood the difference?

The OP didn’t say her students were rich.

In fact as she says she comes from SW, it is less likely that they are rich, as average incomes in SW are lower than the U.K. average.

All 9s is actually very rare: statistically it’s less than 0.5% of the national cohort (eg MIDYIS score of around 135+). And so is getting a lot of 9s plus 8s. It’s not remotely as common as you think.

The average applicant cohort for Oxbridge has about 3-4 of these students in every 20, so yes, it’s not common in either private or state to be honest. Many/most students we admit will have a mixture of 7s, 8s and 9s.

In any case, you’re missing the point. We do take state school applicants with top grades. But now we’re also being asked explicitly to reject the private school applicants with top grades in order to accept the state school applicants with less good grades as well.

@AnotherOxbridgeTutor thank you for posting too - this is exactly my experience. Colleagues in my college are really concerned about this but we get told it’s “the direction of travel”… yes of course we want to take a diverse intake and give great students from every sector a chance (I went to a comp myself); but we also want to take the best, and not be unfair to excellent applicants either. Please DM me when the messages start working again, I’d love to compare notes!

Just to add, I think people are getting muddled between offering opportunities for under represented groups and outright discrimination. The former is legal and the latter isn’t. Is this a case of universities/employers “getting ahead of the law”?

Yes, to put it baldly.

In 2023, the most recent year for which we have statistics:

White applicants had a higher offer rate at Oxford than BME students:

4,995 UK-domiciled BME students applied to Oxford, 846 (16.9%) received offers.
9,035 UK-domiciled White students applied to Oxford, 1,989 (22%) received offers.

Privately-educated applicants also had a higher offer rate at Oxford than those who were educated at state schools:

10,150 state school students applied to Oxford, 1,935 (19%) received offers.

3,797 independent school students applied to Oxford, 858 (22.6%) received offers.

Little wonder you needed to name change before posting the above.

Did I say I was at Oxford?

But no one ever claimed that this isn’t the case. You are missing the point.

Does it not occur to you that this is why we are being told to reject well qualified privately educated white male applicants? Of course academics and admissions tutors want to improve these figures. Do you agree that as a result we should be discriminating in favour of applicants who are less well qualified because of their background / wider social factors?

That’s a valid thing to argue, and many do. Is it fair to turn down excellent candidates only because of their background, though? Some also think yes, this is fine because it is a form of redressing wider social issues (not caused by us, may I add).

Is it also fair to be concerned that we have started discriminating between applicants not just for levelling the playing field, but actually making decisions based only on social factors rather than academic ones?

This thread is vile.

Some fantastic posters, some absolute cunts

cityofgirls · Today 00:48
Did I say I was at Oxford?

Oddly enough, White applicants to Cambridge also had a higher acceptance rate at Cambridge than any other ethnicity.

White applicants had a 22.4% acceptance rate, compared to an 12.9% acceptance rate for Black British (Caribbean), 13.9% for Black British (African), 10.4% Asian British (Bangladeshi), 11.9% Asian British (Pakistani), etc.

Applicants to Cambridge from independent (private) schools also had a higher acceptance rate than those from maintained (state) schools.

Are you going to answer any of my questions?

Maybe they have found that the best candidates are the ones that have not had a privileged upbringing.

At the local state school the only one this year at oxbridge was white, male, lncome FSM family. He felt he'd got in because of that not because of the achievement of getting the standard oxbridge A*AA grades

Okay. I am somewhat suspicious of the motivation behind this thread, but I want to add two points for the benefit of medicine rejects. These are anecdotal but may be useful.

1. Lots of medical schools don't seem to accept resits
2. My ds had 4 x A stars (in hand, not just predicted) and a stellar UCAT, and still only got one offer. Because, honestly, I don't think he was very committed to medicine. So fair enough.

However, he was offered top Irish schools, as they simply took the highest med test results, added his A levels, and had no other elements - no personal statement or interview.

Most Summer schools which are university based are only open to state educated sixth formers. There are commercial ones available often at a cost of thousands.