Is it worth switching from independent to state for A level if applying for a highly competitive subject?

[rougheredges]

DS is in yr 10 in an independent school. He’s really happy there- we’re pleased with the academics and he’s got a lovely group of friends. He’s currently predicted grade 8/9 in 9 of his GCSEs (and a 7 in DT which he’s doing because he loves if!) He’s managing this pretty effortlessly.

Currently he’s thinking he’d like to study Economics at one of the tougher universities to get an offer from. He knows he’ll need lots of extra/ super curriculars as well, but his friend’s dad told him today that he might find it harder applying from an independent school. Apparently there’s less wiggle room and the bar is higher.

I’ve looked online and there’s a lot of conflicting information. Most of what’s out there seems to refer to contextual offers which isn’t relevant. I’ve read that it does matter/ it doesn’t matter/ they take where you did GCSEs into account so it’s too late/ they prioritise state schools/ it’s all about grades and PS.

I fear the answer may lie somewhere in the middle of all that but is there anyone who could give more guidance? His current school are keen to keep him (he’s currently an academic scholar with a princely 5% bursary!) so I’m not convinced they’d give unbiased advice.

(Local state school is great. He’d have gone there but it’s C of E and we didn’t qualify being disorganised atheists who figured it out too late. They remove the church attendance requirement at A level.)

Does anyone have any info?

The ridiculous logic goes like this:
For many years, Oxbridge has been impressed by the academic performance of top selective schools, which is precisely why they have admitted large numbers of students from these institutions. Therefore, this year they have to penalize students from these schools by comparing their results with their peers, in order to raise an even higher standard.

Blind recruitment means employers look at degree class only (eg first or 2:1) and don’t consider the university you went to at all.

So top employers say we don’t care where you went to uni only that you got a first/2:1 (so arguably top of your specific cohort) and our recruitment process is best as we know what we want and put everyone through x y z tests and an interview.

@Araminta1003 thank you for answering my question.
Why is this an issue for Oxford?

What brilliant recruitment criteria: favouring a top maths student from U of Greenwich (ranked 50+) over a mid-ranking maths student from Cambridge (ranked 1st).

I wonder how it can be verified that your parents didn't go to university. It is hardly like you get given a non attendance certificate! I suspect that a lot of these initiatives are gameable and introduce other levels of arbitary unfairness.

Would be better to fund state education better, make sure everyone had well qualified science teachers etc (but that would be expensive and difficult)

It's not hard, There have been educational records for many, many years.

Yes this is patently very silly. If you are one of 1000s sitting for a super selective grammar your cohort will achieve very highly at GCSEs. Not because your school is doing anything amazing (though it may be a nice environment specialised for clever young people) but because it has selected the most able pupils.

In fact my DD (ex grammar) made an Oxford admissions tutor very cross at the open day by asking him if this meant a pupil at one of the less selective private schools would have their gcse grades contextualised to be higher than hers even though they would have benefited from a lot more money being spent on their education. He refused to reply (so I guess the answer was yes).

So do you think Universities are actually performing checks that people's parents don't have degrees through some kind of international database of qualifications? Perhaps asking for proof of your mother's maiden name and both parents' dates of birth (there must be a lot of people with the same name)?

I would be surprised if they were checking this at all.

“What brilliant recruitment criteria: favouring a top maths student from U of Greenwich (ranked 50+) over a mid-ranking maths student from Cambridge (ranked 1st).”

@swdd- It is not about “favouring” but contextualising against their cohort. The University of Greenwich student may have exceptional potential for the employer and what they are specifically looking for, as tested by their own tests (some may include bizarre personality tests which some Cambridge maths student may well fail).
Just like Oxford is looking for amazing academic potential of students selecting specific courses (and do not give a damn supposedly about balance, social skills, extracurricular or anything else but excellence and potential in the course selected, in what can be quite a narrow way). As someone else pointed out, they aren’t looking for Renaissance students, whereas employers may well value far more of that.

@38thparallel “Why is this an issue for Oxford?”

Oxford may well argue it is not because their tutorial system is so amazing that their students are going to nail any interview anyway and are clearly the best and brightest around and have been exposed to the best libraries and top research in the world so are clearly always going to be the best! (But then I think a lot of elite secondary schools believe this to be the case too)

However, “some” more sceptical students may well think it is far more balanced to go to a slightly less competitive uni, get a First with less effort, develop more rounded education by having time for a part time job and socialising and networking etc, and then ultimately end up in a better job via a path of least resistance.

I think there are probably also quite a lot of employers who aren't doing university blind admissions and are still keen on recruiting students from Oxford. It has international name recogniton as well.

All in all I think you could overstate the disadvantages of getting a 2.1 from Oxford as opposed to a 1st from say Bristol or Manchester. Though it could be annoying if you wanted to do a PHD.

I agree. We are less interested in what the student’s been taught and more interested in how their mind works.

Other than that it’s simply passion.

It is not about “favouring” but contextualising against their cohort. The University of Greenwich student may have exceptional potential for the employer and what they are specifically looking for, as tested by their own tests @Araminta1003

A First or 2:1 is contextual itself. In your version of blind recruitment, the university’s reputation carries zero decision weight. Since candidates are then judged by the employer's own testing and interview process, the logical consequence is that the employer is explicitly favoring a Greenwich First over a Cambridge 2:1 before they even reach those tests, other things being equal.

However, “some” more sceptical students may well think it is far more balanced to go to a slightly less competitive uni, get a First with less effort, develop more rounded education by having time for a part time job and socialising and networking etc, and then ultimately end up in a better job via a path of least resistance. @Araminta1003

This is self-contradictory. If an employer values a more rounded education with time for part-time jobs and socialising, which are vital non-academic skills, then why would they reward the student who sacrificed that balance just to get a First? It is perfectly reasonable to argue that a brilliant student at Cambridge might choose to spend less time studying to gain broader experience, resulting in a 2:1. Under your verson of blind recruitment criteria, that candidate would be given a lower evaluation before they can prove their worth in a test simply because they did not prioritise pure academics at the expense of everything else.
The employer is essentially suggesting that a "skeptical" student should choose a less prestigious university to get a First with less effort, which is clearly just gaming the system. This student isn't necessarily a better candidate; they are simply exploiting the massive flaws in a blind recruitment process that ignores all institutional context. It is hard to believe an employer would be so short-sighted as to design a system that actively encourages this kind of tactical box-ticking over real substance.

I think contextual offers don’t make up for the support an independent school can provide.

If it makes you feel any better ours probably had the worst of all worlds - decent state so no contextual offer (fair enough) but still the negatives of state (teacher shortages / unable to expel the disruptive ones / less one to one support). Always seems to be the ones in the middle that lose out!

This echoes the experience of private school admissions where those in the middle are hit hardest. Bright kids are often excluded from a top private education not just because their families aren't rich enough to pay the fees and still maintain a comfortable life, but also because they aren't poor enough to qualify for a bursary.

I think people are massively over thinking this. Yes many employers want to find the best people and will spread their net wide to encourage a diverse cohort of applicants. The degree class can be a factor but their own tests and interviews will be what they base their offer on.

Unsurprisingly those who have worked hard and engaged in interesting and challenging activities - whether work experience, leadership, volunteering etc - will come across best, get the highest scores and be hired. Further unsurprisingly there will be a high correlation between those people and those who have got high grades at good universities.

It was a few years ago when the civil service (I think it was the foreign office) introduced blind recruitment to reduce their Oxbridge bias. After a few recruitment rounds they realised they were hiring more Oxbridge people. The suspicion was that previously with non blind recruitment there had been (possibly unconscious) anti Oxbridge bias amongst the recruiters!

You do realise you can get a contextual offer and be attending an independent school?

Blind recruitment that I have heard of: civil service, BBC, NHS, HSBC initially now more banks (but HSBC restructuring investment banking out of UK somewhat anyway), big 4 definitely, initially Clifford Chance (started many years ago and always had their own process) now followed by other law firms more widely, legal profession in particular under pressure to recruit more widely and fairly due to bottleneck in training places.
Tech definitely; Initially IBM, Google etc

Blind recruitment surely just means they don’t care about the prestige of Oxford or Cambridge nor their “process”. They are going to look for what they want and what is of value to their business. Just like Oxbridge looks for their own particular minds to coach in their ways?

I think you do make an interesting point here @Araminta1003. Back in the day, universities (including Oxbridge) were interested in your wider interests such as sport, music and volunteering; your academics were covered by your A/O level grades and entrance tests. They wanted you to contribute to university life - would you captain the rugby team or run student societies etc. They stopped this and demanded “supercurriculars” so 6th formers try to do lots of extra academic work in the same subjects as their A levels.

However, when it comes to getting a job, things flip back to what are you like as a person. The academic (or brightness box) is ticked by your degree, but what are you going to be like to work with, are you a team player, how do you cope when things go wrong, how do you communicate with others. These are all skills you develop through extra curricular activities. And it’s from your extra curricular activities that you can draw examples that impress at interviews and assessment days.

So I don’t think it’s about having a 1st or 2.1 (whatever the institution), it’s how else have you developed as a person.

The US uni admissions process encourages this development of the wider person, ours doesn’t.

Edit: just to be clear, by extra curricular I’m meaning all non academic activities so including part time jobs/work experience

Exactly Not. Dd2 is extremely likeable and gorgeous with great social skills - numerous of her friends families want to take her on holiday and every Saturday job she’s gone for in person she’s hired on the spot.

She's also done stacks of extra curricular with a teen mental health charity who have trained her and she mentors struggling younger teens at her school she does this because she wants to not for credit. So actually think she will be absolutely fine in the jobs market even if she’s not a perfect Peter Oxbridge graduate type as people like having her around.

Actually, I think it’s generally healthy to downplay the school or uni name and focus on merit, and we should definitely be giving more opportunities to those who didn’t attend top-tier schools but thrived later on. But let’s not go to extremes and ignore how hard these kids worked to get to the top schools in the first place. A bit of common sense is enough: we can respect the rigor of the selection process they cleared without letting a school badge overshadow their actual ability.

I think the underlying point is every institution is flawed and self serving be it the NHS, BBC, the civil service (Lord Mandelson anyone), Oxford university or Westminster School etc. and increasingly it appears the publicly funded ones are the worst offenders. How can the NHS possibly cost the tax payer 500k per medical student and not select the right ones/plan for training places etc and how can the civil service let people through like Mandelson?

And for Oxford to demand a finished product, a typical quasi finished enquiring mind with supracurriculars already, so that their own academics can principally focus on their research, despite having the highest staff to student ratio and despite having the best resources - well it is unreasonable. There is a moral duty to take context and to further that context and to allow that context to explore the university more widely to catch up on missed experiences (extracurricular, social) and to then ensure that there is no further bias further down the road against that context. Because suggesting that context has to keep spending 12 hours a day in the library self teaching to then access the next step is completely bonkers.

Also to enter a room full of gifted students and tell them they are only looking for one sort of intelligence to make an academics life easy - further unreasonable! And why should a young motivated gifted student from a selective school bother with Oxford if eg Imperial is going to value them more? Why should Oxford and Cambridge get a monopoly on selection their students whilst all other unis have to trail behind second guessing based on a personal statement? It is anticompetitive.