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?

In any event, one can see the monopoly eroding somewhat with all these tests that have to be sat (ESAT, TMUA, LNAT, UCAT, TARA) - so that the playing field for the best students is very gradually being levelled. The confirmatory interview remains to feed into the supervision/tutorial process for now for all subjects, but there are interviews in other competitive fields across most unis (eg medicine).

The reason why you have to question the institution is because it has to adapt as well and it cannot keep imposing its way or the high way on the whole of society, especially where the upper echelons of society like politics are still dominated by its graduates and particular ways of thinking. Honestly, I would much rather be led by a balanced person than someone who was top at Classics or Chemistry or the Theoretical Study of Politics.
By questioning any institution like all institutions you further its progress and ultimate success in the long run.

Which subject? Even at Oxbridge, research opportunities aren't too easy to come by during undergrad until your final year, and by that point you're already applying to master's programs

E.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/UniUK/comments/1jx85mv/undergrad_research_when_everyone_says_dont/

I don't think students who game the system in this way necessarily have either an entitlement or guilt issue, anymore than the kids who pay for Oxbridge interview practice or ESAT/TMUA/etc tutoring do. It's just one more advantage that these students have.

It's possible they would be better off not going to Oxbridge et al, but the mere fact that they have a choice when they otherwise wouldn't means they're at least as well off. (Keep in mind that tutoring even through university is not off the table). And getting extra student financing is an undeniable benefit.

What about a Cambridge 2:2 vs a Bath or KCL 2:1 or even a Warwick/Imperial 1st? Suddenly it's not so unreasonable, particularly if the company is taking a PR hit for not having diverse hiring practices.

The stereotype that certain companies are where mediocre Oxbridge old boys latch on and suck dry does not mix well with the dynamic, talented, and progressive reputation most companies would like to attribute to their employees.

I think YP know the difference between using tutoring and eg claiming to live with grandparents in a deprived area (a popular one) or other misrepresentations of fact. They can appreciate that one is allowed and the other is not.

Spot on.

I didn't interpret the previous comment to refer to outright fraud, but rather getting contextual criteria through the letter of the law rather than the spirit.
E.g. "technically qualify", "A lot of kids are in single parent households temporarily when parents split up these days or happen to live in a postcode that qualifies, despite the wider area being fine."
I didn't find anything in that message to indicate these kids were lying about their circumstances, but instead that they earned the contextual admissions on a technicality.

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

Re TempoDiCambiareNome · Yesterday 23:05
I wonder how it can be verified that your parents didn't go to university

Say a couple called Susan nee Anderson and John Davies were born in 1975 and their children apply to university and say their parents didn’t go to university. Is there a central database which keeps records of everyone who went?

No. It's impossible to check, but patents not going to Uni is not a big enough contextual flag to get you much, if anything.

No system is perfect. I know a pupil at a v v expensive boarding school who got a contextual offer this year as one corner of his family's country estate backs onto a poor area. But it's better than nothing 😊

I do find that very hard to believe. Are you sure they weren’t ending you up?

The core difference is that tutoring is a form of educational enhancement aimed at raising a child's actual ability—it is no more a "sin" to be tutored for an A* than it is to be privately trained to win a sports medal. Both aim to lift the child to a high bar, which ultimately benefits the talent pool. In contrast, gaming contextual offers is a zero-sum game; it adds no educational value and simply hijacks a safety net intended for the truly disadvantaged, directly stripping opportunities from those who need them most. One is about self-improvement, while the other is about cheating the queue.

Note that I didn't mention general subject-matter tutoring for this exact reason.
One could argue that interview practice is also zero sum considering that interviews are not meant to be prepped for, and that prepping for them doesn't increase your long term ability in the subject but does make it appear as if you have.

Nope. Def because the post code of the entrance to the estate is the same as a the local council estate. Their actual house is in 1,000s of acres (it's a massive farm/hunting thing). They'll get 3 A stars so totally irrelevant but we all found it funny.

While your critique of Oxbridge is valid, this is a systemic issue across all elite research universities. The demand for a "finished product" is a direct result of supply and demand; because these spots are so highly sought after, the entry bar is pushed to an extreme level. In fact, institutions like Imperial or UCL may be even less focused on the student experience. They draw significantly more revenue from high-tuition international students, who represent a much higher proportion of their intake than at Oxbridge. The primary reason the focus remains on Oxbridge is simply that they are at the top and draw all the attention. Personaly I have no unrealistic expectations of Oxbridge, nor am I cynical about it, as long as its operations don't defy common sense.

Also life takes you to all sorts of places. Through chance I ended up in a job where everyone else was elite (public school / Oxbridge/ Harvard / Yale) I was not! But had worked in a new area of law that they had not so I had to teach them it. I used to internally laugh my (state school red brick university) head off! You can only plan and engineer for your child so far - fate takes a hand too.

Nope. Def because the post code of the entrance to the estate is the same as a the local council estate.

How extraordinary. Do they only look at the postcode, because presumably the rest of the address is along the lines of ‘Belvoir Castle’ or ‘Woburn Abbey’.

Fair enough. My mind jumped to previous threads that did discuss very dubious change of address, etc.

But even making use of technically correct contextual circs that clearly fall outside the intended meaning will backfire if a low offer gets you to a university where you can’t cope. All that tutoring you mention can only help so much.

Nope. Def because the post code of the entrance to the estate is the same as a the local council estate.

Having said that, our village has the same postcode for most of the village street and that includes one bedroom council houses, a large farm house, a Manor House, a Victorian old vicarage and everything else in between.
So it wouldn’t be an accurate marker of wealth or advantage.

Interviews are meant to be prepped for. Where do you get the idea they aren’t?

It’s all explained at open days. There are YouTube videos by Oxbridge admissions people, there’s loads of outreach, admissions staff go into their linked schools, colleges/depts run specific all-day masterclasses, there are Oxbridge run summer schools, existing students mentor applicants for interview and PS, there are organisations like zero gravity, independent schools team up with state schools for interview practice days, Eton runs free uni prep summer schools etc etc. Lots of stuff is run virtually so available wherever you live. One YouTuber explained how he contacted Oxbridge alumni via LinkedIn and asked if they would give him a practice interview. There really are loads of free resources.

It would be very odd to walk into an Oxbridge interview without any prep, but that isn’t dependent on your school.

I doubt it would "backfire" often. A contextual offer is usually just one notch down, so getting through a university slightly above your original predicted reach shouldn't be a problem as long as you are prepared for hard work once you get there.

I don't think it is better than nothing tbh. Seems like a sticking plaster solution that purports to address inequality whilst creating new types of unfairness and possible resentment.

Much easier to lean on univiersities to come up with these window dressing style solutions rather than for the government address the actual causes by improving state education.

Stare education is not the problem. Social issues outside school are much more important than what classroom you sit in. Although being in a class of 5 not 32 for A levels would help, even kids in that class of 32 will still get A stars.

Contextual offers are to support those students who have had a tough start to life. Not all state students get contextual and still manage to get A/A stars. And if the odd rich kid slips through then I think that's a small price to pay to help young carers/LAC etc.

Oxbridge interviews are meant to be prepped in as far as the prospective students are meant to read and explore their subject widely and passionately well in advance and they should practise speaking eloquently to whoever may listen about the matter. However, the interview itself is meant to challenge and so it cannot be specifically prepped or nailed, you are meant to come out baffled/confused and challenged - feeling like you just met the most slippery version of Schrodinger’s Cat and perhaps being excited about it somewhat.

Just to clarify, for a superselective cohort, some of the cohort is not seeking to gain advantage for actual contextual offers by getting a lower grade offer. In fact, it was very clearly explained to them that they won’t even get through to an interview unless they are at the top of their cohort which means the school confirming via predictions exactly where they sit in their very specific cohort according to their comprehensive data. So unless they top the exams/mocks in their cohort they won’t even get an interview despite all being A and A star candidates pretty much. It was explained that if you get a B at eg QE you are in the bottom 15% of your cohort so nobody is interested in even listening to what you have to say. That is why some of them have decided the adults and system are stacked against them and why they are analysing the technicalities of context. And none of this is coming from any of the parents who largely are stuck in the late 90s/early 2000s and want their kids to be bankers or traders. Some of these kids have slippery political and legal brains in the making and they have come up with this themselves. Hence why I was wondering about the medics as well. The Doctor Google generation has lost trust in the adults and the system and they aren’t just taking it all at face value and what any of us have to say.

I would have to disagree. I do think under resourcing of state education is a big part of the problem.

Why do you think richer pupils at state schools do better?

I think one of the reasons is a huge amount of parental help with school work in the early years and paid for tutors later.

If state education was better resourced I think the gap would be smaller.