Would a person need to be officially GnT to consider Oxford?

[ZombiesAtYourCervix]

D1 is 15 and has decided that's where she is going. She is nice, sweet and hardworking but not brilliantly clever (predicted mostly As at GCSE). She just asked if she could go to an open day sometime to have a look around (very forward planning I know but that's her)

DO I encourage her or redirect her?

When I was there, there were quite a lot of relatively thick people, actually, mainly from posh schools where it was assumed you could apply if you were reasonably but not phenomenally bright. Whereas from a normal school like mine, only the real high-fliers were put in as there was this assumption you could only go if you were doing amazingly well.

I didn't know any reasonably bright people when I was there. The range was more very bright to extremely bright. Just about everyone was one of the top few (if not the top) from their school and in some subjects the 'only very bright but hard working' were treated with contempt by their peers (esp. if they had aspirations to continue in academia). I would think the chances of someone not in the top 10% (official GnT threshold?) at their school enjoying themselves at Oxford (if they got in) would be fairly slim to be honest, although not necessarily if they are a late developer or had some particular reason for underperforming at school. Otherwise I think they'd spend most of their time struggling to keep their heads above water. Around 6A* GCSE is the usual guidance given for minimum GCSE grades to think about applying (without special circs.) and I suspect it's reasonably sound advice.

Definately go and have a look :). My DD was totally inspired by her first school organised trip to Oxford and it made her up her game with 6th form study.

(My DD is an 11+ "failure", got higher than average but not wonderful CAT tests but she works like a trojan and got the required results).

GO FOR IT! Be careful though. Friends of ours have four children. All of them were on g and t. The one boy got 14 gsce passes all A* and a's and could not get into Oxbridge. Mother said it goes on postcode and as we live on council estate they had no chance. My daughter apparently is oxbridge material and she is only in year 8 and on g and t so what chance would we have? Still go for it though you never know. Perhaps it goes on how many spaces left?

Ibiza that's complete rubbish. Oxbridge do not discriminate on the basis of postcode.

ibizagirl, your friend was talking out of her behind.

It goes on academic excellence. They are looking for brilliance in their subject, an interest in it that goes beyond school and can be demonstrated through their personal statement on their UCAS form, a string of As and A's at GCSE and 3 or 4 A's at A-Level.

Absolute rot that a council estate postcode would put them off. Actually they are actively recruiting from the very deprived estate near us (students from local school have been invited to taster days etc. by the uni.)

Piffle to the postcode thing Ibiza.

I'd have thought G&T was a complete red herring OP.

I'd always strongly discourage any DC from taking the view that it's Oxford or bust.

Which subject has she decided on, or which subjects has she in mind?

Oxford are looking for bright candidate who are obsessed very interested in their chosen subject. They are more interested in how a person thinks - can they think outside the box, argue their point convincingly, are they passionate. These are the clues as to whether your daughter should apply for Oxford.

Actually, Oxford at least do look at postcodes during their admissions process. A little is explained here, but basically they flag applicants from deprived areas and for applicants with more than one flag (you can also be flagged for having been in care or attending an underperforming school) they are more likely to be invited for interview than otherwise.

Perhaps your Ibizagirl's friend was lamenting that her council estate wasn't deprived enough to get a flag?

Quoted from link above...

The postcode that an applicant gives as their home address, assessed using ACORN information. ACORN is a system that associates specific geodemographic profiles to individual UK postcodes; it is widely recognised and used by both the public and private sectors to assist in the effective targeting of policies, services and communications. Where a candidate?s postcode falls into ACORN groups four or five (Moderate Means and Hard Pressed) the application will be flagged. More information about ACORN can be found at www.caci.co.uk/acorn-classification.aspx.
An additional postcode factor will be used in the flagging for the coming admissions round. The postcode from an applicant?s home address is matched against the POLAR2 data set. This classification places regions into Quintiles based on the rate of young participation in Higher Education. Applicants from the lowest two quintiles will be flagged. More information about POLAR2 can be found atwww.hefce.ac.uk/widen/polar/polar2/ .

Good grief. IME (went to Cambridge from a very average comprehensive) the main things are: try and get good grades, and believe you have every right to apply and be there. In the end it is just a university and anyone can apply. Like a previous poster said, I'm no brain surgeon either, just interested in my subject and managed to get a reasonable amount of A grades.

I think it's a myth that you need to demonstrate loads of sports/music/extracurricular talents. That's easy for the private-school types who have all those opportunities handed to them on a plate but that was not my type of background. Oxbridge admissions are pretty clued up to this I imagine.

Going back to the OP - I would definitely suggest she goes to an open day or two, but looks into other universities as well so she can end up with a good portfolio to apply to. Hopefully between teachers and admissions tutors they can help her see what to aim for and whether she does have a realistic chance. It is grim being somewhere where you can't keep up with the work, but very hard to suss out in advance.

No you don't need to be G&T but hard work alone is not going to get you in to Oxbridge.

Your DD is up against the top 0.1% of scholars in the whole World.

She needs to be naturally all round intelligent, have a real gift for her chosen subject and very very well schooled and prepared.

worldgonecrazy - yes what you said is a much better way of putting it.

DH is an Oxford graduate. He is (relatively) normal. It was expected by his hateful family that he would go there, failure wasn't an option and he had to apply two years in a row to be accepted.
His first year, by his own admission was awful. He loathed it because he wasn't sure what the expectations were.
As it turned out, he got a first but, still went on to work as a bus driver.

I got into Oxbridge - by fluke- I just happened to click with my s- level paper on the day, whereas I'd struggled with past papers. However, I was on a very intense academic course, and didn't really enjoy it tbh. I did quite a bit of sport, but not the ones I was most interested in as they were done in the afternoons when we had labs and lectures. A lot of the art courses had very little teaching - 1 lecture a week if that, in some cases,so I missed out on that side of college life.

So having got into a profession that realistically I'm not naturally bright enough for, I am now a Sahm, happier by far, except for the persistent nag in my head that I am making myself less employable with every year, and wishing I'd done teaching or accountancy.

hi, i'm new on here but just wanted to jump in here! My dd always did well at school - 10 A stars at gcse then 4 A at A level. She got a place at cambridge after much pressure from the school and college - live in really remote wales and nobody from this area had got a place for about 5 yrs. She hated every minute of it and left after first year - nearly every person on her course know everyone else and had all been to same schools etc, she was like a fish out of water. Sure being so remote had lots to do with it - it was all such a shock to her system. She now studying in uni closer to home and happy.
Hope your daughter makes it if she got her heart set on it - the interview is nearly as important as great grades

impostor syndrome is also rife at oxford, so you need to take claims that "I went there but I'm normal" with a pinch of salt (except from me of course ). The vast majority will have an academic profile well inside the top 10% of people nationally (ie:GnT), but I agree with those saying that GnT is largely irrelevant and they are looking for other qualities.

You should go for it if she gets good enough grades - its early days yet. After her GCSEs you'll have a better idea - on average, successful applicants have 8 A* GCSEs or higher (info via my kids schools where if you dont have that number, you get advised against)

they are looking for more than that though and if she's got it, then where she's from is irrelevant ( and I say this with 2 kids who both did have all the right grades and CVs but didnt get offers - there's something more/different from just the exam history)

There is a section on "The Student Room" website where Oxbridge applicants detail their GCSE results, their predicted A Level results and what offer they received from colleges.

It is frightening! Most have at least 10 As at GCSE, and are predicted 4 A at A Level. One person even posted in the notes section an explanation of why they'd only achieved an "A" for one of their GCSEs...

It's not really relevant for most MNetters to detail their own experience of applying to Oxbridge, because times are different now. Back in my day there was the old EE offer, which, correct me if I'm wrong, does not appear to exist now. It's a good thing that more people feel able to apply, but on the minus side that means that fewer people get interviewed and weeded out at application stage, maybe on exam results alone.

Mammonite is right - we really don't care about the extra-curricular stuff. Partly because it is perfectly obvious that the great majority of extra-curricular achievements, however commendable, are more or less the product of considerable privilege (time, money and emotional energy in the family to support highly committed art/music/sport/fundraising/whatever); but mostly because what Oxbridge admissions tutors are looking for are a) candidates who have first-class potential; and b) candidates who are probably good 2:1 students (the assumption is that all those accepted ought to be capable of a 2:1 with reasonable diligence) and plainly lively, interesting and teachable. Specifically - teachable in the particular Oxbridge system (more important for humanities with little contact time and a major emphasis upon supervisions/tutorials, which don't suit everyone).

Almost without exception, candidates in these brackets have an impressive range of other interests or achievements of some sort, because highly intelligent and well motivated teenagers largely do. But I can never remember deciding for or against a candidate for any reason even slightly connected to extra curricular stuff. I wish parents and school teachers would take this on board!

Fwiw, I was an undergraduate at Oxford and had a pretty miserable time. I'm not really sure I would have been happier elsewhere necessarily, but I certainly wasn't very happy there, despite being extremely well taught and finding the work by and large both fulfilling and fairly straightforward. I was much much happier as a graduate student, first in the States and then at Cambridge. I now teach at a good London university and on the whole I think the students are happier and healthier than we were as undergraduates.

i noticed on the Cambridge webite, that they say they are not all that interested in GCSE performance , because post 16 education is so utterly different.

If you want to get into Cambridge you should be looking at 10 or more GCSEs, in traditionally academic subjects, with at least 5-8 As depending on where you have been to school, and whether you are applying via the special access scheme, plus something like 2 AS levels with As, and 3 A Levels with AAA predicted.

If you've been offered a provisional place, you'll most likely still be allowed to come if you get AAB due to some sort of minor problem in one module or something, and once I saw an ABB entrant let in who did fine when there.

You should be used to having academic debates with intelligent peers - if you're at a school where there aren't too many other people around operating at your intellectual level, it would make sense to start investigating summer schools and so on.

You also need to be quite self-starting and resilient, the type of person who is happy to get up at 8 to get to the Faculty library when it opens, and spend all day reading hard books because you are dying to know more about the subject. It's also important to be able to find a hobby or two otherwise you would probably go nuts.

A really good guide to what is expected is gained from looking at the reading lists, set essays, past papers and so on, many of which are on the website. The book "How to get a first" is a great thing to read as well, if you want to get inside the university mindset.

It's not rocket surgery, as one of my colleagues frequently says.

BoffinMum unfortunately your advice is a little out of date for Cambridge, grade-wise.

Fortunately for the OP's DD she's keen on Oxford, where getting up times (at least for arts students) are far more slack (noon on a regular basis appears to be fine).

7 A minimum gcse - at least one A predicted at A level and rest As

wearymumof6 (i am one of those too!!) Very similar experience here with ds1 who has just started yr two at cambridge. He was always a high flying teenager but also a 'worker' willing to put in the hours...good job. Despite being in the top few in a v academic school he has found the work and expectation thrust upon him - relentless. He has chugged through his first year and is now hoping to be a bit chirpier now he has picked his options in year two.

He comes from a northern town and now has a humungous chip on his shoulder about this - he says there is an awful lot of joshig and japing about the north...state school educated...working in a crappy job to pay your way...

He has made great friends and is not unhappy but it has opened our eyes as parents- think long and hard about what your dd wants from university - DS experience is very very far from DP and mines experience at a Russell group university late 80/90s