Are these grades Oxbridge material?

[DivisionBelle]

Yr 12 Ds has been encouraged by his tutor to go to an event set up to enable school students to talk to Oxford and Cambridge undergraduates, I think as part of an initiative to get more state school students to think of applying. His tutor has hinted that he should think about it.

I was a bit surprised, DS is doing well, working hard, but not the sort of high flying straight A*/9s genius that I imagine Oxbridge students to be.

He is doing 2 sciences and Maths at A level.

GCSE:
Maths:9
Triple Science: A, A, A
Further Maths: A
Other subjects: A*, 8, A,A,A, 6,B,B

I know these are good results. but everyone I know who has kids applying to Oxbridge this year had across the board A*s.

If he has a chance, great, we'll go for it. But he has enough on his plate not to be pursuing something that is not actually realistic. What HE wants is get good teaching in a science degree and to eventually be involved in interesting research, wherever that may be.

I think that he has a very good shot and should definitely apply for an Oxbridge place.

I assume that he doing subjects at A level that he got 9s or 8s/A*s in and therefore the likelihood of him getting high grades at A level is high especially having achieved those sort of grades at a state comp and taking so many subjects.

His application should focus on super curricular rather than extra curricular to show his passion for his proposed degree subject.

Very good luck to him.

BubblesBuddy - with the 9s 8s and As that the OP's ds has he has over 6 As and 4 As as well as 4 Bs.

Not impossible at all, provided he has excellent A-level predictions and does very well on any subject aptitude tests.
Context will also be taken into account for the GCSEs and it might also make a difference which subjects got which grades.
I think he should go along to the event and see what he thinks.

I'm an Oxbridge admissions tutor.

he needs to carefully research colleges and pick one that is known for prioritising intellect over academic attainment and then read up on the people who work there, read a few of their books and other note worthy books in the subject area.

[blink] I have never known a whole college have a profile for "prioritising intellect over academic attainment" - colleges have different reputations for scoring highly in the internal academic league tables e.g. Oxford's Norrington, but virtually all tutors and colleges I've ever known prioritised intellect as a default anyway. If you've got to interview your academic record is largely moot, you've passed the bar so it's all now down to how they experience your intellect.

Reading around in your subject area because you are interested and being able to comment on it intelligently = great. However, most tutors I've ever known would be a) not fooled and b) downright annoyed by a student who expected to get credit for name-dropping the tutor's own work. "I thought your book on X was great" will get them nowhere, "your book on X made me think about the theory of Y and whether it had [these interesting implications]" is good.

OP, some enrichment would really help his confidence. If he knows which subject he'd like to apply for, can he get some work experience in that or a closely related field? I agree about going to lectures, reading specific journals and books on the wider subject than the A level syllabus.

he needs to carefully research colleges and pick one that is known for prioritising intellect over academic attainment

All colleges have the same selection criteria for the same subjects. And there is a lot of re-allocation anyway.

He will also need to see whether they have any internal exams

Again this will be identical for all colleges at the same University for the same subject. Please don't make this more complicated/mysterious than it is.

I made it 3 x A, an 8 and a 9. That’s five at A or equivalent so borderline. There are also Bs in there. However nothing to lose.

"Wouldn't you say, though, that a super active and super curious and inquiring mind is inherent rather than learned?"

I would. He is super inquiring, and sucks up new facts and new ideas super fast. What isn't inherent in him is talking about it and debating, arguing his case, believing he has the 'right' to hold his views. He just gets on with it. I think he could benefit from developing that aspect a bit, wherever he goes.

"Worth a look though to see how the land lies but those results are not stellar and far too many subjects which suggests school doesn’t know the time of day, sadly."

All the comps round us do great lists of GCSEs with the top sets. I think they have reduced the options by one from this cohort onwards because of the more challenging curriculum. But then the school doesn't focus especially on Oxbridge applications and admissions like some do, especially in other sectors.

It is very interesting to hear the pros and cons and ins and outs of all this - very useful, thank you all.

He is super inquiring, and sucks up new facts and new ideas super fast. What isn't inherent in him is talking about it and debating, arguing his case, believing he has the 'right' to hold his views. He just gets on with it. I think he could benefit from developing that aspect a bit, wherever he goes.

Would agree with you there. Oxbridge tutors are looking for people they will enjoy teaching, which means they do need some ability to explain and debate their view, since they would be doing it once a week every week of term with their tutor. This skill can absolutely be practised before the interview and if the school support his applying, they may be able to arrange some practice for him there. The good ones will want to draw him out - "what interested you about that, how did you come to that conclusion" - but he needs to have some ability to show them his interesting mind.

There may well be additional tests to take. PAT for physics related courses etc. Everything required is given on the course page within the faculty at the universities. I would also suggest that you look at the courses now because on some science courses they really like Further Maths so checking it out now may help make decisions.

They also have every applicant with A or As predicted at A level so GCSEs can be used to differentiate between candidates.*

Therein lies the rub!

This, more than anything discriminates against children who are likely to be underpredicted by teachers.
Pupils with less than three A grades predicted may be sifted out at the admin stage of some of the most competitive courses.
The whole system is opaque and open to corruption as soon as the issue of predicted grades comes into play, IMO.
At DCs school there are children with C grades in mocks predicted an A in some subjects, while teachers in other subjects will stick to the schools stated policy of giving all their pupils no higher than marks achieved in the mock exams. Two pupils, same grade at mocks, two different outcomes. The official reason is that the school treats each pupil as an individual. No, it doesnt, it discriminates one over the other using subjective value judgement. If a process is not empirical, as is feasibly possible, i.e. a test, ideally marked by someone unknown to the candidate, the prediction may be subject to conscious or unconscious bias, IMO. There are stark inconsistencies when one compares school against school. DC knowns pupils with D grades in mocks with straight A predictions. These pupils may never fulfil the offers if they are not up to the task academically, its true. But theyve been incentivised to do well in the final exams and may possibly do better because of this. Lets adopt the system common to the rest of the planet in Post Qualification Application. Surely, universities should have unbiased data on candidates and the power to sift out who can and cant apply. Sadly, they will focus more on GCSEs now as these represent harder data than predicted grades. This is bad news for the unprivileged and untutored who realise too late that you need more than a handful of As in your GCSEs in your best subjects to even be in with a chance of being in the running. It shouldnt all rest on the professional opinion of school teachers. This might be an informed professional opinion. But it`s still an opinion nonetheless. Scrambles for hard hat!

It's interesting.

Had the Oxbridge possibility been introduced earlier, he might have perked up and realised that EVERY grade counts, not just the ones needed for A level. He definitely took his foot off the pedal in subjects he had little interest in, or saw no benefit in.

Plus they did Maths and Further Maths in the curriculum time allowed for just Maths, ditto triple science in a double science slot. He did a lot of self-teaching and consolidation in his own time in these subjects. Which is the problem in dog such a big list of subjects.

Yes, definitely a case of the earlier the better, even if it’s just to make parents aware of what’s required.
Parents could then decide whether it’s potentially too stressful to inform pupils of the high benchmark or not.

My ds wants to go to Cambridge because he thinks it's the best and dh went there. Currently I don't think ds is achieving the grades - 7&8's at GCSE but like dh he is a late developer and a very hard worker - knowing what he needs to do to achieve gives him focus and leaves the decision up to him - he can't say to me in 10 years time that we should have told him!

Oh dear. All of that points to a school that doesn’t understand the way to prepare candidates for Oxbridge. It was wrong to do more subjects which meant there was less teaching time for maths x2. Preparing early can be useful but my DD wasn’t identified as anything special either. I think the problem is that some schools see a certain type of child as being worthy of special attention and often these are the obvious candidates and not those who come up fast on the rails, like mine did. However mine did have a far better GCSE profile and didn’t coast on subjects she wasn’t so keen on. In any degree you get topics you are not so keen on and definitely in professional qualifications so perseverance is a good trait.

Quite often schools don’t have a younger member of staff who went to Oxbridge and have outdated ideas. For example, my DD was discounted because her UMS scores for two AS subjects were below 90. The school’s test was above 90 for everything.

I don’t think low predictions are really going to come into it if schools predict Bs and the candidate gets 3 x A*. You just apply for next year. I think most teachers know who the real stars are but do not plan or act strategically.

Find your link college here
www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/colleges/area-links
There will be lots of targeted events to encourage applications from historically low application groups

If he's not thinking about medicine, then he has 5 choices of university in his UCAS application form - 4 if medicine. What's the problem in putting Oxbridge as one of the choices? He'd regret it for a long time thinking "what if?" should he decide not to take the opportunity - not that Oxbridge is the be all and end all . .

I knew someone who applied to Oxbridge who had pretty much a perfect score for the I.B. that we were on. They didn't get in despite having amazingly high grades because Oxbridge was looking for someone who could also prove they were involved in clubs/societies, could volunteer and had an active social life.
We didn't really get a chance to do much of that while doing the I.B purely because so much of our time was taken up trying to complete about 20 extra hours of work at home every week on to of a highly demanding course of 7 subjects. Friend was devastated as they thought they'd get in no problems.

And yet I also had a friend who had CFS and got in because of the way she thought which was outside the box. Her grades were fairly high but not as good as they could or should have been due to her missing a lot of school with the CFS. So it's really hit and miss sometimes.

With that number of GCSEs the sheer number of individual exams to be sat during exam season seemed quite overwhelming to me.

But hey ho.

What subjects is he doing now?

Strongly recommend Junior Membership of the RI. Ds1 did this and used to go down for monthly lectures and other events: it helped him broaden and deepen his approach to science and also identify which area he wanted to go in; and gave him some extra subject-related stuff to put in his PS and talk about at Oxbridge interview.

Masterclass programme at Cambridge - and Oxford do similar I'm sure - is another way of exploring the idea.

He should definitely visit and talk to students there. If he is applying for scientist and gets to the interview stage then the interview will involve working through science problems not proficient debating skills. These problems also involve indirect testing of the amount of extra reading / study that a candidate has done (taking into account that some schools will put a candidate at an advantage for this whilst others will not).
If he has a super enquiring mind then he will not be satisfied with what he is being taught but will looking up and reading about his extra questions or working through his questions outside class. If that is the case and he is happy with the idea of an intense workload at university in his subjects then he should try. (BTW uniform good teaching cannot be guaranteed anywhere).
However for Oxford at least his GCSE grades are borderline although depending on his subject scoring highly in the pretest may compensate (both in getting to the interview stage and in the final decision). Previously, excellent AS level results with borderline GCSEs would steer a candidate towards Cambridge but Cambridge admissions is in a transition stage with added pre testing to compensate for lack of AS results.

There would be an argument for him applying post A level once he achieved very good grades if he was really keen on either Oxbridge university after visiting. No decisions need to be made before the summer. In the meantime, whatever he decides he should of course be focussing on doing very well in his A level work but also making the most all the material, videos, external lectures hat is so easily available now to explore his questions and deepen his knowledge. Being in London gives him easy access to outreach events and extra lectures at UCL and Imperial. In addition to Oxbridge master classes etc there are also summer courses at Imperial and UCL for example www.imperial.ac.uk/study/ug/visit/summer-schools/under-18-summer-schools/
www.ucl.ac.uk/prospective-students/widening-participation/activities/summer-schools
As an aside it is worth noting that most application deadlines for summer university science course 'tasters'. including Headstart will be soonish.

Oxbridge was looking for someone who could also prove they were involved in clubs/societies, could volunteer and had an active social life. It seems that Cambridge at least is not interested in any extra curricular activities unless the student can clearly demonstrate an interest in the subject being applied for.

13 GCSEs??? That's just crazy!