Super IB scores vs avg Oxbridge offers - Why?

[IBDworthit]

I have been looking at a few schools and some of them seem to have stellar academics in the superlatives (40+ IBD scores) yet Oxbridge offers are left behind.

Pls have a look at two schools, both independents with a wide range of extracurriculars:

Whitgrift School
Avg IBD score 41.6 points!! (the typical offer score for Oxford medicine is 39 according to their website), yet
Oxbridge offers for 5.8% of leavers (or 23% of those applied)

compare this with another IBD school:

Sevenoaks School
Avg IBD score 41.3
Oxbridge offers for 14.7% of leavers (or 29% of those applied)

So less apply from Whitgrift, but the acceptance rate is also lagging by six percentage points, which is not a negligible difference (six pct pts is what separates Eton no.3 and Sixth Form College Farnb no.30 for example).

Think we can safely conclude that the watershed is not in the academics: it is extremely difficult to reach 40+ in IB. Yet it appears that more than half of the students in these schools manage to pull it off somehow, no doubt at the cost of great anxiety. But that is another topic.

Does anyone have any views or insights why Sevenoaks pupils are more into Oxbridge than those from Whitgrift?

At our school, the top IB scorers are going on the places like UCL or to international universities. One or two go to Oxbridge. One top scorer who got the top 45 points is now at a London university. Interestingly (I never noticed until I looked for this post) most are not going on to do science.

@cloudtree I agree with @GratS
I would say a pupil getting an A at a comp should get a place over an A from Eton. It is going to be significantly more difficult to obtain an A* at a comp than from Eton. I guess if parents who send their children to private schools (of which I am one) think this is unfair they can always send their child to the local comp instead. I think my children have a much better chance of achieving those higher grades at private schools than our local comp.

It's more complex than just how easy it is to get an A star though. I went to a state school and got straight As. I went to Oxford, and I did perfectly fine. But there's no way I was the best candidate on my course. Not because I wasn't 'clever' or hard working, but because I didn't have the genuine academic drive and the true passion for my subject that some of my fellow students did. IMO that's what an Oxford don is actually looking for - that's why they interview, rather than just looking at grades. My subject/college was pretty heavily private school dominated, and there were definitely others who were stronger and more deserving candidates than I was - even though they may have been worse than me on paper. I'm not going as far as to say that I didn't deserve my place - but I do think it's much more complicated than saying 'a state school student with an A must be the better candidate because they've worked harder to get it'.

The 3 Whitgift schools have a disproportionately high number of pupils chosing to stay in London to study - in some cases trying to live at home whilst doing so. A number of those would not have considered moving away to study at Oxbridge regardless of how academically brilliant they are.

private schooling still confers a significant advantage for getting into Oxbridge.

on the latest available numbers (for Oxford only), private schools get 20-odd percent of AAA at A level (a reasonable proxy for being Oxbridge standard) but 30-odd percent of Oxford places, so despite all the usual squeals of dumbing down, positive discrimination, etc, something in the admissions process still appears to discriminate (narrowly) in favour of private - see www.ox.ac.uk/about/facts-and-figures/admissions-statistics/undergraduate-students/current/school-type

and going private obviously improves a student's grades

@gogohm

Not everyone wants to go to oxbridge! Plenty of youngsters in south london with high grades want to go to big city universities up north, they don't want oldie worldie quaint - they want clubs and fun. I know, I was one. None of my whitgift friends chose oxbridge, they all wanted cooler places like Manchester and ideally to upset their parents if possible

@londonmummy1966

The 3 Whitgift schools have a disproportionately high number of pupils chosing to stay in London to study - in some cases trying to live at home whilst doing so. A number of those would not have considered moving away to study at Oxbridge regardless of how academically brilliant they are.

Makes sense. Thanks!±

IB is imprtant for applying to foreign University, I was told. Some students from Whitgif have applied to Harvard ( one offer last year) and other European universities. Whitguft is string on languages so possibly gthis another reason why the applications to Oxbridge are less.