With Oxbridge taking less and less private school students, is it still worth it??

[SillySmart]

stats shows that the number of private educated students Oxbridge enrolled has dropped 1/3 in the past 5 years. Any thoughts?

I knew a fair few glamorous party girls at Oxford! They were up and down to London on the Oxford Tube a lot, were pretty glossy, and from what I can remember, mostly got solid enough 2.1s.

@Moonicorn
Its extremely difficult to sit back and not hope for the best. I didn’t get invested in Oxford above all else. School didn’t pick out DD for their Oxbridge group. She wanted to have a go. So she did. She did it all herself plus help from her mfl
teachers who thought she had some talent. Deputy head disagreed.

I had no input into her application whatsoever. She did MFL and we hadn’t even taken her to her language countries! She got in. Then it really sinks in that she could access a great education that would boost her career aspirations. So you get your hopes up. Then they are dashed.

In the long run it’s made no difference. She’s very successful and has the career she wanted. I honestly thought, at the time, that she wouldn’t. She’s better than that and we quickly supported her. But it’s lying to say it didn’t hurt at the time. Many feel the same and get over it!

@Artsyblartsymum As you haven’t had to deal with the issue of not getting in, at the last minute,I’m actually not taking a lecture from you. Thanks all the same. We are all different and I wasn’t overly invested and Dd did the work. DH not I speak another language. She had to do it all herself. We moved on together afterwards. I’m delighted she has a great career now. She enjoyed her alternative university. I sometimes wonder if not getting in was a relief to her in the end, despite Oxford being her goal! I’m happy with my parenting - thanks all the same!

@Dzogchen and @TheaBrandt yes, this! I knew lots of very glam party girls at Oxford as well, always up and down on the Oxford Tube!

You're sort of describing my dd and what she's going through now - do you really know this girl's parents were disappointed in her and put so much pressure or was that just how she perceived it and described it to you? Did her parents really tell her it was Oxford or nothing and she might as well not go to another university? I say this because we genuinely only want dd to be happy, we couldn't care less where she goes to uni but when we say similar things to her about seizing the moment with other great places she doesn't want to hear them, she thinks we're flanneling her . However, she might well accept them from another adult.

I think the trouble is also that if you apply to Oxbridge and sit the tests and interview it is such a huge commitment in terms of prep for most DC, that they sort of have to convince themselves they really want to go and that that is their dream. So when it doesn’t work out, it takes some time to adjust and reconvince themselves of the truth, which is that it was just another university which also has an element of luck in it. Who knows how it would have turned out anyway. Plus to get through the interview process and A levels etc and that intense year, it helps in some ways to convince yourself that you are so incredibly passionate about X course at Oxford as it then sounds more convincing in the interview itself.
It is actually a very fine balance between becoming over-invested vs still being passionate enough. The importance for young people who do not quite make it is to realise that it wasn’t anything personal really. Someone else just got a few extra marks or was just a tiny bit more convincing on the day in a big pool of very talented passionate young people who all have a very bright future ahead.

Actually, 2 of my favourite trainees in the past were Oxbridge rejects. I knew they must have just had a bad day as they were utterly brilliant.

That's right I think. And @LanadelSlay her parents aren't bad people. I know them really well and yes, they were disappointed. They wanted her to go to the same college as them. Their whole life still revolves around their uni friends from Oxford and alumni events etc. They really pushed her to go and were then suggesting she try again next year. She is very smart and a really great girl. And she seems really happy at Bristol and is thriving there now from what my DD tells me. It was very difficult for them and for her. It didn't need to be so expected and that did knock her back and effect her confidence and self-esteem as well as just made her want to give up and not go to uni at all, which would have been so wrong. She still needed to get through her exams in year 13 and she was so depressed. Kids internalise so much. She has an excellent mind and she is still on track to do well in life even though she didn't get in.

So @Artsyblartsymum - so the parents were disappointed but not in her - I think very few parents would be disappointed in their child for this and it's a key distinction, you might be disappointed that your dreams for your child had failed to work out but to suggest that they thought she was somehow lacking and couldn't possibly be happy anywhere else isn't fair.

I don't think it is fair either. That is how their child felt about herself and about how her parents thought of her. Whether her parents really felt that way, only they know this. That is how their child perceived their reaction according to what she told me and told my DD. She was devastated on many levels.

That’s such a shame, hopefully as time goes on they will realise how wrong they were

We've got a local kid, dad was a Cambridge undergraduate, pushed heavily.
She's driven herself hard, very motivated, but when she 'failed' English GCSE with an 8 and an extra after school subject, mostly self taught with a 7!!!!
Her parents just continued to heap pressure on, should have got a tutor, etc.

Of course she failed to get an interview at Cambridge, immediately dropped all the extra curricular stuff because it was all for being impressive rather than fun.

Has had a huge amount of grief for having a boyfriend, a week off at Christmas.

We hear from the younger brother who's friends with my son.

They've broken that kid, and the irony is the dad couldn't cope with the Cambridge workload and resat a year. It's dominated that families talk of the future for far too long. It's going to need a lot of unpicking.

Heh.

Yikes.

How can it be fair? Just because children are in top private or top grammar, doesn’t mean their grades should be regarded as worth less, not should it mean that they didn’t need to work hard.

It is obviously not a fair selection & inherently very discriminative.

It is fairer @flawless
If your maths set are all A star students, the teacher can teach to the set doesn't have to deferentiate, you cover more ground in class less distruption. From that cohort we can expect to see an A star and additional time gaining an epq, entering a maths challenge, etc

If you are in a class of thirty, mixed ability, probably more distribution, certainly a less targeted lesson. We can expect that our top student will have to spend their additional time recovering the ground, exploring the extra concepts that are beyond most of the school cohort. Someone who walks out with an A star amongst C, D & E has worked just as hard, clearly self motivated. The lack of epq and extra curricular is to be expected, particularly since he may well have more domestic or paid work to fit in.

Hasn’t it been proved that (total generalisation) state school pupils more likely to thrive at university as they are more used to self motivating and working independently ? Family member who is an Oxford tutor bears this out - most are fine of course but if there are issues with a student the most common one is ex public school student floundering as now away from their tailored support network…

I think maths is a good example because there's a particularly massive ability range at secondary level, which makes it challenging for more inclusive schools to cope with. DS1 was streets ahead of most of his peers (at his rubbish school) by Y9/Y10 (only in maths/physics, nothing else) and there was just nothing at his academy school to cater to him.

By Y10, where - even in the 'top' set - the focus was on getting pupils up to a 6 or 7 grade, his teacher was putting him in the corner with GCSE papers and (later on) an A level textbook and telling him to get on with it by himself. The upside was he got used to independent working very quickly, but the downside was he essentially got very little teaching for about two years - two years when he could have been doing maths competitions and all sorts of enrichment that his fellow students at Oxford often did as standard.

So yeah in that case I do think the 9 he got says something specific about his ability that it wouldn't have said if he'd got the same 9 from a top academically selective school. Not that he's cleverer, or even that he had to work hard for it (he didn't), but that he's resilient and able to pull out a good performance even in challenging circumstances. To be fair, his analogues in the top schools didn't have a chance to prove they could do this; some of them absolutely could have, of course. But that's where they can show their initiative/resilience through supra-curricular stuff.

I'd never survive bringing up kids in today's climate.

@TheaBrandt - “state school pupils more likely to thrive at university as they are more used to self motivating and working independently”.
My DC are heavily encouraged to work hard at grammar school and the expectation is that everyone in sets 1-3 maths easily gets a 9.

Oxford and Cambridge provide their students with far more 1 to 1 attention than most other universities. So it isn’t really a proper argument for Oxbridge per se.

@FlawlessSquid - society works like this at higher levels too. If I work 60 hours a week as a corporate lawyer I pay a huge amount of extra tax. So I have decided to work less (25 hours instead) and spend more time with my DC. My choice. I pay much less tax now. However, not exactly having the huge stellar career I could have, but I am happy and comfortable.
As regards my DC, I am finding their grammars really very pushy academically speaking. Thinking of sending the youngest to relax at the local comp instead and have more fun as a teen and be celebrated as the clever one.

Social engineering create mediocrity. Many do not realise some parents make huge sacrifices to send their children to private schools for they value education than expensive holidays or a bigger house etc. This is a family's preference. Only a small section of parents are rich or got an inheritance. Or sometimes grandparents sponsor. Either way, they give more value to education than other things that money could have bought. If you feel that's unfair then you are mistaken. As being aspirational is one's choice.

We should socially engineer getting rid of private schools with attitudes like that!

Yet in 2023 the school with the most Oxbridge offers was a state school in one of the poorest , and most multicultural boroughs in London, Brampton Manor. Blimey gov, in a few years they’ll all be dropping their aitches innit?

Plenty of parents don't have the spare £20000-£30000 a year needed to privately school even one child. No amount of saving on houses and fancy holidays is going to change that.

The best chances for Oxbridge is by going to a grammar school.
if your DC cannot get through the entrance exam for a grammar school that’s probably a sign that their chances of Oxbridge are slim anyway.

Old thread I know but it's hardly surprising that an academically selective sixth form
In a 'poor' ethnically diverse area gets lots of kids into Oxbridge. Still lots of sharp elbows.

The education system is still failing those poor students in failing schools dotted around the country. The amount of '9's at GCSE and Astar at 'A' level is ridiculous.

It would be fabulous if those really naturally bright children got the opportunity however this would require a lot of work by Oxbridge plus would require them to accept a big shift in the way it operates. It won't happen, they are performing a controlled opening up of admissions.

Loads go from our local comp. It’s not a grammar.