Oxbridge advice please

[faustina]

could do with some help - ds currently in year 12 and wants to go to Oxbridge. there's a small group of friends who plan same but to date the only support they've been given was in year 11 when a girl who'd received an offer gave them a little talk one lunchtime. Absolutely nothing else. Help was promised in september, then after Christmas, then after easter - now changed to "in September". Is this normal?
I've read about oxbridge entrance courses that you can do privately - has anyone gone down this route? I haven't heard many good things about them - eg they aren't that useful
ds applied for the eton summer school but received total non-reference from head of 6th form. He said "what do you want me to put" and of course ds has no idea how to write a ref so said" well could you put that I can't study these subjects at school (ppe) and so I would really like to do them"". And that's exactly what he did put - nothing else. It wouldn't have occurred to ds that something about his abilities and personal qualities is what's needed in a ref.. No idea how they choose people for summer school but sure this can't have helped.

Academically ds more than capable, but no-one receiving any real encouragement from school. am not pushing oxbridge but feel if he does want to go he will need to extra help and time seems to be running out for this. any ideas? He has already worked his way through the reading list the girl gave them. There's almost nothing extra curricular offered at his school academically - he did debating society and loved it but that ended in january when they went out of the mace competition, and he's done a shakespeare production and loved that too.
he's doing history, maths, chemistry and religious philosphy and ethics as levels and predicted as, he got 10 a* 1 a and 1 b for gcses
he is at a state school but we are not in a category that can apply for any of the schemes for would-be students who are disadvantaged in any way - eg, sutton, aim higher etc etc

I went to one of the lesser-known Oxford colleges and would agree with TotalChaos about the advantages - certainly my college had much less of a hothouse atmosphere than some of the older and more traditional colleges. It was also a hell of a lot less cliquey with a real mixture of people which I found reassuring - a friend of mine from sixth form went to one of the oldest and most well-known colleges where everyone was posh and bitchy, she had a terrible time.

I agree that the poorer colleges are likely to be a bit less obliging when it comes to book loans etc, but they can be better when it comes to accommodation - because our college was newer it had a lot more room for accommodation meaning that we could stay in halls for the whole three years. We also had kitchens - this is something you might assume that all colleges have but quite a lot don't have kitchens at all, meaning you have to eat in halls every night and this gets added onto your battels (rent etc) for the term which can make them considerably more expensive.

One hint for interviews - you will be interviewed by the tutors for your subject. They are looking for pupils that they will enjoy teaching - pupils who are engaged with the subject, interesting people, and above all enthusiastic, about both the subject and the workload. You need to be able to think on your feet and be able to hold your own in a debate. They don't want to spend the next three years teaching someone without any original thoughts or personality.

Lastly, grades are important, but if they like you they may well make you a low offer. Several of my friends were offered places if they only received three B's at A-level. I didn't get the grades I needed at A-level but they rung me up the morning results came out and offered me a place doing a slightly different course, which I took.

Sorry, bit of a long and rambling post but hopefully some of it will be helpful

Steamedtreacle makes some very good points there.

It can be extremely pressured at Oxbridge (which is why the Counselling Service has to set up so many support groups for this sort of thing) so there is a lot to be said for sniffing out the friendly people where you can find them. Also there are a lot of central funds that can be applied for, for vacation travel and so on, so picking a college on the basis of maybe getting a small book grant at some point in the future is a bit pointless really. Plus all UGs on the full level of funding get Newton Trust top up funding anyway, in the region of £1000.

Once they have got through the interview stage successfully, more people get let in with grades lower than AAA than you might think. I think we are all aware that chasing As at AL is not the be-all and end-all, but that we have to work within the system we have, to some extent. You would be surprised how few current staff members have strings of As at AL - it's no guaranteed predictor of top flight academic success later on, we find, certainly at postgraduate level (bearing in mind though that grading systems changed after 1988 and many of us have school-based qualifications that pre-date that).

Personal statement will be critical, and should really show a passion for the subjects applied for. How your spare time, reading, hobbies etc are used to further this.

Can he get time shadowing your local MP for Politics? (ours offers this to local interested comp. school pupils, as DD discovered when she considered the PPE)

Will he continue all 4 subjects to full A2 level? Not essential but they sometimes ask what the "spare" time will be filled with.

Totally agree with looking at the smaller colleges. DD was pooled from Jesus and ended up at New Hall, where most are from the pool!

DO make sure he really knows the course. DD had her heart set on Oxford, until she read the whole syllabus and then switched to Cambridge.

Good luck

ds now realising possibilities of philosophy as single subject much more interesting than he'd previously thought - I am glad because it is something he has a true passion for, whereas the politics and economics were more interests. Cambridge looks like being his first choice after all (oxford don't do single philosophy)- he is still interested in kings I'm afraid - liked the ethos of non-conformity that came across in the student prospectus, also the art, photography and drama which are really big for him.
I checked the module results and he has so far - 80% for maths, 91 and 95% for chemistry, and 93% for religious philosophy and ethics. he definitely wants to continue them all into the second year

will try to organize individual college visits also - I know there are some coming up this month

thank you again for all this help : )

faustina - there are so many options to get involved in art, photography and drama across Cambridge that it isn't so critical to pick a college that is known for this IYSWIM. so he shouldn't worry that his choice of college dictates what he can do on an extra-curricular basis.

i hear what people say about some of the less well-known colleges, but these can often be smaller than the well-known ones. the one thing to be careful of with these, is that if you don't find like-minded people in your year group then you can be a bit stuffed as there are fewer people to hang out with. i ended up at Trinity, which is the biggest and some would think the poshest/snobbiest, but because there were so many undergrads, it was very easy to find like-minded individuals. My DH was at Sidney Sussex which I would also recommend looking at - great location, good student accom, not so many of the public school stereotype students and at least in the 90s had a really warm, friendly atmosphere.

finally, find out whether philosophy teaching is largely organised through college (in which case he needs to apply to a college that has a good reputation in the subject) or through the department (in which case he can just go for a college he likes the look of). I did geography where supervisions were organised through the dept so it meant it didn't matter that i was at a college that didn't really have a reputation in my subject because i had access to the same supervisors as all other students as you signed up through the dept. however my english student friends had all their supervisions organised by college fellows so needed to be in a college with several good english fellows.