Grrrrr sorry this is a silent vent about ds who is 'undecided' re university - bit late!

[NotanOtter]

just offloading really

ds seems to want me to pick his course. Up until three weeks ago ( but only for about 12 months prior IYSWIM) ds wanted to do medicine at university

Then he waxed and waned a little

Then he was in the National youth Theatre over summer and came back all fired up to be an actor

Then started making 'jokes' about not doing medicine

DP willing to just let it all lie but i wont and start questionning if its right for him...cue daily changing of mind

Cue me starting to stress over unwritten personal statement

.....him getting moody now and saying 'no one has done it' and still no nearer WHAT exactly he does want to study

Anyone been here and offer me sound advice ...

had a friend round so just got on here tonight - totally unheard of - yes he is at a state school (selective though so not sure how that works0 great idea but we live too near leeds and the other (sorry to offend but Bradford has been demolished) only university and ice rink left!

Senua you areright

DS head of sixth year has been sniffy about cambridge as he prefers oxford
esach of his a level teachers have told us he should follow their subject at university - including RS!

DS has moaned buckets about RS being waffly and awful and you cant get teeth into it but has scored 99 and 100 so far ...

I almost feel he is an artist stuck in a scientists body...this is after a few glasses or red

todays news is that he has decided he is not dedicated enough to go into medicine and that natural sciences sounds good

thanks to advice on here he has been perusing the alternative prospectii and tonight said magdalene looked appealing

he says he will go down again in september to look over colleges. its his birthday tomorrow ( well celebrating a week late as he was at NYT when he had it)

tomorrow we have the trauma of the year nine daughters science module results and ICT - the joy

It sounds as though he wants to go to Oxbridge more than he wants to study any particular subject.

Might he benefit from a gap year?

DS1 is a top grade student (aren't they all? ) with a very realistic chance of getting into Oxbridge but he wants to study medicine much much more than he wants to go to Oxbridge. And so, he considers Oxbridge a potential waste of one of his four precious choices. DS1 hasn't finally decided where to apply and I'm leaving it entirely up to him. And he hasn't written his personal statement as far as I know.

I do know he's going to the Leeds festival this weekend though.

swedes tell him to drop in on me!
ds is happy today and contemplating the personal statement

dd however received the forst of her module grades and ict gcse grades and i am so wishing she had not done them in year nine

but then we knew today would be like this

NAO - Thank you, if anything goes wrong for him I might be sending you an email SOS. Glad your DS is feeling brighter.

I can't swear for everyone, but I would say that if an Oxbridge interviewer says "And why did you pick this college?" they are just offering a conversation opener. It certainly shouldn't be a test in any way, shape or form. It can be an opportunity to say 'because I read Dr X's book and really enjoyed it and I saw she was a fellow of this college', if this is the case (in which case expect to discuss Dr X's book), but you can equally well say 'because I loved the art on the walls', or 'because I thought the gardens were beautiful', or 'because I came to visit and I thought the students were very friendly'. If you say, 'well, actually I made an Open application', then the only disadvantage is that the interviewer has to think up another conversation opener. In fact, I'd say the most common reason to apply to a college is that the students heard someone from that college doing a talk or were taught by them on a summer school.

Frankly, there isn't nearly as much difference between colleges as we all pretend, and the differences which are important are the ones that students have no chance of finding out about, so I'd say there's no reason not to make an Open application.

If your son's a good mix of arts and sciences, he could always look at applying for the Cambridge NST with an aim of picking History and Philosophy of Science as one of the options in his 2nd year.

If he thinks he might like to be an actor, then doing an academic theatre studies course is unlikely to be of any help to him at all. I am speaking as someone who studied English and Theatre, and then spent time doing opens for west end musicals, before deciding to give it all up for a "proper" job(teaching drama). If he wants to do acting, then a vocational "training" course is much more sensible, OR a degree in something totally different, with lots of time spent doing extra-curricular drama. If he has a real talent, then I would suggest a degree in something he enjoys, then a post-grad year at a drama school, after which all his options will be open, and if he doesn't get where he wants to with acting, he still has a decent qualification to use. IME, teenagers get sniffy about parents/teachers suggesting they have something to "fall back on" - the implication being that they are bound to fail at the creative path they wish to follow, but in reality, a decent education, not necessarily in drama, is hugely beneficial to those wishing to get into acting.

If he's not sure about medicine, he really shouldn't do it. Because medical training is so specific it leaves you very few options. What's more, the NHS will be facing the worst economic crisis in its entire history between 2011/14 so it may well be hard for newly qualified docs to find jobs for some years after that. Natural sciences sounds like a far better plan.

If he's interested in acting and wants to do Oxbridge, surely the best advice would be to perservere with the Oxbridge application and then, if successful, he will have an opportunity to join the Footlights or OUD. Does he realise how many of our best actors, performers/writers started out this way?

While an open application might not disadvantage you, it often means you get put at the "less popular" colleges. - the ones far out of town, the women's only one at Cambridge, etc.

That may be so, but I'd say that there's very little logic behind which colleges are 'popular' and which aren't. The popularity of colleges can spike wildly from year to year depending on what activities the students and tutors there have been engaged in (publish popular book = lots more students apply). So I don't think that being allocated to a college which was less popular really would be any kind of disadvantage.

A friend of mine who interviews for one of the less well known colleges was delighted when two students who were interviewed both by her and someone at the older and better known college which they had actually applied for were offered places at both (complicated pool situation, I suppose), and both chose to attend her college having met her and looked around, although neither would necessarily have chosen to apply there. Both interviewers were young, dynamic people, so there wasn't an obvious bias caused by the interviewer.

On the whole, students enjoy wherever they are, and are firmly persuaded that they wouldn't have liked any other college half as much. It's like supporting football teams really.

My oldest did a degree with about 3 - 5 hours of lectures a week and had a very good time. I'ts not hindered her career wise and she starts her first job in the city tomorrow. Medicine by contrast is a very time demanding c course, is a vocation and isn't in comparison to other things he might achieve (although not most actors who end up being waitors as we all know) that well paid either. So he should perhaps consider changing to a different course even but at Oxbridge and don't bother with the gap year idea. Just get on with it.