Oxford uni (and just unis in general)

[law4569]

Hi all!

Just wanted some advice. My daughter is applying for spanish + beginners German and wants to do a law conversion after. She's decided she wants to apply to Oxford, Edinburgh, ucl, durham and bristol or warwick. I wanted to know people's experiences with these unis as durham and Edinburgh are very far from where we live + warwick we're unsure if it's good for her degree. For anyone whose children went to Oxford, did they do well at gcse? She got 999888777 but she's worried because of the context of her skl (she did okay) then she'll be disadvantaged. if anyone has any sort of experience on any of this id appreciate it :)

PS @lightseeker that course run jointly by Sciences Po and Columbia does sound amazing. Can you tell us anything more about it?

OP - it's a shame that the school doesn't offer German A-level. But if she wants to read German at university she could make a good start by doing some self-study this summer, so she doesn't forget what she learned at GCSE.

She could also watch all of Heimat! And some major German novels in translation. There's plenty of time for relaxing too. But if she wants to apply, she should treat the summer as an opportunity to read widely and get ahead.

Some of my cleverer friends took extra A-levels under their own steam because they found the material enjoyable and easy - and didn't put themselves under great pressure to do well. The fact that they 'don't count' doesn't mean that they don't count intellectually! She should be willing to work around the standard expectations and school models, to do what is good for her, and stretches her.

On going home at weekends: I do remember that weekends weren't necessarily as busy as weeks in terms of socialising. Student club nights were during the week, college discos were usually Friday nights. There was a good deal of sport on Saturdays. That's a long time ago, of course. Either way, I don't think it's a problem if she goes home regularly, though better not to have a fixed plan in advance and rule herself out of getting involved.

Final point in response to the PP who said that admissions tutors don't necessarily know what they're doing: well, it's like any interview panel. There are so many very able young people, all with outstanding grades. The panels do their best. I've heard that there can be some horse-trading between tutors with very different views over candidates for dual/triple honours degrees. I've also heard of a case where a tutor realised a student was brilliant, but that they would find them difficult to teach, so recommended them to another college. That student probably assumed they were borderline, which they were not.

Then the students turn up nearly a year or two later - and may have changed their mind in the meantime about how committed they are, which doesn't mean the panel got it wrong at the time. Or, they may decide that university is for coasting, while school and the workplace are for hard work. Again, it doesn't mean the decision was wrong.

Or - the panel may well make mistakes, just as we do when interviewing for employment. It's a noisy process.

The OP’s DD is doing 4 A levels, that is a heavy work load. My DD2 grammar school only breaks for 5 weeks this summer. It is 2 weeks work experience, 1 week on holiday, 2 weeks studying for LNAT/finessing the personal statement/bit of A level catch up/see some friends/play a bit of music. It is gruelling, it has been a gruelling Year 12 when she did 5 A levels as that is the norm at her grammar. There is not much time to indulge your “passion” subject like tutors at Oxford like to idealise. Nor are the kids with 2 or 3 x 7s at a grammar school or private school coasting, they never did. The YPs know this, the employers know this. In the end, it all works out fine. None of DD1 or DS1’s friends who were rejected by Oxbridge are struggling in any shape or form. Many have graduate jobs, all amazing YPs.

He sounds really sensible as well as clever. I am glad he found such a good fit. You are right that it really doesn’t suit everyone. DD’s friend took a break after his first year as he was so unhappy, and he is returning this year, hopefully it will be better this time. The actual environment in terms of learning and culture suits my dd, but the intense pace didn’t, because there is no time to go into things in depth. You have to skim read, it’s impossible to read ten books for each essay. You can’t explore little corners of knowledge that you have found, there isn’t time for that either. It is also very tutor dependent, and some of them are really not great at teaching. Dd had a couple of terrible tutors in the first two years and was tearing her hair out (plus an assumption that she knew all kinds of things already, that coming from a Comp, she didn’t). Then in her third year she thankfully had an incredible woman tutoring her, and a wonderful supervisor, and she had a far better time, and that made her want to also apply there for her Masters.

https://sciencespo.gs.columbia.edu/content/program-overview

@poetryandwine - this was the Dual BA programme. There are (or were) different campuses around France depending on what region of the world and languages they want to study. It's quite complicated though!

There is a similar Dual BA between Colombia and Trinity Dublin, but I believe that one is for English Literature and related modules?

I do think it’s an issue if you go home a lot in a very short term. Establishing friends and consolidating friendships would definitely present an issue. Gelling is important and, with an ab initio MFL, you might well
need the language learning facilities at the weekend!

What do you mean ‘considering she moved country’

So she didn’t do three from year 10 or she did? I’m confused.

My DS did three at GCSE and overall results were 11 9’s. I don’t think it’s that rare at all to do three languages at GCSE.

@Araminta1003 Many tutors will have done A-levels themselves and will have a reasonable sense of what is possible time-wise.

From my own young person's experience, the core teaching time was five hours per week per subject - I would have liked them to have taken on a little more, if not a full fourth A-level.

Some of the most able often do find their subjects relatively easy, especially because the English system encourages early specialisation. That mightn't be the best system, and it doesn't mean that such students are the most teachable - or indeed the best graduate researchers or employees later on. Indeed, I've heard that some tutors do recruit for a range of cognitive strengths because they have found traditional 'brilliance' a bit shallow.

But even so, some students do get their required work done more quickly and efficiently than most, and do have time to read deeply.

@startagainagainagain It’s extremely rare to do 3 MFLs in a “bog standard” comp and few dc do 11 GCSEs and a tiny few get 11 at grade9. As a result I think you are in another world. Many schools teach French or Spanish and no third MFL is available at all. The timetable is often 1 MFL only. It’s simply not true to say standard dc taking 9 or 10 GCSEs can do 3 MFLs. That’s ok if you are fluent in another one and don’t need teaching but I think 3 at GCSE is rare.

In 2024, only 145 dc got 11 grade 9s. So Oxford with 3600 places takes plenty who don’t get this- in case anyone is disheartened.

That’s in England. Wales still uses letter grades, not sure about Scotland and NI plus there are the equivalent overseas students to consider.

It must be more than that @MeetMeOnTheCorner ? I can think of about 5 schools within a few miles radius of me where probably half of the year group get those kind of grades. And those who don't will only have one or two 8s.

AI confirms the result cited by @MeetMeOnTheCorner . It isn’t perfect but it is usually reliable in matters of public record like this.

Are the schools themselves publicising grade profiles? If not, the likely answer seems obvious.

They don’t count private schools in those figures for top GCSEs?

Because I know from my nephew that 60 boys at Eton got all 9s in their GCSEs in 2025 so it cannot just be 145 in the whole country because they do 11 GCSEs as the norm there.

Most of the more highly ranked private schools do IGCSEs rather than GCSEs which are not counted in the official stats.

I'm sorry your daughter had such a hard time (and you too) @law4569. Universities do take things like that into account and if you have circumstances that mean you have had more challenges than others may have experienced, there is a section on the UCAS form to explain these. Moving countries and suffering a bereavement definitely count.

I think moving countries isn't one to be honest! I don't think she'll include it bc of that

This is the data from the government. It’s from ofqual - government. Not sure if private schools are included or not. I doubt if igcses are. It’s highly unusual to get all grade 9s.

IGCSEs definitely aren't included. If you look at schools data on the DfE tables, you'll see that lots of the more selective private schools have eg nobody passing both English and Maths at grade 5 or above which is completely incompatible with their own published results.There are schools that have 80%+ grade 8s and 9s which are listed with nobody passing English and Maths at grade 5. I think probably the private schools that do GCSEs instead are included along with everyone else.

If your daughter wants to go to Oxford, OP, I guess she can let them decide if moving countries is something that may have impacted her results. I think it sounds a bit stressful personally, especially combined with a bereavement.

If DD moved to the UK and began GCSEs on the back of her father’s death, that is definitely worth mentioning! It is a valid explanation for the improvement she is showing now.

DD must decide if she wants to mention this. It depends partly on how long before the move and the GCSEs her DF died, and how badly this affected her to the school’s knowledge , possibly with documentation. Standards vary.

The main discussion should come from her referee, but DD can mention this as an adverse circumstance and say she has asked the referee to discuss it. However if her DF died several years before GCSEs this will not necessarily be helpful.

Something to think about.

Our DF died 1 month before O levels started for dsis in the early 80s. No one remotely cared about it. School certainly didn’t. Times have changed, thankfully.

That was really wrong. I am very sorry this happened to you.

To your sister, scholastically, and your family more generally.

I would weave it straight into the opening line of the personal statement and passion for literature and search for sense of self, mortality and identity.

Very hard for a YP to carry this off successfully, especially to Oxbridge standards, though not impossible. It can easily sound generic or like a play for sympathy. Admissions tutors have a keen eye for the latter.

I have been thinking that this DD might find a couple of sessions with a professional admissions adviser useful - even one session if the budget will allow it. A discussion of whether Oxford is a good fit for her would be important, but so too would the question of how best to deal with this tragic and potentially mitigating circumstance.