Berkshire


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<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-planning-for-oxbridge-in-year-9-feels-very-early-is-it-really-necessary"><strong>Planning for Oxbridge in Year 9 feels very early. Is it really necessary?&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<p>If you have an academically-inclined child who is starting to think about universities, it’s definitely the right time to start looking at Oxford or Cambridge. There’s no minimum age limit for going to an Open Day&nbsp; or looking around the universities, and although it might cement their desire to go, it might also be a way to rule it out – you might have a child who thinks, ‘urgh this is a bit traditional for me’.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The other, more important reason to get children thinking about it now is because their GCSE choices and grades are incredibly important. They quite literally help contribute towards your likelihood of accessing one of these universities. If you think about it, since the removal of AS levels, GSCES are the only concrete attained grades you are submitting as part of your application and, in an&nbsp;Oxbridge&nbsp;context, the indication that you can really work hard.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>But it’s OK to have a couple of subjects that don’t go quite so well?&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<p>The kind of question I get asked a lot is, “I’m applying for science, surely it doesn’t matter that I got a six in French?” I wish this wasn’t my answer, but actually it does matter because a lot of the courses at Oxford or Cambridge are so intensive.&nbsp;</p>



<p>That said, there’s been much more effort to contextualise GSCE results. When I applied to Oxford, It was around 50/50 independent to state schools entry but now the vast majority of students taken into Oxford or Cambridge are from the state sector – around 75%, – there have been enormous steps to widen access and contextualise students’ attainment, and one of the key pieces of data they use for that contextualisation is GCSE performance against your school’s GCSE performance. So if you’ve got all nines from Westminster or St. Paul’s, that’s seen to be quite different from getting all sevens from an underperforming state school where 80% of the cohort are on free school meals. We say anything below an eight in your GSCE if you’re at a top-performing independent school, starts to be a problem in any subject.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Can you tell when you meet the pupils which ones have what it takes?&nbsp;</h3>



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<p>Not at pre-GCSE stage. Really, at this point, it’s about enthusing the pupil and giving them encouragement to work hard for their goal. But when students come in to see if us during their A levels we absolutely can. Last week one of the students came in to see me, and brought her personal statement draft, plus a reading list she’d been working on. She wanted to talk about her subject and wasn’t at all fazed to try some practice questions with me. I had another student who came in and the whole discussion was about which subject would be easier to get into the university on, and when I asked whether he was interested in the subject he said he didn’t know yet.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Big flags for me are if at this time of yet they haven’t started their reading yet, because if they love the subject they should be doing it anyway. These are the most academic courses in the world, you need to adore what you’re studying.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>What if your child is shy? Will it hold you back in interviews at Oxbridge?&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<p>Because it’s still about one-to-one tutorials at Oxbridge, they don’t mind a student being shy. Especially in an interview context, they are looking for the intelligent content of answers rather than really showy children. For example, if you have a shy child who wants to study engineering, they’ll give them&nbsp; maths and physics problems and see how he or she logically works through it. They don’t then need to see your child do a dance! They’re trained to spot intelligence.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Can you work magic on any child applying to Oxbridge?&nbsp;</strong></h3>



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<p>No! If they don’t have the language ability to cope with an interview environment, we’ll advise them that this probably isn’t going to be a feasible pathway. Also, if GSCE grades are much poorer than the context of the school or predicted grades aren’t what they need to be there’s no wiggle room. A student was predicted A*, A and B recently and I had to tell them they didn’t meet the requirements for application. They will automatically be removed from the process before the interview stage.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>But if you have all nines at GSCE you’re OK to apply?&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<p>I always talk about your GCSEs and your predicted grades for A level as allowing you out of the starting blocks; basically top grades let you put your hat in the ring. However, they’re not the thing that marks you out because you’re just joining a race with loads of similar candidates who all have great grades.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>So, if the grades don’t qualify you, what else do these poor kids have to offer?&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<p>Oxbridge specifically introduced several assessments throughout the process that add up to the whole application – it might be essay submissions, it might be special exams to answer the question of out of all the children with nines at GSCE which is the best physicist or historian? Then you’ll have at least two interviews. I mean, I had four to get into my college of St Hilda’s!&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>What about extra curricular stuff? Does being the hockey captain or head boy still hold any sway?</strong></h3>



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<p>I can’t say this strongly enough – they don’t value any of that at all anymore! Sport, music, leadership, they have no bearing on the admissions process whatsoever. Oxford University clearly states on its website that, “There is a myth that Oxford is looking for well-rounded applicants with a long list of extracurricular activities. In fact, any extracurricular activities are only helpful if they demonstrate the selection criteria for your child’s chosen course”. I’ll have people saying, my son does county cricket, and I’m thinking, “That’s great – but is he going to get through the maths test?!” My tutor who taught me Old English wouldn’t have cared if I played netball. She just wanted to know if I was any good at Old English.&nbsp;</p>



<p>This is an interesting conversation to have with pupils before they start GSCES as it’s important to dispel that myth. I do sometimes meet parents who’ve spent thousands getting these children to grade eight flute, or into county sports teams; I have to explain it has zero value on the application and they look devastated! I always say, please do these extracurricular activities if you like them, and they add to your life but don’t expect them to have any impact on your university chances.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>So what will help a child’s application to Oxbridge?</strong></h3>



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<p>It has to be something that’s super-curricular. So, it means you’re doing something connected to your academic discipline, but you’re doing it in a way that’s going beyond just what you do in the classroom. Maybe you’ve taken it upon yourself to enter into an essay competition, or start the club for your chosen subject at school, or you’ve taken yourself off for relevant work experience in the field you want to study. Maybe you’ve watched docudramas about the fall of the Tsars on Netflix because that’s your favourite period of history. Or you’ve made a special visit up to the Jorvik Museum because you want to apply to the Anglo Saxon, Norse and Celtic course. Basically, it’s just about being really nerdy about your subject. In whatever way, shape, or form.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Should parents be reaching for their credit cards or rolodex of contacts to help then?&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<p>Definitely not. Oxbridge, in its widening participation moves, has been very vocal about making a distinction between super curricular activities that are democratically available to everyone, like borrowing a book from the school library or watching the MIT lectures on YouTube. Those things are free, compared to a summer course that costs £2000 or £4000 and is dependent on parent wealth. That also goes for work experience where Oxbridge recognises that those from more privileged backgrounds will have an unfair advantage in, for example, finding work experience in law firms. So, they’re quite rightly focusing on the context of that application and what opportunities someone did or didn’t have.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Can the super-posh beat the system? There’s word that panicky parents have been pulling their children out of private and into state schools to help the ‘optics’ for Oxbridge&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<p>That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nuances of how admissions are done. When Oxbridge look at your child’s GSCEs, they will look at them in the context of the school they have left, so it makes absolutely no difference.&nbsp;Also Oxbridge recognise many other metrics – your postcode and your socio-economic area, whether your parents have been to university, if you’re a carer, if you’re on free school meals, and other extenuating circumstances.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Are independent school children being discriminated against with Oxbridge entrance these days?</strong>&nbsp;</h3>



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<p>The two universities are trying to make Oxbridge look like the rest of the country where roughly 7% of pupils are independently educated at Sixth Form level. They’re still saying to independent schools, ”Send us your absolute best students we’ll take them”. There are still loads of them getting in, but perhaps not 80 from Eton each year.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>How can Muddy parents help advise their kids on subject choices?</strong></h3>



<p>At GCSE your children can’t really go too far wrong, mostly because most schools have a policy that you take a wide variety of subjects – sciences, an art, a language and so on. When it gets to A Level, you really do want to aim for academic subjects rather than vocational subjects with the obvious one or two exceptions. For example, if you’re applying to the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford, it makes total sense to have Art A Level.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Or perhaps, if you’re applying for Architecture at Cambridge, and you’ve paired your art A level with Maths, Further Maths and Physics. But otherwise, would&nbsp;Oxbridge&nbsp;rather see an A Level in History or a Modern Language or Maths than Media Studies or Textiles? Definitely. LSE is the only university to considerably stick its head above the parapet with this issue of subject choices. They issue something called the ‘non-preferred subjects list’. Other universities tend to point you to it too, so it’s quite a good indicator of what has more and less sway with various unis.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What’s your top piece of advice for A Level students?</h3>



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<p>One specific, and very common pitfall is to not equip yourself with further maths if you’re going for anything with a quantitative component and you’re looking at&nbsp;Oxbridge. That’s my number one advice for A Levels, if you’re going to do any kind of remotely mathematical subject, you do yourself an enormous favour by taking maths and further maths or you may find yourself at a significant disadvantage without it.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Also, I always say aim for clusters rather than breadth. Breadth is the opposite of what you want if you’re applying for&nbsp;Oxbridge. Breadth is an American concept or works if you’re applying for a broad degree, but we’re mainly a single subject system. So, I try to deter students from taking, for example, maths, a language, and a social science. Because it’s much better to ‘group’ – perhaps take all essay subjects and really solidify that framework of critical text engagement through a modern or classical language, English and history.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Likewise, a sensible ‘group’ would be maths, further maths, and two sciences. The other problem with breadth is that students generally, with only a couple of exceptions, tend not to be all-rounders. They do genuinely tend to be science driven or maths-brain people, or, artsy, humanities people. So, if you aim for breadth, you sometimes end up with what I call the ‘rogue B’, either in a predicted grade or in the real thing, the two main culprits usually being maths and chemistry. It’s not your natural skill set and you just can’t rise above the B. So I advise to go for the subjects you’re fantastic at, don’t burden yourself with a rogue subject.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Finally – how do you know all this stuff?!&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<p>This is all we do full-time! Often in schools, there’s a UCAS coordinator or a teacher who’s in charge of&nbsp;Oxbridge, but they’re mostly in charge of teaching their A Level class. We live it every day, combing through and collating the admissions wrap-up reports every year, and staying up to date with all the latest alerts from both universities. Plus we have really good relationships with the&nbsp;Oxbridge&nbsp;academics, either just longstanding contacts in the universities or our own peer group – a lot of our contemporaries are now at the universities as junior fellows and so on.&nbsp;</p>



<p>What’s also useful is that we’re the in-house plug-in&nbsp;Oxbridge support for around 70 schools including the likes of JAGS, Rugby, Wellington, Marlborough, and Bradfield, who use us to help with personal statements, mock interviews, and test preparation, so we get to see what happens every single year during the admissions process across hundreds of pupils. Our success rate is around 50% so I guess something is working!</p>



<p><a href="https://oxbridgeapplications.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>Oxbridge Applications</em></a></p>


Getting into Oxbridge – insider tips on admissions from the experts

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