28th April 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Following on from an article we wrote a couple of weeks ago on admissions Policies at Oxbridge, there are more cases in the news criticising those policies. One was the prime minister, who claimed that Oxford accepted only one black student last year, a claimed which was quickly rebuked by Oxford, suggesting that he look again at the statistics. Another case was written about on our website recently, where a model Australian student was unsuccessful in her application to Oxford, and felt that something untoward was going on.
Obviously the roots of Blue Tutors lie at Cambridge, and the vast majority of our tutors are from there or Oxford, so we may have a prejudiced view of Oxbridge, and how ‘fair’ their admissions policies are. However, something which has become increasingly clear over the years is, generally, how poorly understood the admissions policies are, Often by schools, but also, understandably, by parents.
Everyone hears the mythical tales of the Oxbridge interviews when they’re studying for A levels. There’s the example of a professor asking the interviewee to throw a brick through a window, and when the student does, the professor saying “I didn’t say you couldn’t open the window first”. Or the interviewee who, in their Oxford exam, when asked to write an essay on the nature of ‘guts’, wrote “this is guts”, and walked out. In truth these examples probably never happened, and are unrepresentative of the general Oxbridge interview experience. A few reproachable companies play on the myth of this bizarre interview process as a way to scare parents into paying lots of money for interview preparation, and that might be why the myth persists.
As A level results have consistently improved, and the best students have been crammed into an ever decreasing top grade boundary, the differences between the best and very best has become blurred, and it’s more difficult than ever to choose who’s the best, and who is not quite there. Obviously Oxford and Cambridge will look at students’ extra-curricular activities, and use them as deciding factors, but that’s not always easy.
The dirty little secret, the thing that successful applicants are too proud to admit, and that unsuccessful applicants are too annoyed to believe, is that a lot of the time a student’s success boils down to luck. Many graduates well tell you, looking back on their interview, that they don’t really know why they were offered a place at Oxford or Cambridge. It could have been because the interviewers were in a slightly better mood than for someone else, or because they got on with the interviewers that bit better.
Whatever the reason, it’s bound to be largely subjective; the interviewer just felt a student was easier to teach, or grasped ideas more quickly; nothing quantitative or clear, just an opinion. You could argue that Oxbridge shouldn’t use opinions to choose their students, but they do, and it’s their prerogative to do so. When you apply you’re putting yourself in the hands of whoever conducts your interview.