15th April 2011 9:58
By Blue Tutors
This week a student from Ausralia wrote an article outlining her thoughts on being rejected from Cambridge University. Isabella is a model student - her coursework received a mark of 100%, she beat over 10,000 students to receive a General Exhibition prize, and won the Literature Exhibition, a prize awarded to the top student in her country for Literature. So why was she rejected? Although the university was clear that her application would not be disadvantaged by her experience of the Australian education system, she feels that deeply embedded bias led to her rejection.
Each year there are many stories like this, with newspapers and politicians claiming they have found the perfect student who was rejected, thus proving the system is biased for one reason or another. However, this case is interesting, because it is perfectly clear that in the Australian system the student is the best she could be, yet her Cambridge rejection cited the narrow literature syllabus offered by her Australian school, and a general lack of cultural awareness in her writing.
Cambridge are perfectly within their rights to reject someone on these grounds, although it would be nice, as she pointed out, if they took their claim to look for potential over past opportunities a bit more seriously. But if we get to the bottom of what they are saying, it's that she didn't have the cultural capital that they like in their students, that awareness of literary, social and political ideas that often comes from upbringing and life experiences rather than formal education.
This is one of the reasons that tutoring has become so popular today - parents are not just after improving their child's exam results, they are trying to give them a greater cultural awareness, and the opportunity to be exposed to new ideas. A tutor can mark work and advise on literary themes for coursework, but they might also use analogies based on modern political issues, they could bring in philosophy, sociology, and explain the historical circumstances that informed an event in a classic novel. This is what is missing for so many students today, and it's not something you can find in a book or on the school syllabus. Tutoring is one way in which students can access this kind of resource, and improve their chances of success at university and beyond.