I should add I was there in the mid 80s

But the place still isn’t on the radar of lots of state schools, perhaps because so few of the teachers or parents went there, and people feel wrongly, it’s not for them, and so the cycle continues…

this.

Alumni outreach works a bit, but only targets state schools that already have an Oxbridge history. The main thing is often coaching in interview technique given the weight placed on this at application.

No that was Queens

EDIT: It doesn’t work with the edit, and a reputation only because of its name – but wrong.

Eh? Oh come on, Wadhams well known for being left wing and errr liberal.

The bop is mad for starters!

Besides, your experience alone doesn’t tell the full picture and I’m actually fairly surprised that as a man who states that he went to a state school, that you haven’t mentioned that you didn’t feel at least a little bit out of place there. Or did your upper class puppet masters manage to make you feel like one of them?

Can I answer somebody else’s question again? No, I didn’t feel the least bit out of place there, and though I didn’t mix with the toffs I had friends who’d been to comps like me, grammar schools and private schools. Didn’t and don’t feel upper class, so I don’t think it worked on me, just that whilst there are folks like that around they are easily avoided if you don’t fit in with them. Mind you I did go to some parties with people very not like me in my first term.

Well, a few of the lads I knew did and I could understand why.

I think the biggest factor is state school dont get as good grades in the first place and are less likely to get through the interview. Oh and if out reach by oxford only goes to places they have kids coming from already its a **** joke.

Anyone with half a brain can work out that oxford is elitist ( its supposed to be) and favours those from a more wealthy background.

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/aug/14/oxford-university-private-a-level

state school dont get as good grades in the first place

True. But beyond that there will always be a lot of straight A (predicted) students at application stage from all schools. Many state school students do not apply due to lack of history. Some state students will apply but without decent interview prep will come up short. These are 2 needlessly prohibitive barriers to state students gaining entry.

It doesn’t take a wealthy background to address these.

TomW – maybe that is because they share your inability to have an open mind, exhibited so brilliantly on here.

Or maybe I’m giving a counter anecdote, considering that none of you seem to understand statistics or probability.

Also, I’m very good at fitting in with rahs. I just won’t pretend like some of you, that Oxford is a bastion of meritocracy.

Yak firstly is there any evidence that state school kids dont apply? And secondly how do we better prepare state school kids for interview with no money to do it?

We are merely slaves to our experience, but it is at least our experience – unfortunately bald statistics don’t always indicate causation.

anagallis_arvensis – I can’t answer the first except anecdotally, so I won’t try.

But the 2nd – this is a case of an extra hour a week by a committed teacher for the group of applicants for a short period. There are plenty of duff ‘time-filler’ subjects within a sixth-form day that could be substituted for this*

*back in my day, we had to fill a certain number of taught lessons per week. Even 4 A-levels didn’t fill it completely so there was some ‘filler’ stuff. I imagine it may be the same now?

and also our own experience is a poor indicator of larger scale processes

http://m.mic.com/articles/1872/classism-is-entrenched-in-british-student-social-clubs

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15940208

The writers experiences of Oxford (bbc video) mirror some of my own friends experiences in the 21st century.

Yak so you can fill the social capital gap with a few extra tips from a teacher. Pull the other one. Private education buys much more than grades and wealth can enrich your cv beyond measure. What you suggest is already done in all schools I’ve taught in. It helps some but cannot compete with a properly financed system built into high quality education driving you in that direction and thats before you factor in how the wealthy can boost a cv.

But the 2nd – this is a case of an extra hour a week by a committed teacher for the group of applicants for a short period. There are plenty of duff ‘time-filler’ subjects within a sixth-form day that could be substituted for this.

I was offered extra tuition by my teachers in order to sit entrance exams – in the event, being a lazy bugger who didn’t feel like doing extra work I just applied to those colleges which didn’t require the entrance exam. Unsurprisingly those also happen to be the colleges with the highest state school intake. Didn’t actually get much interview prep, but given I was applying to study engineering, the interview was more about testing technical ability than how good your interview technique was – or at least I remember coping with it fairly well.

anagallis_arvensis – I’m not disagreeing in principle. It just that at the point of application decent students are getting undersold by their preparation, regardless of whether they’ve had a great cv-boosting background or not. The interview should be there to assess potential, not necessarily experience to date based on money spent. That part should be obvious.

The writers experiences of Oxford (bbc video) mirror some of my own friends experiences in the 21st century.

They noticed that people lost their accents? Maybe he’s right – I can’t say it’s something I ever really noticed at the time, and I know several other people who’ve lost their accents who went to less celebrated universities.

As for the exclusive clubs, they were never something I had any interest in joining – instead I joined those clubs where other members were people like me, plenty of those about – so didn’t have any pent up feeling of being downtrodden.

The interview should be there to assess potential, not necessarily experience to date based on money spent.

In my experience (from 25 years ago) it was.

Their preparation is better due to a better education which comes from wealth.

and despite what I’m saying like for like in terms of grades at a level state kids do better at uni but then even with the same degree as a privately educated kid from the same uni will go on to earn less.

The first is as expected, the 2nd is reality and frustrating.

Caryl Phillips is a friend of one of my oldest friends, they met at Oxford in, I guess, the late 70s. My friend has just retired. I am sure he is right, people think they need to conform and therefore do to an extent, but frankly there was, and is no need. However, at the time RP was presumed to the way to speak in “elite” circles due to, as much as anything, the BBC.

The other article is just a garbage rant. If in a student population of 22,000 a few guys are members of what they perceive to be an elite club, who cares? I even knew one of the guys in the David Cameron Bullingdon photo, I had no idea he was a member. He was, 15 years ago when I last saw him, the same meek individual that I had always known.

You’re right Yak the first is as expected but does suggest uni’s are not selecting on potential the second is as expected too given the social capital wealth brings.

Uni’s are either not properly selecting on potential or state school applicants are consistently underselling themselves for their level of ability. Same result, but the latter could be improved. Your schools sound like they are doing the right thing, but it would be interesting to find out the percentage of state schools that do the same.

I think you are failing to see the big **** obvious picture here. Privately educated kids are coached much better in many many things and that doesnt just bring exam success. State schools do not have the funds to compete on exam grades or life skills.

The only time there has been social mobility was in the 50s-80s, with a decent grammar school system in place, bolstered by grants. There’s also the fact that university in now incredibly expensive for your average lower middle-class family.
Oxford has also since opened the gates to privileged international students, leading to a Swiss finishing school air about the place, especially amongst the postgrads.
Public school children generally adapt to Oxbridge easier at the start because the system is familiar – very work hard, play hard, in a 24/7 institutional environment. I could pick out the state school kids a mile off in freshers week, either trying too hard or just shrinking in the corner.
In terms of admissions, prospective students need an adviser who understands the colleges, and can match the student to the college they are most likely to fit in.
But is it worth it overall? I spent seven years at Oxford and looking back there were some really low times, and I expect I would have dropped out if I were paying the current tuition fees.

Is there actual evidence for Grammar Schools boosting social mobility?

For the few who passed an exam at 11 years of age, it gave an opportunity for social mobility, for the rest that was it, the opportunity was gone and they were cast into a system preparing them to be factory fodder.

Of course those who benefited from the system moved into lives where they were able to crow about their success, the majority who the system failed remained voiceless.

Current grammar schools are poor at boosting social mobility

There are so few grammar schools now I doubt you could make a conclusion that they are “poor at boosting social mobility”.
I’d be in favour of introducing something along the lines of the German system, where entry into their version of grammar schools can happen at 11 and 14. As well as a high standard of technical schools.
I went to a state school on a big council estate and it was a waste of time all round. The academic kids got held back by the kids who weren’t academic. The non-academic kids I knew have since gone into trades anyway (and incidentally earning a lot more than many people I went to uni with) and so would have benefited from attending a technical school instead.

I think you are failing to see the big **** obvious picture here. Privately educated kids are coached much better in many many things and that doesnt just bring exam success. State schools do not have the funds to compete on exam grades or life skills.

I’m not sure “life skills” is totally accurate. I know of a privately educated individual who is absolutely ******* useless when it actually comes to doing their job. Although they are just about sharp enough to realise it and explain the predicament with “I’ve had everything done for me before”

The only reason the individual in question is still in their job is nepotism, thanks to another privately educated but still under skilled pillock. Who again, is in their role through nepotism and connections. Glad I’m out of that equation these days to be honest. Tiny sample size. But I’d say the key difference is not that they are better, more that they believe they are better. And certainly better connected.

Alternatively to this, I know a lot of privately educated people. Who went down the path of serious academic study who are very smart cookies in their respective fields. Just getting that disclaimer in if the current or ex GF reads this.

Life skills was maybe a poor choice of word but given the same predicted grades they get into competitive uni’s much better.

My IQ puts me on the far right of that graph, I doubt that I will be earning 100k anytime soon as I am a directionless **** up

The point is that as an intelligent person you have a choice, an unintelligent person does not, so, anecdotes notwithstanding, there is a one-way tendency for more intelligent people to get better paid jobs, which is more or less evident dependent on which Google link you cherry-pick.

Having worked in an environment with a lot of Oxbridge graduates and ex-public school types – the one thing that stands out to me is the degree of self confidence, particularly in certain environments. That may well be that their backgrounds mean they are used to senior business, public and political figures(ie their friends and family) and/or the Oxbridge style of teaching – tutor groups and debate.

However, they are no more or less effective. Some of the most objectively clever people I’ve met you wouldn’t trust to tie their own shoes let alone run a multi-million £ programme. Unfortunately, the self confidence thing often means they do end up doing just that.

Conversely, because I’ve been around a while, some of the best people I’ve worked for have never been anywhere near a university as they left school in the 1970s and working class and generally lower middle class people simply didn’t, those with grammar school educations got entry level management positions in banks, civil service or similar and worked their way up.

Now who would you trust a 30 yo super bright intellectual or a 55 year old with almost 40 years of experience and had to push their way up through the ranks? My answer – depends on the individual in both cases some can be brilliant and others are just fronting it.

The problem is that I see the Oxbridge route beginning to dominate – too many without life experience running stuff. Just look at politics, there is need for a balance.

Yak – Member

Uni’s are either not properly selecting on potential or state school applicants are consistently underselling themselves for their level of ability. Same result, but the latter could be improved.

The latter is basically impossible to make equal, and incredibly hard to improve much at all- many schools struggle to give decent UCAS support let alone interview coaching, and even that wouldnt’ close the gap. The real problem is the former.

For whatever it’s worth, we’ve more or less abandoned selection interviews, not because they’re unfair (though, they are) but because they’re just not much good- we found the correlation between interview performance and student performance was weak at best. Though, we’re further down the pecking order 😉

Agreed – it will never be equal, but could be better.

It’s just that for a given predicted set of a-level grades, you would expect the privately educated applicant to be able to make a very convincing argument for their potential. An un-coached state applicant would have to be exceptional to put forward an equally convincing argument for their potential.

aa – of course that is obvious, as it should be to the interviewer. You wouldn’t expect the state applicant to have the range of experiences, and associated skills, but you would want them to demonstrate what they are capable of, not fall foul of bad interview technique.

Yak – Member

It’s just that for a given predicted set of a-level grades, you would expect the privately educated applicant to be able to make a very convincing argument for their potential. An un-coached state applicant would have to be exceptional to put forward an equally convincing argument for their potential.

The counter-argument is that the state-school applicant in this situation has performed better to achieve the same grades, on average. Though that’s a huge generalisation of course, the concept of contextual admissions is sound but trying to implement it fairly for the individual is, er, challenging.

I agree Northwind the problem has occurred far far earlier in a childs education than when the apply to uni. State education is massively underfunded and under resourced.