A word from Stephen Carville on Oxbridge Offers

Posted on Thursday 11 August 2016 at 15:52

2016 has been another fantastic year for the 13 Maple Group colleges with a formidable total of 257 students receiving offers to study at Oxbridge this autumn.

There are offers from a number of different Oxbridge colleges in subjects including Maths, Medicine, Law, History, Veterinary Medicine and German.

Oxbridge received record numbers of applicants this year with approximately 34,000 applications for the 6,400 places available for undergraduates.

Nationally, each year around 20% of applications to Oxbridge are successful, but many of the Maple Group colleges achieve a higher success rate than this which can be attributed to the support and experience offered by the talented staff.

Applicants continue to be supported through the process by their College through a number of interventions.  These include:

  • one to one guidance sessions

  • trips to the universities

  • subject specific practice interviews

  • marked practice essays

  • guidance for the entrance exams

  • extension classes

  • subject specific lectures

  • support in preparation of personal statements

  • practice interviews including with College Governors and mentoring from ex-students currently studying at Oxbridge.

Stephen Carville, Principal at Peter Symonds reflects on the process:

At Peter Symonds College, we have had another successful year regarding Oxbridge offers, with 156 applicants and 42 offers in total. We had 80 applicants for Oxford and 76 for Cambridge, and the outcome was that 21 students gained offers from Oxford and another 21 students received offers from Cambridge.

Both universities select on the basis of academic achievement (GCSEs, AS Levels and predicted grades) as well as performance in one or more interviews. Oxford interviews only the top 30% of its entrance examination candidates in some subjects, while Cambridge expects short-listed candidates for the more competitive courses to have achieved average module marks of 90% in the relevant AS subjects.

Our success rates have decreased somewhat in recent years, possibly because of much stiffer competition. We also have a policy of not stopping students from applying as long as they have the requisite predicted grades. In order to balance encouragement with realism, we share as much information as possible with students and parents regarding the selection process at the old universities and the emphasis placed on evidence of academic excellence.

Ever since Oxford re-introduced entrance examinations, the number of students who are unsuccessful in the application process has increased. Cambridge plans to re-introduce entrance exams in the next UCAS cycle.  While interview performance is important, the final decision on who gets an offer depends on entrance exam ranking also. It is not enough to pass the entrance exam: students have to achieve results at or near the top to have a good chance of securing an offer.

The 42 students who have offers from Cambridge and Oxford have done very well to get through such a rigorous selection process. To provide just one example, our sole Veterinary Medicine candidate gained an offer in a subject with a 10% success rate.

The challenge for us is to increase success rates while maintaining our ethos as an open-access college committed to raising aspirations.