Close the Oxbridge gap
As the head of Ofsted calls for more state pupils to aim for our top two universities, we reveal the insiders’ tips on how to land a place
Haxie Meyers-Belkin says state pupils should learn the tricks public schools use to boost their success rates (Julian Andrews) A few years ago Haxie Meyers-Belkin won a place to study French and Italian at Cambridge University. Her friend — just as gifted, according to Meyers-Belkin, 23 — did not. “She was clearly a brilliant student, and went on to get a first-class degree at another university. But at the college she had applied to she was interviewed by a guy who was quite distant and I think they just didn’t click,” she says.
“I Googled various fellows at different colleges and applied to St Catharine’s, because I worked out that the people who would be interviewing me were women and looked friendly. You need to be tactical about your application.
“I was a pupil at a girls’ grammar school and wanted to be interviewed by forward-looking women. I was accepted and ended up getting on really well with my tutors.”
This month Sir Michael Wilshaw, England’s chief inspector of schools, will publish a report castigating state schools for doing too little to get bright children into Britain’s top two universities.
The Ofsted report will say these pupils are held back because their schools fail to push them to get the top grades needed.
It will reveal that, according to analysis of exam league tables, hundreds of schools do not produce a single pupil with high-enough grades in tough subjects to win a place at elite universities. Fifty typical comprehensives have also been investigated to check whether they are doing enough for their best pupils. Many are not.
“This is a big issue for our country,” Wilshaw said last week. “Do we need more youngsters from the state system to get to top universities? Yes we do. And it should be one of the national targets to get more.”
He wants parents to confront teachers they feel are not doing enough for bright pupils. So what do families have to know about the extra steps needed to help a teenager earn a place at Oxford or Cambridge?
According to Meyers-Belkin, whose former school places a handful of pupils at Oxbridge every year, preparation is vital.
“Schools should be picking up children with potential by the time they are 14. If you leave it till they are doing A-levels, it is too late,” she says. At her school she was nurtured with extra essays and regular feedback on her work from an early age. Teachers engaged her in discussion about the subjects she loved and encouraged her to read widely outside her syllabuses. She also advises joining a debating society.
“One of the most important things that can help in terms of doing well at the admissions interview is to practise debating and talking to adults,” she says.
“That’s why privately educated children do so well; they have the confidence to express their opinions. The dons who interview you want to see that you have a passion for your subject and can express that. You will be doing that every week if you are accepted.”
Choice of GCSEs and A-levels is also critical. While he was head at Mossbourne Community Academy, which sent 10 pupils to Cambridge in a year despite being in one of the poorest parts of London, Wilshaw insisted that only A-levels recognised by top universities be offered to pupils.
A-levels such as media studies, sports studies, general studies — almost any subject with the word “studies” in the title — carry no weight at Oxbridge. Instead both universities make offers based on achieving three A grades in “hard” subjects such as the sciences, maths, English, Latin, Greek, history and languages.
Schools and parents need to ensure that children make the right subject choices early on. For a degree in medicine, for instance, chemistry GCSE and A-level are required. If you want to study for a law degree at Oxford, don’t do law at A-level: many dons like to teach law from scratch.
Ed Durban is an Oxford-educated historian who has spent the past few years helping pupils at a sixth-form college in Hackney, east London, apply to Oxford and Cambridge. This year five of those he has coached have been offered places.
His tips include applying for less competitive subjects. “Vocational subjects such as medicine and law are massively oversubscribed. Far fewer students apply for ancient and modern history or classics,” he says. “Private schools know these kind of facts; they know how to play the system.”
He also advises rigorous preparation for the extra entrance tests both universities now ask candidates to sit in several subjects. “Past papers and sample questions can be found on their websites,” he says.
Helen Smith, a former state-school pupil from London, agrees. She won a place at Oxford to study languages. She remembers her parents paying for private tutoring — by a former Oxford languages graduate — to prepare her for the entrance papers in French and Spanish. “State schools are not good at teaching grammar and these papers really test your grammatical knowledge and your ability to critically analyse texts,” she recalls. Of particular value was a mock interview her tutor gave her before the real thing.
Durban also advises studying beyond the exam syllabus. This year his students will be attending a summer school at Oxford, where they will learn Greek from scratch and take a course on gender and antiquities. “It’s a bit Machiavellian, but if you are a don and see someone has spent a week studying gender and antiquities, that has to be appealing,” he says.
He tells his students to “talk about your subject all the time, so that it feels natural”, and to endlessly practise essay writing (if you are applying for a humanities course) and solving maths problems (if you want to study maths or science).
“It is really, really hard to get into Oxford and Cambridge. You need to do a lot of reading, of essay-writing, of problem solving. But it is doable,” he says.
Meyers-Belkin agrees. And if you don’t succeed first time around, don’t give up. “You’d be surprised how many privately educated pupils try again a year later — with considerable success,” she says.
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