Want to apply to Oxford next year as a freshman somewhere else

Social stigma? That goes with what?
I though too that I wouldn't have anything to do over a whole year and I hesitated, but I'm having a great time now if you want to have a back-up option, you could always go to uni in India after a year.

Thanks for the reply. One of my friends on a gap year misinformed me. I was really quite sad. I am definitely not doing it for increasing chances. So, I shall see how I can convince them about the same.

My son has just been interviewed by Oxford. He had a year at another university but decided to leave (course related problems). Whilst he doesnt know what his referee wrote, he mentioned his reasons only briefly on his personal statement and was only asked about it briefly at one (of three) interviews he had. His feeling was that they were more interested in testing his ability given his year at university than his reasons for leaving.

We were told that Oxford accepts that students can change their mind over university choices. If you were to start at another university when would that be? My concern for you would be whether it would appear that you would have had long enough to decide a university was not right for you. UK unis start mid to late September, so given the mid October deadline for Oxford, that's only about 3 weeks. But terms might be different in other countries. I can understand though why you would want to do it this way.