Not-so-typical Cambridge Students/offer-holders

Your ambition to encourage people to aim high and not write themselves off is good. But you run the risk of implying that the system is stacked against state school pupils and that private school pupils derive their success from factors external to them.

In practice private school pupils and state grammar pupils have been in competitive environments where they have never assumed they are the best and so have always had to work hard to do well. Every year they see highly able pupils not getting offers and so they tend to not take them for granted. Their parents have often succeeded because of their education and so have motivated them to believe that their future is under their control. My impression was that some comprehensive pupils had often been one of a tiny handful of bright pupils and had never struggled to come top. They were taken aback by how hard they had to work at Cambridge as previously they had rarely done academic work at weekends or flunked a test even if they hadn't revised.

I think Cambridge is quite good at picking out those who have the motivation to do well, they exclude the spoon fed from any school and those who despite passion simply don't have the raw ability.

It's all very well to say don't allow grades to limit you but you can't generally ignore the need to meet the grade requirement or to beat fellow candidates who may have achieved better than you without any greater advantage.


Posted from TSR Mobile

Your ambition to encourage people to aim high and not write themselves off is good. But you run the risk of implying that the system is stacked against state school pupils and that private school pupils derive their success from factors external to them.

In practice private school pupils and state grammar pupils have been in competitive environments where they have never assumed they are the best and so have always had to work hard to do well. Every year they see highly able pupils not getting offers and so they tend to not take them for granted. Their parents have often succeeded because of their education and so have motivated them to believe that their future is under their control. My impression was that some comprehensive pupils had often been one of a tiny handful of bright pupils and had never struggled to come top. They were taken aback by how hard they had to work at Cambridge as previously they had rarely done academic work at weekends or flunked a test even if they hadn't revised.

I think Cambridge is quite good at picking out those who have the motivation to do well, they exclude the spoon fed from any school and those who despite passion simply don't have the raw ability.

It's all very well to say don't allow grades to limit you but you can't generally ignore the need to meet the grade requirement or to beat fellow candidates who may have achieved better than you without any greater advantage.


Posted from TSR Mobile

Very high UMS is not uncommon for maths applicants

Your ambition to encourage people to aim high and not write themselves off is good. But you run the risk of implying that the system is stacked against state school pupils and that private school pupils derive their success from factors external to them.

In practice private school pupils and state grammar pupils have been in competitive environments where they have never assumed they are the best and so have always had to work hard to do well. Every year they see highly able pupils not getting offers and so they tend to not take them for granted. Their parents have often succeeded because of their education and so have motivated them to believe that their future is under their control. My impression was that some comprehensive pupils had often been one of a tiny handful of bright pupils and had never struggled to come top. They were taken aback by how hard they had to work at Cambridge as previously they had rarely done academic work at weekends or flunked a test even if they hadn't revised.


Posted from TSR Mobile