The Student Room Group

How to get over Oxford rejection?

Hi everyone,

I'm sorry if this seems really pathetic, but I don't really have anyone else to turn to and I've felt so desperately low for the last 3 years.

At GCSE I was able to get 11A*s and I was predicted A*AA at A level. I applied to Oxford for law, and was so happy to get shortlisted for interview in 2014! I also managed to get a 27 on the LNAT. However, on the actual interview day itself I was terribly nervous and let myself down, and didn't answer questions quickly enough and made the mistake of not articulating my thought process out-loud.

When I got my rejection I was crushed and thought I would get over it in a few months but it's been a few years now and I still can't get over it. I just feel like a failure, like you have this image of what your life is going to be and now your life is over before it even began. I'm also a black student, and as there are so many statistics about how hard it is for black people to get into Oxford I feel like I'm even more of a failure- I was one of the few lucky enough to get to the interview stage and I blew it!

I would have reapplied, but unfortunately I ended up only getting A*AB in my A-levels and so my teachers dissuaded me from reapplying even though I retook to the subject I got a B in. I've now seen that several people have reapplied to Oxford with retakes and feel stupid for not trying again.

Does anyone have any advice? Or has dealt with these issues before? I just feel like a crazy person because you're supposed to get over these things but I still haven't been able to.

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Just get over it and apply to another university
Reply 2
Hey,
is there someone you could talk to maybe? And you are not letting down ~your race~ or anything like that. Just do the best you can do. Who cares if its not good enough for Oxford? You can't please anyone. Just try making yourself happy. Your self worth isn't determined by where you get offers from. So you stuffed up your interview and didn't get an offer. It happens. Failing one day doesn't mean you're going to fail for the rest of your days.

Keep your head up high :smile:
Hi,

I had a pretty similar situation (kind of) last year. I applied for medicine and then got accepted by Imperial College (and when it comes to medicine, an offer from Hull-York medical school is a major achievement seeing as 60% of applicants get four rejections)
I’d been in love with imperial for years before this, since secondary school. It felt like my life was too good to be true. But I botched my exams and missed my offer by a mile.

To say I was dejected was the understatement of the century. I would cry every morning when I woke up and every night before I went to bed. I’d not only ruined my chances of going to imperial but my chances of going to medical school entirely, because they don’t take retakes. All of a sudden I couldn’t become a doctor (unless I did grad medicine but that was even more difficult). I had to deal with the rejection and go about finding a new career after aiming for a career I’d been working towards for years, all in the space of a few months. In summary it was a horrible experience.

More than feeling like a failure I felt like I’d ruined my life and let myself and everyone around me down. But I still felt like a failure. I know how it feels, like there was a perfect version of your life just waiting for you and you ruined it. But what you need to realise is that oxford alone was not the factor determining that life. It is a much smaller thing than you think it is, and even if you had gone, your life might not have been as good as you think.

Not all smart people go to oxbridge and not all people at oxbridge are smart. Oxbridge is not the sole measurer of your intellect or achievements. Just because you didn’t go doesn’t mean that people won’t marvel at how talented you are. You aren’t oxbridge, youre yourself and it is up to you to make sure throughout the last part of your academic career you shine to the point where you won’t need oxbridge to excuse yourself.

I had a chemistry teacher in my college (all the teachers apart from him went to oxbridge) who was the best teacher I had ever had in my life. He taught himself an entirely new subject up to graduate level independently to teach to us. I don’t think anyone is his classes had ever not understood something after he explained it. His career was teaching and he excelled at it. He was better than all the other oxbridge graduates and he went to imperial. It made me wonder, how could someone like him not have been at oxbridge? And then I realised that there are loads of people like him who are the best in their game but didn’t start off they wanted to. (Actually I found out that he didn’t even apply to oxbridge in the end, even though he could’ve) So trust me, you don’t need to be upset.

Sit down and write all the reasons you wanted to go to oxford. Did you want to prove the statistics wrong? Did you want to make your family proud? Did you like the uni, did you want to be in the ‘went to oxbridge’ crowd? Really think about your reasons and picture yourself there, picture whatever you used to imagine, entertain all the thoughts at the back of your mind when you applied. I think you need to sit down and accept the truth, that you didn’t go or won’t be going or whatever, so that you can move on. Now write all the bad things about oxford (sounds bitter but it does really help, and I know you must have some things you dislike because nothing is perfect ). After you’ve entertained all the bittersweet thoughts, from then on whenever you think about the first list counter it with the second. It’s something I used to do and it sounds hateful but it actually made me remember that there is no such thing as a perfect experience of something, or a perfect life, because the second list is as true as the first and will pop the bubble of this perfect life you have felt like you missed out on since 2014.

I’ll stop here cos I could go on and on but I just want to say that you should take this as your first lesson in real life. Obviously academically you’ve clearly never missed a goal before so it’s good that you experience it now and not later on (when you misread a case and accidentally put your client in jail or something lol), so accept it and realise that something as big as this is better to have happened now than later on in life. The people in oxford are not living or will live better lives than you, no matter how it may seem. I saw that with my teachers. I’m also black and I know how it feels to work so hard with less entitlements than others and not make your goal. You need to believe that you will still be great, and happy, because of yourself and the decisions you go on to make in your life, not because of three years of uni that may or may not have made a difference to your future.
Original post by larp97
Hi everyone,

I'm sorry if this seems really pathetic, but I don't really have anyone else to turn to and I've felt so desperately low for the last 3 years.

At GCSE I was able to get 11A*s and I was predicted A*AA at A level. I applied to Oxford for law, and was so happy to get shortlisted for interview in 2014! I also managed to get a 27 on the LNAT. However, on the actual interview day itself I was terribly nervous and let myself down, and didn't answer questions quickly enough and made the mistake of not articulating my thought process out-loud.

When I got my rejection I was crushed and thought I would get over it in a few months but it's been a few years now and I still can't get over it. I just feel like a failure, like you have this image of what your life is going to be and now your life is over before it even began. I'm also a black student, and as there are so many statistics about how hard it is for black people to get into Oxford I feel like I'm even more of a failure- I was one of the few lucky enough to get to the interview stage and I blew it!

I would have reapplied, but unfortunately I ended up only getting A*AB in my A-levels and so my teachers dissuaded me from reapplying even though I retook to the subject I got a B in. I've now seen that several people have reapplied to Oxford with retakes and feel stupid for not trying again.

Does anyone have any advice? Or has dealt with these issues before? I just feel like a crazy person because you're supposed to get over these things but I still haven't been able to.


Go there for a LLM if you really want to (you'll need first Class).
Reply 5
Original post by Anonymous
Hi,

I had a pretty similar situation (kind of) last year. I applied for medicine and then got accepted by Imperial College (and when it comes to medicine, an offer from Hull-York medical school is a major achievement seeing as 60% of applicants get four rejections)
I’d been in love with imperial for years before this, since secondary school. It felt like my life was too good to be true. But I botched my exams and missed my offer by a mile.

To say I was dejected was the understatement of the century. I would cry every morning when I woke up and every night before I went to bed. I’d not only ruined my chances of going to imperial but my chances of going to medical school entirely, because they don’t take retakes. All of a sudden I couldn’t become a doctor (unless I did grad medicine but that was even more difficult). I had to deal with the rejection and go about finding a new career after aiming for a career I’d been working towards for years, all in the space of a few months. In summary it was a horrible experience.

More than feeling like a failure I felt like I’d ruined my life and let myself and everyone around me down. But I still felt like a failure. I know how it feels, like there was a perfect version of your life just waiting for you and you ruined it. But what you need to realise is that oxford alone was not the factor determining that life. It is a much smaller thing than you think it is, and even if you had gone, your life might not have been as good as you think.

Not all smart people go to oxbridge and not all people at oxbridge are smart. Oxbridge is not the sole measurer of your intellect or achievements. Just because you didn’t go doesn’t mean that people won’t marvel at how talented you are. You aren’t oxbridge, youre yourself and it is up to you to make sure throughout the last part of your academic career you shine to the point where you won’t need oxbridge to excuse yourself.

I had a chemistry teacher in my college (all the teachers apart from him went to oxbridge) who was the best teacher I had ever had in my life. He taught himself an entirely new subject up to graduate level independently to teach to us. I don’t think anyone is his classes had ever not understood something after he explained it. His career was teaching and he excelled at it. He was better than all the other oxbridge graduates and he went to imperial. It made me wonder, how could someone like him not have been at oxbridge? And then I realised that there are loads of people like him who are the best in their game but didn’t start off they wanted to. (Actually I found out that he didn’t even apply to oxbridge in the end, even though he could’ve) So trust me, you don’t need to be upset.

Sit down and write all the reasons you wanted to go to oxford. Did you want to prove the statistics wrong? Did you want to make your family proud? Did you like the uni, did you want to be in the ‘went to oxbridge’ crowd? Really think about your reasons and picture yourself there, picture whatever you used to imagine, entertain all the thoughts at the back of your mind when you applied. I think you need to sit down and accept the truth, that you didn’t go or won’t be going or whatever, so that you can move on. Now write all the bad things about oxford (sounds bitter but it does really help, and I know you must have some things you dislike because nothing is perfect ). After you’ve entertained all the bittersweet thoughts, from then on whenever you think about the first list counter it with the second. It’s something I used to do and it sounds hateful but it actually made me remember that there is no such thing as a perfect experience of something, or a perfect life, because the second list is as true as the first and will pop the bubble of this perfect life you have felt like you missed out on since 2014.

I’ll stop here cos I could go on and on but I just want to say that you should take this as your first lesson in real life. Obviously academically you’ve clearly never missed a goal before so it’s good that you experience it now and not later on (when you misread a case and accidentally put your client in jail or something lol), so accept it and realise that something as big as this is better to have happened now than later on in life. The people in oxford are not living or will live better lives than you, no matter how it may seem. I saw that with my teachers. I’m also black and I know how it feels to work so hard with less entitlements than others and not make your goal. You need to believe that you will still be great, and happy, because of yourself and the decisions you go on to make in your life, not because of three years of uni that may or may not have made a difference to your future.


Thank you so much for your kind words, I was a bit wary of posting on the student room (as I know how mean some of these threads can get) but am so grateful you took the time to reply! I've not been able to talk to anyone about this, because it's supposed to be one of those things that you get over, but I still cry from time to time thinking about what could have been. In the UK I think we all have this collective obsession over Oxbridge but thank you so much for your advice, I'm going to write the lists now. I know that it doesn't mean I'm dumb just because I didn't get into Oxford, but now I have to start believing it.
Reply 6
Original post by Kyber Ninja
Go there for a LLM if you really want to (you'll need first Class).


I'll definitely try to! Although I know their BCL is actually more competitive than the undergraduate degree
Reply 7
Original post by Requiems
Hey,
is there someone you could talk to maybe? And you are not letting down ~your race~ or anything like that. Just do the best you can do. Who cares if its not good enough for Oxford? You can't please anyone. Just try making yourself happy. Your self worth isn't determined by where you get offers from. So you stuffed up your interview and didn't get an offer. It happens. Failing one day doesn't mean you're going to fail for the rest of your days.

Keep your head up high :smile:


Thank you so much for your message! I know how cruel people can be on TSR so am grateful for your kind words. Unfortunately there isn't really anyone I can talk to. It's something that you're supposed to get over I think, but I haven't been able to yet and am ashamed to talk to the people around me. I just think for so long being intelligent was a crucial part of my identity, and because in my head intelligence= Oxbridge when I didn't get in I got this crushing feeling of not being intelligent. But thank you so much for your kind words, you've really helped!
Original post by larp97
Hi everyone,

I'm sorry if this seems really pathetic, but I don't really have anyone else to turn to and I've felt so desperately low for the last 3 years.

At GCSE I was able to get 11A*s and I was predicted A*AA at A level. I applied to Oxford for law, and was so happy to get shortlisted for interview in 2014! I also managed to get a 27 on the LNAT. However, on the actual interview day itself I was terribly nervous and let myself down, and didn't answer questions quickly enough and made the mistake of not articulating my thought process out-loud.

When I got my rejection I was crushed and thought I would get over it in a few months but it's been a few years now and I still can't get over it. I just feel like a failure, like you have this image of what your life is going to be and now your life is over before it even began. I'm also a black student, and as there are so many statistics about how hard it is for black people to get into Oxford I feel like I'm even more of a failure- I was one of the few lucky enough to get to the interview stage and I blew it!

I would have reapplied, but unfortunately I ended up only getting A*AB in my A-levels and so my teachers dissuaded me from reapplying even though I retook to the subject I got a B in. I've now seen that several people have reapplied to Oxford with retakes and feel stupid for not trying again.

Does anyone have any advice? Or has dealt with these issues before? I just feel like a crazy person because you're supposed to get over these things but I still haven't been able to.


As the Tibetan monks say, "Living life is letting go" Easier said than done at times, but I've found it helpful to stop thinking in these situations and start taking action.

As I see it, you can:

A) Try again for Oxford. I know this may seem daunting but if it's eating at you that you didn't reapply, then at least doing this will put it to bed for you,

or

B) Apply to another university. There are some excellent universities for law. Trust me there are bigger tragedies in the world than getting a good law degree from somewhere like UCL or Durham :smile:

Either way I would encourage you to stop the pity party, dust yourself off and take action. Sincerely wish you the best of luck.
Original post by larp97
Hi everyone,

I'm sorry if this seems really pathetic, but I don't really have anyone else to turn to and I've felt so desperately low for the last 3 years.

At GCSE I was able to get 11A*s and I was predicted A*AA at A level. I applied to Oxford for law, and was so happy to get shortlisted for interview in 2014! I also managed to get a 27 on the LNAT. However, on the actual interview day itself I was terribly nervous and let myself down, and didn't answer questions quickly enough and made the mistake of not articulating my thought process out-loud.

When I got my rejection I was crushed and thought I would get over it in a few months but it's been a few years now and I still can't get over it. I just feel like a failure, like you have this image of what your life is going to be and now your life is over before it even began. I'm also a black student, and as there are so many statistics about how hard it is for black people to get into Oxford I feel like I'm even more of a failure- I was one of the few lucky enough to get to the interview stage and I blew it!

I would have reapplied, but unfortunately I ended up only getting A*AB in my A-levels and so my teachers dissuaded me from reapplying even though I retook to the subject I got a B in. I've now seen that several people have reapplied to Oxford with retakes and feel stupid for not trying again.

Does anyone have any advice? Or has dealt with these issues before? I just feel like a crazy person because you're supposed to get over these things but I still haven't been able to.


Just get over it! What else can we do for you?
Reply 10
Original post by larp97
I applied to Oxford for law, and was so happy to get shortlisted for interview in 2014!
...
When I got my rejection I was crushed and thought I would get over it in a few months but it's been a few years now and I still can't get over it.


And what have you been doing since 2014/15? Did you go to university elsewhere?
Reply 11
Original post by Doonesbury
And what have you been doing since 2014/15? Did you go to university elsewhere?


I now study law at another Russel Group university
Reply 12
Original post by larp97
I now study law at another Russel Group university


Ok, and how's that going?
After 3+ years you really shouldn't still be feeling like this. Life is full of disappointments, it's what we do to get over them that makes us stronger.

As above, what have you done since you finished school? Hopefully you've found that there's a lot more to life than an Oxbridge degree.
Undergraduate study is not the only thing available at Oxford. There are many further study options
concentrate on your current studies. if you excel you will

i) get a brilliant career

ii) open up post-graduate options at Oxford

do not let bad past experiences ruin your enjoyment of the present.
Original post by larp97
I'll definitely try to! Although I know their BCL is actually more competitive than the undergraduate degree


Well, whichever takes your preference, you can apply to Camb too
Reply 17
Original post by Doonesbury
Ok, and how's that going?



It's going well. I'm on track for a 1st class. I just can't keep from having these fleeting thoughts about Oxford. I know it's something you're supposed to get over, but I can't help but feel like a failure. I also can't stop thinking about whether I should have just reapplied even with my poor grades, as I was retaking, but I guess I would have likely been rejected again. I just find myself crying a lot.
Reply 18
Original post by the bear
concentrate on your current studies. if you excel you will

i) get a brilliant career

ii) open up post-graduate options at Oxford

do not let bad past experiences ruin your enjoyment of the present.
Thank you so much!
Reply 19
Original post by jestersnow
As the Tibetan monks say, "Living life is letting go" Easier said than done at times, but I've found it helpful to stop thinking in these situations and start taking action.

As I see it, you can:

A) Try again for Oxford. I know this may seem daunting but if it's eating at you that you didn't reapply, then at least doing this will put it to bed for you,

or

B) Apply to another university. There are some excellent universities for law. Trust me there are bigger tragedies in the world than getting a good law degree from somewhere like UCL or Durham :smile:

Either way I would encourage you to stop the pity party, dust yourself off and take action. Sincerely wish you the best of luck.


This was really helpful. Thank you so much.

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