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Chances of getting an interview

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More good stuff! I’m sorry if I disappoint you, Musicboy and Ndgaarondi. Yes, it’s immoral. Paying for your son/daughter to get a ‘better’ education is immoral. Paying to get ‘better’ medical treatment is immoral. (I use the word ‘better’ loosely…) I’m all in favour of changing the world where it’s wrong I’ve done my bit in the past but sometimes, you need to work with the world rather than against it. If my daughter were seriously ill and the only way of making her better were to pay money is it still immoral? But we digress… (Although can I just say that, in my mind, there’s a world of difference between paying a £200 bribe to get in, and paying £200 to enable you to show yourself at your best no course can teach you to interview well if the raw material isn’t there. Would we be equally outraged if she went out and spent £200 of her hard-earned savings on a good dress or suit so that she looks her best at interview?).

Jessie: thanks!

Mib: well, I hear you and your honest assessment is good. Frankly, I guess, in my heart of hearts I agree with you I think she’s come at the thing too late, and somewhat half-arsed. She is very, very bright but that’s not enough, and I’m cool with that. I guess, though, to answer your question about why they’d consider her: only because ‘the package’ she represents is something they believe would add value to the subject, the college and the university. Yup, you’re right all lovely touchy-feely stuff… Head girl means nothing, of course, except that it is to some extent a validation of that ‘package’. No, I’m not about to throw cold water over her and I bet, in my position, you wouldn’t either :smile: . But she knows about the need to work like hell. And your good wishes are much appreciated that was a nice afterthought.
ian-in-northamp
she went ahead (without telling me) and dropped Computing in favour of Art. (So, dropped her C subject in favour of her B subject). What exercises me about this choice is only whether you have to be a ‘natural artist’ to get an A. She isn’t…


You don't have to be a natural artist to get an A. obviously, you have to have ability - it's at heart a practical subject - but a LOT of the marks are about fulfilling specific objectives, especially analysis of your own work and of the work of other artists. there's a lot of writing involved, as i'm sure your daughter knows from AS level! while the quality of your observational drawing etc has to be good, evaluation & thorough research, as well as how everything is presented and how much work there is are also really important. I was in an a-level class with people who had far more ability than me but got lower grades. i think i'd say i have natural ability but lack the creative talent of a lot of people who were in my class, but A2 especially is much more academic than creative so I was able to get away with it :wink:
NDGAARONDI
Where's the meritocracy here? Why should people get in because they can afford to take a course that managed to get them in?



Do interview prep courses gurantee this? No.
ian-in-northamp


However, Tom’s wake-up call is spot on. I know, from my experience both in hiring people and trying to get hired, that there are so many applicanst for any given job that the first ‘sort’ is fairly coarse, and based on easy-to-identify, objective criteria. For example, many recruitment agencies will give a pile of CVs to an office junior and ask the junior to bin all the ones that don’t specifically mention “x”. I could well understand it if Oxford took a similar approach, weeding out all the non-AAAA applicants.

However, Tom is a little wide of the mark on whether or not her AS scores are meaningful. I’m confident that they weren’t, and that there’s little doubt that she’ll achieve three As. A little more effort and application is what’s required.


First of all- when hasn't an Oxbridge candidate recieved a glowing reference? Second of all, you seem to ignore the fact that sure your daughter could get AAA next August but this does not compare favourably with someone getting consistent A grades. Personally- based on some of the applicants I have spoken to however, that your daughter should apply. If only to spend a few days in Oxford, and experience it and have some time off school. Good luck to her and tell her how lucky she is to have parents who understand the system!
ian-in-northamp
More good stuff! I’m sorry if I disappoint you, Musicboy and Ndgaarondi. Yes, it’s immoral. Paying for your son/daughter to get a ‘better’ education is immoral. Paying to get ‘better’ medical treatment is immoral. (I use the word ‘better’ loosely…) I’m all in favour of changing the world where it’s wrong I’ve done my bit in the past but sometimes, you need to work with the world rather than against it. If my daughter were seriously ill and the only way of making her better were to pay money is it still immoral? But we digress… (Although can I just say that, in my mind, there’s a world of difference between paying a £200 bribe to get in, and paying £200 to enable you to show yourself at your best no course can teach you to interview well if the raw material isn’t there. Would we be equally outraged if she went out and spent £200 of her hard-earned savings on a good dress or suit so that she looks her best at interview?).


You think that your daughter getting into oxford is comparable to you curing her of a disease? Personally I think it's a waste of money to spend £200 on clothes. I turned up to my interview looking quite scruffy - wearing my hat, not having brushed my hair, wearing a jumper. I didn't look neat and tidy and still managed to get in (possibly by luck). Ian, keep fighting the world (you have nothing to lose but your chains, you have a worldd to win :wink:)

MB
Thanks again people. Amateurish: that’s reassuring. She enjoys art she makes a point of seeing the current exhibitions, and is knowledgeable on e.g. Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin etc. and has seen their work. Her work tends to be a little derivative installation pieces, or ‘Roger Dean-esque’ paintings. She’s no slouch with a pencil or a paintbrush, but there are definitely others in her year whose work to this philistine is much ‘better’. Tomcoolinguk: you’re right, of course. It amounts to a et but a bet you can’t lose my favourite kind! And I hear you re the consistent A grades. Yes, there’s no doubt she should apply and perhaps apply again if she’s unsuccessful (even if her extra year will cost me a small fortune… :rolleyes: ) She may be lucky to have parents who understand the system but I consider myself lucky to have bumped into some people who have been so free with their time and thoughts. Musicboy: yeah, it was probably a poor analogy. But I was thinking about it yesterday evening. Does it make any difference to the ‘morality’ of it whether a) I’m a fat cat to whom £200 is just the price of a bottle of wine on a Saturday evening, or b) to scrape together £200, the family would have had to go without many little luxuries? Not that either is true I’m just interested (in the same way as I’m interested whether a £100 donation to charity from someone who can easily afford it is a lesser act than the act of someone who gives £5 they can ill-afford? It’s harsh but true, but the net benefit to the charity in the former case is 20x the latter. But I digress again…) And as to your interview technique: I can only say, you must have been a strong and impressive candidate. Nice one! Fighting the world? Yeah, in my own small way, I guess random tiny acts of rebellion. Ah, but when I was a student on the Bloody Sunday marches, and got to experience unprovoked police brutality at first hand now that was something that opened my eyes, and has jaundiced my view ever since. Those were the days…
NDGAARONDI
Where's the meritocracy here? Why should people get in because they can afford to take a course that managed to get them in?

The fact is that they do. In the same way people live longer because they can afford BUPA; get better exam results beacuse they can afford a private school/move to an are with good state schools; have better chances in accident beacuse they can afford Jaguars etc.
Reply 67
tomcoolinguk
First of all- when hasn't an Oxbridge candidate recieved a glowing reference? Second of all, you seem to ignore the fact that sure your daughter could get AAA next August but this does not compare favourably with someone getting consistent A grades. Personally- based on some of the applicants I have spoken to however, that your daughter should apply. If only to spend a few days in Oxford, and experience it and have some time off school. Good luck to her and tell her how lucky she is to have parents who understand the system!


My school actually prided itself on accurate references. Mine was pretty glowing (left out all the she-is-not-sporty stuff...) but another girl who was applying for Oxford got rated as having 'above average' ability and all sorts of other not-so-good things.

To be honest, if you get an interview it's still an experience. I came back from mine glowing with enthusiasm for university in general.

And I bought clothes for interviews - new sweater, cords, shirt, boots - so I felt more confident. It's not about looking your best it's about feeling your best, but as a girl I find the two often go together.

And finally, the meritocracy is in allowing people to move up so that they can experience those things. Not in abolishing them altogether because they *do* allow for a standard-of-living improvement. (Assisted Places being abolished, for example, was not the way to go to meritocracy.)
InterCity125
The fact is that they do. In the same way people live longer because they can afford BUPA; get better exam results beacuse they can afford a private school/move to an are with good state schools; have better chances in accident beacuse they can afford Jaguars etc.


I know. I just don't like it when people go on a course to improve their chances of gaining student status at top universities when candidates who are more appropriate, would benefit from going there but nevertheless rejected. Of course, you just need to fight against this :wink:

You can go onto courses for the BMAT or something like that in the USA, which cost.
Mussed: right on! Why, under New Labour - bah! - does everything have to get levelled down in order to make things equal? Why can't they try levelling up instead?
tomcoolinguk
Do interview prep courses gurantee this? No.


I know. People think they can buy their places at university.
Reply 71
ian-in-northamp
Mussed: right on! Why, under New Labour - bah! - does everything have to get levelled down in order to make things equal? Why can't they try levelling up instead?


Funny, though, because I guess you're not a Tory saying that.

Those people who do buy their places at university are an unfortunate reality. Say they're borderline candidates who get pushed up by the help - maybe they sidekick other borderline candidates, but not the truly outstanding. No future Stephen Hawking is ever going to be rejected. My father pointed this out to me after interviews: I'd come from a school - private, admittedly - where the teachers were pretty clueless about the Oxbridge admissions procedure and were less confident with it than I was with my limited research. I got the worst mock interviews in the world.

Yet I would rather it had been that way: had I insisted, I could have gone on any number of courses; I could have drafted essays and got them marked pretending they were for a real subject, although I wasn't doing an essay subject last year; I could have tutored myself and pushed myself to see friends of friends. But what would that have given me? A barely-deserved place. At least the way it is, as my father pointed out, I deserve the place I've got.

That's the problem with these courses - they advantage some borderline candidates over others, making more of a difference than something else. But, in reality, I don't think the truly outstanding candidates are ever turned away.
NDGAARONDI
I know. I just don't like it when people go on a course to improve their chances of gaining student status at top universities when candidates who are more appropriate, would benefit from going there but nevertheless rejected. Of course, you just need to fight against this :wink:

You can go onto courses for the BMAT or something like that in the USA, which cost.


Fair enough. I suppose that education is different from health. I did not go on any courses - my Dad said he'd pay whatever it took (he can afford it) but my Mum said it wasn't really right and that I didn't need it anyway. My school also said go for it, but I felt that the prices were silly and if I could get in I could do it on my own merit, not somebody else's money. I guess we agree then. :wink:
mussed
Funny, though, because I guess you're not a Tory saying that.

Those people who do buy their places at university are an unfortunate reality. Say they're borderline candidates who get pushed up by the help - maybe they sidekick other borderline candidates, but not the truly outstanding. No future Stephen Hawking is ever going to be rejected. My father pointed this out to me after interviews: I'd come from a school - private, admittedly - where the teachers were pretty clueless about the Oxbridge admissions procedure and were less confident with it than I was with my limited research. I got the worst mock interviews in the world.

Yet I would rather it had been that way: had I insisted, I could have gone on any number of courses; I could have drafted essays and got them marked pretending they were for a real subject, although I wasn't doing an essay subject last year; I could have tutored myself and pushed myself to see friends of friends. But what would that have given me? A barely-deserved place. At least the way it is, as my father pointed out, I deserve the place I've got.

That's the problem with these courses - they advantage some borderline candidates over others, making more of a difference than something else. But, in reality, I don't think the truly outstanding candidates are ever turned away.


Right you are!
The people who get on may not do that well either, once they loose the support that money has obtained for them.
It is an embarassing to have to see friends of friends just to ask for favours, and something I for one prefer to avoid - although I have done it under exceptional circumstances.
Your father is right - it would not have felt the same if you had used crooked (in the loosest sense of the word) means to get in - I know someone who did a lot of this stuff, sucking up, declining grades etc. and got into Cam - I never saw him as equal to those who did it without these measures.
ian-in-northamp
. Musicboy: yeah, it was probably a poor analogy. But I was thinking about it yesterday evening. Does it make any difference to the ‘morality’ of it whether a) I’m a fat cat to whom £200 is just the price of a bottle of wine on a Saturday evening, or b) to scrape together £200, the family would have had to go without many little luxuries?

It makes no difference. Either way you are buying priveliges. Think about it this way. By investing in this coure you could well be taking away a place from someone who deserved it more than your daughter but who wasn't educated in interview technique. I know that interviews should be about the academic side rather than interview technique but unfortunately this is not always the case and I think that it is disgusting (sorry to use such a harsh word) that you are happy to buy into this loop-hole while others have no choice about it (because they don't have £200 lying around).

ian-in-northamp
And as to your interview technique: I can only say, you must have been a strong and impressive candidate. Nice one!


I'm sure there were many other suitable candidates who got turned down. I am not strong, impressive or anything out of the ordinary. The whole system is a bit of a lottery.

ian-in-northamp
Fighting the world? Yeah, in my own small way, I guess random tiny acts of rebellion. Ah, but when I was a student on the Bloody Sunday marches, and got to experience unprovoked police brutality at first hand now that was something that opened my eyes, and has jaundiced my view ever since. Those were the days…


yes, I know the feeling. I've been exposed to shows of police brutality since I was very young. The worst I ever saw was that anti national front demonstration in Wapping (must have been 1993/1994) and some of the mayday events i've been on (it's ok, i'm not an uncultured anarchist).

MB
Mussed: yeah, I’m a Tory but that doesn’t make me a bad person… :biggrin:

What does make me a bad person, I guess, is that I don’t buy into this idea that going for interview training is an immoral thing. Apart from anything else and I’m nothing if not a master of the specious argument it comes back to the whole leveling down thing. Yes, let’s stop people being able to get into university because their parents could afford £200. Let’s also ensure they’re all dressed in black, from Milletts, so no-one is advantaged by what they wear. Let’s not have oral interviews, so that no-one is disadvantaged by their accent. In fact, let’s not have written interviews either so that no-one’s disadvantaged by their inability to spell or punctuate or construct a grammatical sentence. Of course, having done away with written interviews, you lose the bonus of being able to disguise whether the applicant is male or female, attractive or less so such that no-one is disadvantaged by their sex or their appearance. I could go on… In life, you take advantage of every advantage you can get. I know, it’s cynical, it’s certainly not socialist and it won’t win me many friends around here. Let’s just try and remember that no-one is cheating or doing anything underhand by going on interview technique training they’re taking advantage of something that’s entirely legal and that brings out attributes they already had. If my daughter were to go on the course, and got in, I wouldn’t feel any the worse about it.

But Intercity raises an interesting point about people ‘overachieving’. Being a product of the old grammar school system, I saw many friends pushed to the very edges of their abilities and beyond. They got to university and fell apart. They found themselves among peers who were ‘naturally’ bright and didn’t have to be pushed to achieve.

Musicboy: ‘deserved it more’? That’s a pretty big assumption, and highly judgmental. Suppose she really, really deserved it but her interviewing technique was crap? Ditto the ‘£200 lying around’: what about the example I gave of a family scrimping and saving to do that? Are you assuming, because I take the principle on board pretty readily, that I must therefore have £200 lying around? I don’t think so… But given the wide divergence of opinions on here, not to mention backgrounds and experiences, I have to concur with your position that it is indeed something of a lottery.

Hasn’t this thread taken an interesting turn?
By the way, satisfy my curiosity: I sense in this thread a degree of youthful idealism. Am I wrong? Are any of you fathers/mothers?
I know I'm a newbie to the thread, but it seems to be spinning in circles. To be honest, I'm applying to Cam, for English lit, with three As and one B at AS level, and As and one B at GCSE. I still hold a pretty good chance IMO, and I will give it my all.

Art - picking up waaay back in the thread, when I did GCSE Art, and from what I hear from my Photography teacher, it IS derivative. You're encouraged to add in links between your work and other artists. You're not considered naturally creative enough to go off on your own. :rolleyes:

To the whole 'buying privileges' thing, it's a hotly contested debate. Those of us who are cynics think, 'this is the way the world works'. It may be unfair, but you know what? Communism is idealism, and it doesn't work. Bias and privilege are part of Oxbridge - for pete's sake, the universities were set up for the rich and elite to have a 'classical' education! If you're buying into Oxbridge, you buy into the history, architecture and the privileges of it, including having experts world-renowned as your teachers. To then go on and say, 'that's not fair' is really not fitting with applications to Oxford/Cam. Go to Bristol! They'll support you! (there speaks a rather embittered private school kid, and yes, I'm also Tory)

To the actual subject in question, the girl. It's one option, out of six. There is another year, if it's affordable. For Christ's sake, just apply, and get it over with! If you want it badly, you can make it happen if you'll work at it. See the result of the LNAT, and module results, possibly. Tell her to go up to interview and *revel* in her subject. And then wait and see. About two hundred other kids are doing the same right about now.
ian-in-northamp
By the way, satisfy my curiosity: I sense in this thread a degree of youthful idealism.


i'm youthfull but certainly not idealistic. I'm skeptical about most things, not least any form of utopianism. In terms of your previous post you seem to be weaving rather a lot of straw men. Why should someone who believes in an ethical theory that attempts to give some sort of meritocracy (of course meritocracy never exists and doesn't work anyway) be disadvantaged at interview because they are not trained. I know, coming from an inner london state school with pretty bad results and limited support for students going to university that it is not easy (and probably much harder than for students who are coached) to go into an interview situation but if you can put across yur ideas well and you can reason an argument then there is nothing stopping you. Oxbridge admissions is supposed to be about "academic potential" as they like to put it. I am not saying that your daughter wouldn't get in anyway but how would you like explaining to some kid who is just as good that they didn't get in because someone had a load of interview coaching. just because you don't have to deal with it it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. I think that where we can we should make the system as fair as possible. I on't think your daughter would like it if she got turned away as a result of the other candidates being friends of the interviewer or because the other cndidates were wearing more expensive clothes so why should she do that to other people. Sorry my argument is rather garbles - I haven't slept for days and have had too much to drink. Maybe I should paragraph a bit more :smile:

MB
Wilde_Oscar
you know what? Communism is idealism,


hmmm, well i don't see it that way. Communism is about a system of understanding the world through economics and socio-economic dialectics. It is about trying to stive not for equality but satiation and satisfaction (from each according to his ability. to each according to his need etc). Also it is not idealistic in that it doesn't head towards a single "end-point", well since Trotsky formulated the theory of permanent revolution it certainly doesn't but is even expressed in marx- "When the revolution happens, history begins"

Wilde_Oscar
and it doesn't work.

Do you feel like backing this up. I'd be interested to discover why as I am yet to find a reason.

Wilde_Oscar
Bias and privilege are part of Oxbridge - for pete's sake, the universities were set up for the rich and elite to have a 'classical' education! If you're buying into Oxbridge, you buy into the history, architecture and the privileges of it, including having experts world-renowned as your teachers. To then go on and say, 'that's not fair' is really not fitting with applications to Oxford/Cam. Go to Bristol! They'll support you! (there speaks a rather embittered private school kid, and yes, I'm also Tory)


I'm only going cos I like the course.

MB

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