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Hi,
All my life I have been labelled as the ‘not academically smart’ kid in my friendship group and my friends expect little from me…but little do they know I’ve been planning my revenge, I have been secretly revising loads for my GCSEs.
I’m currently in yr 11 and I just found out that one of my family friends got into Oxford uni. In the future I really want to get into Oxbridge in order to prove my friends wrong, I’m aiming for atleast 9 A*s and 2 As in gcses and am aiming for 4 A* in a level. Is there anything I can do currently, apart from GCSEs and A level, to increase my chances of getting in to Oxbridge ?
Original post by Anonymous_dragon
Hi,
All my life I have been labelled as the ‘not academically smart’ kid in my friendship group and my friends expect little from me…but little do they know I’ve been planning my revenge, I have been secretly revising loads for my GCSEs.
I’m currently in yr 11 and I just found out that one of my family friends got into Oxford uni. In the future I really want to get into Oxbridge in order to prove my friends wrong, I’m aiming for atleast 9 A*s and 2 As in gcses and am aiming for 4 A* in a level. Is there anything I can do currently, apart from GCSEs and A level, to increase my chances of getting in to Oxbridge ?

Extracurriculars and olympiads depending on the subject that you really want to do.

The extracurriculars and olympiads would depend on the specific subject. There's a confused idea that you would need to be an all star across the board - that applies more to US and Canadian universities where they do bachelor's degrees that are more generalists than in the UK where we do degrees based on specific subjects.
If you are applying for a degree in say English Lit, there's little point in mentioning that you are a captain for your school's cricket team. Instead, it's more useful if you say you written a number of short stories, be a member of a writing club, or do numerous book reviews.

It's also a lot better to get advice from people who got into the uni than it is to get general advice that you can find on the Internet. There are plenty of people who went to/are currently at Oxbridge on this platform, so you're not going to have problems finding tailored advice.

Just for the record, Elon Musk was labelled as an average student until he was 14, when he was inspired to go into space. After that, he worked his way up to getting a PhD in Engineering at Stanford before he dropped out after the first year there. That's not easy to do.
June Huh, a recent Fields Medal winner, was a very bad maths student prior to uni and even during uni. He is now a maths professor at Princeton.
Things can turn around with the right motivation and the right attitude.
Original post by MindMax2000
Extracurriculars and olympiads depending on the subject that you really want to do.

The extracurriculars and olympiads would depend on the specific subject. There's a confused idea that you would need to be an all star across the board - that applies more to US and Canadian universities where they do bachelor's degrees that are more generalists than in the UK where we do degrees based on specific subjects.
If you are applying for a degree in say English Lit, there's little point in mentioning that you are a captain for your school's cricket team. Instead, it's more useful if you say you written a number of short stories, be a member of a writing club, or do numerous book reviews.

It's also a lot better to get advice from people who got into the uni than it is to get general advice that you can find on the Internet. There are plenty of people who went to/are currently at Oxbridge on this platform, so you're not going to have problems finding tailored advice.

Just for the record, Elon Musk was labelled as an average student until he was 14, when he was inspired to go into space. After that, he worked his way up to getting a PhD in Engineering at Stanford before he dropped out after the first year there. That's not easy to do.
June Huh, a recent Fields Medal winner, was a very bad maths student prior to uni and even during uni. He is now a maths professor at Princeton.
Things can turn around with the right motivation and the right attitude.

Hi,
Thank you so much for this advice! I will try to get some more advice from people on here who go to Oxbridge! :smile:

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