Missed Oxford Offer

I had an offer for History from Oxford for AAA. I messed up one of my maths papers despite being well-prepared (combination of no sleep and a draining exam earlier that day), dropping my mark significantly to a B. The college I applied to said that Oxford don't typically consider candidates doing resits unless extenuating circumstances apply.
A) is getting an offer after missing your initial one unheard of? (without extenuating circumstances)
B) I plan on taking an additional A-level in my gap year (just so my brain won't rot), and I was wondering if this might overshadow my resit and counteract any disadvantage?
Obviously when I do reapply I'll set my sights lower than Oxbridge, but I'd still like to try again for the sake of it.

Hi! I hope you're doing okay following the fallout of A-Level results day, I thought I would reach out as I found myself in a similar predicament last year and can understand how tough this decision is.
Firstly, I need to preface reapplying and resitting was challenging for many reasons but I can understand its appeal too.
Academically, you need to consider if you will be able to do this at your previous school or if you will study your a level/ a levels privately. Will you get a tutor? You also need to consider if your school will be able to support you during the UCAS application (academic reference). How will you prepare for the test and then interviews?
Aside from academics, it is important to consider that many of your friends will be moving on and moving away. It can be isolating as this is a process you would most likely undertake alone. I cannot stress this enough.
As far as the college you applied to saying they do not generally accept resits, I am not sure to what extent this is applicable to all colleges. My school emailed my department before my reapplication and they appeared to have little problem with me resitting.
Lastly, I can confidently say that getting an offer after missing your initial one is not unheard of, although it is a long process that is filled with self-doubt. This year I received an offer and have now secured my place after achieving an A* in history exceeding my requirements. I did not expect this result and constantly doubted myself until the morning of results day.
If you would like any further advice, please do not hesitate to message me 🙂

Which course at Oxford did you apply for? 😧

Modern languages 😀

Hi! I hope you're doing okay following the fallout of A-Level results day, I thought I would reach out as I found myself in a similar predicament last year and can understand how tough this decision is.
Firstly, I need to preface reapplying and resitting was challenging for many reasons but I can understand its appeal too.
Academically, you need to consider if you will be able to do this at your previous school or if you will study your a level/ a levels privately. Will you get a tutor? You also need to consider if your school will be able to support you during the UCAS application (academic reference). How will you prepare for the test and then interviews?
Aside from academics, it is important to consider that many of your friends will be moving on and moving away. It can be isolating as this is a process you would most likely undertake alone. I cannot stress this enough.
As far as the college you applied to saying they do not generally accept resits, I am not sure to what extent this is applicable to all colleges. My school emailed my department before my reapplication and they appeared to have little problem with me resitting.
Lastly, I can confidently say that getting an offer after missing your initial one is not unheard of, although it is a long process that is filled with self-doubt. This year I received an offer and have now secured my place after achieving an A* in history exceeding my requirements. I did not expect this result and constantly doubted myself until the morning of results day.
If you would like any further advice, please do not hesitate to message me 🙂

I am sorry to hear of your situation. I assume that you have spoken to the college. A college will sometimes accept a candidate who has missed a grade, but it may of course decline to do so.
Is your second choice of university not attractive to you? There may be something to said for jam today instead of the possibility of (Oxford) marmalade tomorrow.

Perhaps a result of my pre A-level Hubris, I applied to universities that all required a triple A result. (Ended up missing my insurance)

Thank you so much for the advice - it’s genuinely made me feel a lot better about my situation!
Similar to what you touched upon, what troubles me the most right now is that feeling that I’m stuck behind all my friends who are moving forward with their lives - luckily lots of them are going to Uni in my city so I’ll still have them about at least.
I was also wondering how to find a college that doesn’t have a strong bias against people taking resits - would it perhaps be better to submit an open application?

I had an offer for History from Oxford for AAA. I messed up one of my maths papers despite being well-prepared (combination of no sleep and a draining exam earlier that day), dropping my mark significantly to a B. The college I applied to said that Oxford don't typically consider candidates doing resits unless extenuating circumstances apply.
A) is getting an offer after missing your initial one unheard of? (without extenuating circumstances)
B) I plan on taking an additional A-level in my gap year (just so my brain won't rot), and I was wondering if this might overshadow my resit and counteract any disadvantage?
Obviously when I do reapply I'll set my sights lower than Oxbridge, but I'd still like to try again for the sake of it.

Hi, just reaching out to check you're okay. I wanted to share my daughter's experience as what you need right now, apart from lots of TLC, is good information.
She applied to Cambridge in 2022 and was given an offer for A*AAA but failed to meet her grades getting AABC (some very good reasons, but none of the usual life shattering exceptional ones). Her insurance offer was A*AA so she missed that too. Rather than go through clearing she decided to just stop, take a year out, and consider her options. She found out that her course had a standard offer of AAA at Oxford and, as her B was 2 marks short of an A, she rang around all the Oxford colleges to ask whether they would even consider an application with her grades. Some were a bit off, but several were very nice. She therefore went to the university open day in September 2023 and targeted visiting the colleges where they'd been nice to speak to the admissions tutors face to face. This further consolidated a short list of colleges which genuinely seemed to listen to her situation and encouraged her to apply. I don't want to be too specific, but the colleges who were the most supportive were the ones which aren't the most popular, but if you want to study at Oxford then the college is absolutely secondary and *everyone* ends up loving the college they went to.
By this time we had enlisted the input of a private tutor from Keystone Tutors to prepare her for Oxford application (which required an admission test and submission of written work in Oct 2023) as well as rework her personal statement. She decided to resit the B (rather than do a whole new A Level which would've required a lot of new work) as an independent applicant and we got a former teacher from a different school (as her sixth form college was very much part of the reason she didn't get the grades predicted) to do a very supportive academic reference which did touch on the reasons for underperformance but focused mainly on her aptitude and ability in her chosen field. Her tutor also contributed to the reference.
After the admission test (which was eventually disregarded due to the IT disaster last year!) and submission of written work, her personal tutor then went into interview preparation mode which was incredibly intense. We have friends who studied in fields related to her chosen subject who grilled her again and again. We committed to the process ahead of each stage to avoid being behind the curve which was a risk.
Alongside this, she applied to universities which accepted AAB for her course so she knew she would get an unconditional offer as a back-up and took the time to work out which of them she liked the best, rather than having to make the rapid decision during clearing. She eventually got an Oxford interview and an offer. She then sat her A-Level and met her offer, so ultimately the whole venture paid off.
The downsides:

The positives:

In summary, it was an incredibly involved, costly and stressful process with a very high chance of failure throughout and lots of unexpected glitches. It worked out for her but even if she didn't succeed she felt it worth the attempt and her insurance place was somewhere she felt happy to go to if it didn't work out. However, if you have a genuine aptitude for your subject (and your grades don't reflect that for good reasons) and can demonstrate that to the admissions tutors then you have a good chance of making your case. They know who and what they want and if they can see it in you then they are very open to resit applicants.