Hey I’m super new to College Confidential, but I’m a US junior absolutely infatuated with Cambridge. However, I’m also a realist with little hope of acceptance. Chemistry is my major of choice and I’m looking to see where I stand, but not expecting much so be brutally honest. Also if anyone has any other UK school recommendations please share!
Thanks so much, Liv
GPA: 4.28
SAT: 1520 (Math: 770 Verbal:750)
SAT II: Chem: 770, Math II: 770, Physics(June 1), Bio(June 1)
AP: Bio(probs 5), Chem(5), Gov(probs 5), APUSH(5), Comp Sci P(5), Calc BC(4/5?)
EC’s (idk if they even care): Varsity Swim, Varsity Track, Math Team, Student Newspaper editor, Organic chem independent study, CEO of tutoring company, Social Justice club, TA/starter of applied chem class, MITx programming class, National Honors Society, Science Honors Society, Math Honors Society, Spanish Honors Society
Senior Year Classes: AP Stats, AP Physics C, AP Lang, Mobile Apps, Advanced Algorithms, AP Economics, Multi variable Calc
Awards(also not sure if it matters): Columbia Book Award and Seal of Biliteracy
Spend some more time marinating on the Oxbridge (and other UK) websites- learn what they want, how they work, what the course is actually like, year by year. How you are taught, how you are assessed.
You get 5 UCAS choices for the price of 1, so also consider Durham (collegiate like Oxbridge, great college experience, high likelihood of acceptance, ranked #3 for chem after Ox & Bridge), St Andrews, Glasgow, Exeter, Edinburgh and (if you want a London option), Imperial.
One of my son’s HS friends was admitted to Cambridge for Natural Science (Physical Science track), but he turned it down (along with a TJ scholarship at UVa) to go to Yale. A very strong student who was taking courses at Columbia/NYU during HS.
“As an aside, do anyone other than American kids get infatuated with institutions of higher education?”
@PurpleTitan Plenty of British kids get infatuated with Oxford or Cambridge, especially as they are far more dominant in the upper echelons of business, politics, journalism, etc than say Harvard or Stanford in the US, and you may spend a lot of time preparing for the interviews. Have you seen “The History Boys” (an Alan Bennett play/film, brought back a lot of memories for me as it’s a pretty good representation of Oxbridge admissions in the 1980s)?
@Twoin18, actually, going through TSR, I saw a lot more focus on prestige and career-boosting and not so much infatuation. That’s a little different. The difference between marrying for love and marrying for money.
BTW, the greater dominance of Oxbridge in the UK compared to the Ivies/equivalents in the US should be expected since
Most of the Ivies/equivalents have small/tiny undergraduate student bodies compared to Oxbridge while the UK has 1/5th the population of the US so 2 of Oxbridge can take in a percentage of the population that is equivalent to 16 American Ivies/equivalents (plus another 14 or so LACs).
Unlike for doughnut hole families in the US, Oxbridge would cost the same as any other UK uni to English kids (and still would cost roughly the same as an in-state public to Scottish kids) so cost issues aren’t a big issue when deciding where to apply and matriculate.
So Oxbridge has a 90%+ yield rate among Brits (I reckon only losing a handful to LSE, Imperial, maybe UCL, and some Scots to Scottish unis like Edinburgh which would be closer and almost free to them).
Oxbridge selects nearly completely by academic merit so would get the most clever UK kids (HYPS reserves maybe 10-20% of slots for those who get in purely on academic merit).
Because of all that, Oxbridge laps everyone else in the UK when it comes to entries in Who’s Who in both absolute and percentage-of-alumni terms (with only LSE being close).
That’s not the case in the US where by percentage-of-alumni terms, the top is dominated by Ivies/equivalents but it is a smoother declining slope and in absolute terms, the top (huge) publics are represented at the top of the list.
“…going through TSR, I saw a lot more focus on prestige and career-boosting and not so much infatuation. That’s a little different. The difference between marrying for love and marrying for money.”
Isn’t that the same on CC? Lots of threads about prestige, not so many about life of the mind. And where those “life of the mind” threads exist they are mostly created by parents - and after all CC is much more dominated by parents than TSR.
I do agree with your reasons why Oxbridge dominates UK life more than individual US colleges. But as far as infatuation goes, British kids do tend to develop a preference for either Oxford or Cambridge, often for irrational reasons, e.g. who was winning the Boat Race more often (similar to picking a soccer team to support) was my justification for telling my parents I was planning to go to Cambridge at the age of about 8 (ironically they then proceeded to lose every year I was there). And then picking a college can be similar if you are intrigued by famous scientist X or mathematician Y or prime minister Z.
Do not underestimate the class system in the UK it is like a cancer. To the patrician class entry to Oxbridge is regarded as a right rather than infatuation. It is the reason you have individuals such as Boris Johnson likely to become the next prime minister of the UK, a deeply unpleasant individual who has been sacked from 2 previous jobs for lying and is currently in court for misleading statements. Chris Grayling, a cabinet minister, someone so breathtakingly incompetent as to make Scott Pruitt look gifted, I could go on. At the same time some of the more intellectually gifted kids in the country are not even applying to Oxbridge because they simply don’t feel they will fit in. It doesnt help that politics, the civil service, the judiciary and the media industries are crammed with privately educated Oxbridge alums, who send their kids in the main to independent schools then Oxbridge, rinse and repeat.
“To the patrician class entry to Oxbridge is regarded as a right rather than infatuation”
But not a “right” they can exercise freely because (unlike in the US) you can’t just buy your way in. You can buy tutoring and schooling but you still actually have to be clever. Two of Tony Blair’s kids didn’t get into Oxford even though he was PM at the time.
I agree many British politicians are “deeply unpleasant” but I don’t think anyone would argue that Boris Johnson isn’t “intellectually gifted”. I don’t know anything of Chris Grayling, but a 2:1 in history from Cambridge in 1984 doesn’t exactly highlight anyone’s intellectual gifts.
I think the difference is that in the US “class” is defined more explicitly by money, whereas in the UK it’s defined more by your background and social circles. No one in the US would look down on someone who made tens or hundreds of millions from their startup’s IPO, whereas in the UK that would make you an arriviste.
Boris Johnson… as Americans would say… All hat and no cattle. He could probably say “Garden Bridge” in Latin.
The independent school sector are known to prepare their kids with one objective… Like the tommies in WW1 going over the top, they come at Oxbridge in waves. The class system is alive and well…
In the US it seems outstanding academic achievement is not sufficient for the Ivy league at least , you have to have a ‘hook’ probably 2 to stand a chance.
@elguapo1, in the US, outstanding academic achievement is enough, but you have to be insanely outstanding (and not just by stats/GPA/class rank). HYPS would reserve 10-20% of slots for those candidates. At MIT, that percentage would be much higher. At tiny Caltech, that would be the criteria to fill the entire student body.
Or if you apply ED to any Ivy/equivalent.
But half the class or more at Ivies/equivalents would go to hooked applicants.
If you are applying to Oxford or Cambridge from the US, I would apply to all top schools for my other choices, because you presumably are applying to US schools and don’t need safeties. In general, LSE is the most competitive, but probably not a choice for science. Imperial, Durham,and St. Andrews are reasonable choices.
In general, going to top schools in the US has less prestige, because as mentioned most of it is hooks.Also, financial aid and loans are possible, but it helps to have tuition money. Probably 20% based on straight academics and Ivies and top LACs is accurate. However, some hooks are not elite oriented, like athletics, underrepresented minorities, and geographical quotas. Maybe half of students at some schools have relatives who contributed money. It isn’t totally clear who has a hook, and how much they look at private schools, background, prominent parents, wealth, etc.
The British system pretends to be objective, and is more merit based than the US approach, but it is sort of rigged according to the class system. There isn’t as much of a class system in the US, but there are similar obstacles.