I have several students who were recently accepted to the program. In order to reserve their spot, they must pay $1500 by next week. Here are some concerns:
-there is really no information about the program outside its own web site
-No reviews, articles, anything.
-The website seems very generic. No leadership or faculty names.
-The accreditation bodies seem strange.
I looked at the internet domain name info and it was originally registered in April of 2023 and was registered from Arizona.
-All social media seems to have started at the same time with no activity. The facebook page has 9 followers.
Does anyone have experience or knowledge about the program? TIA.
This analogy seems apt:
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. Don’t feed the ducks.
It’s possible this company is legit, but I somehow suspect that if you don’t give them $1500 by next week, they will happily accept it another time.
Edit: I looked at the website. This seems to just be another high school summer program. I’m betting the photos are stock photos mostly. It’s probably perfectly fine as a summer activity, but it isn’t likely to boost a student’s application in a significant way.
There are dozens of Oxford academic programs which have nothing to do with Oxford.
But the true red flag is an early deposit to “reserve” your spot. $50 administrative fee? Fine. $1500 due next week? I’d be running, AND calling the better business bureau to find out if there’s a pending investigation! Or the Attorney General’s office in Arizona…
They seem to be running out of Oxford, England, so I doubt the Arizona AG has any jurisdiction. They likely simply used a domain name registrar based in Arizona to register their Internet web address.
They claim to run their classes at Oxford University and that they’re all Oxford alumni or teaching faculty. Might not be a scam in the true sense of that word, but more likely a money-grabbing summer program like so many others.
Look up “Oxford Round Table”, the ultimate in Vanity Conferences. Back when the Forums of the Chronicle of Higher Education still existed, there was a long-running thread about it. None of the posts were complimentary. It became a meme before they were called that.
I would guess that this is the Oxford Round Table of high school programs.
