I was so pleased for him; all I could think of was how much of an achievement it was and how proud I was that all his hard work had paid off. I felt dumbstruck. Should you go? Well, of course you should! Why would you throw that away? Thinking on it a few days later, I wondered whether the trial that is applying to Oxbridge ends once you get the offer, or intensifies once you accept it.
Good joke. Churchill College has 39 places in natural sciences and more than direct applicants. The academics will make about 45 offers, in letters that arrive on candidates' doormats this week. To help preserve the anonymity of the candidates, most of the academics in the room have asked for their names not to be used.
As the wind shakes the bare branches of trees outside, the academics discuss an interviewee from a sixth-form college. One notes: "He was extremely careful with everything he was doing, but not exactly engaging in the discussion. I think mathematics is something he does quite well, but he doesn't shine. The boy is an unusual case — he has won a scholarship to study in the UK after going to school overseas.
His home country is a poor one, not known for its education system. One of the women says: "I would take him and keep a close eye on his progress. He might need a boost in confidence. Next up is a girl from a leading private school, who was strong on paper but stumbled at interview.
Partington suggests: "One possibility is that she's someone who's learned in a compartmentalised way. Another tutor says: "The comment I've put down is: 'Needed help with next steps. Partington wonders aloud if tutors can lead a student through an entire degree.
Both Oxford and Cambridge are regularly accused of bias against state school applicants — most famously, in the case of Laura Spence , the girl from Tyneside who was refused a place at Magdalen College, Oxford, more than a decade ago. At present, that proportion is The university has also agreed with the Office for Fair Access — an official watchdog set up when the Blair government brought in top-up fees — to increase the share of students from neighbourhoods where few people have gone to university.
Churchill College is a low-rise modernist stack on the edge of the city centre, a series of interlocking brick cubes. It does better on state-school intake than Cambridge as a whole. This is partly because of its reputation for science, which attracts more state school pupils. In its prospectus , the college is described as having a "friendly, unpretentious social atmosphere".
It is certainly not as physically daunting as some of the grand and ancient buildings in the city centre. But even here, the surroundings speak of wealth and intimacy with power; the sketches on the walls are by Winston Churchill, the floor is teak and the room is panelled with another glossy tropical hardwood.
The phrase "a good school" comes up repeatedly in the tutors' discussions. It is used most frequently about private and grammar schools, but also some comprehensive schools, and has a double meaning. It is a school that knows what Cambridge requires, where the school reference is delivered in the terms the university is looking for — the key phrases are ones that emphasise superlative performance compared with their age group: "He [or she] is best in … he is top of …" But when a candidate comes from "a good school" they are also cut less slack.
The Sutton Trust , the charity that aims to promote social mobility through education, blames the unequal outcomes between state and private candidates at university level on the poor exam performance of some schools.
That failure at school level becomes painfully apparent in the case of one of the Churchill candidates. She has had "unimaginable teaching difficulties", the tutors hear. She has taken her A-levels at a school that has had a spectacularly high turnover of teachers. Peering at his laptop when her name is announced, Nick Cutler, an admissions tutor at Churchill, says there are "multiple flags".
The flags are used to indicate factors such as poverty, or a school that performs very poorly at GCSE. There are six categories in all — including whether an applicant has spent time in care. Built between and , the chapel is so awe-inspiring and beautiful especially inside , that it brings many visitors to tears.
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