Oxbridge Rejection

think there are a range of factors, some of which you've mentioned. First off though, I'd like to dispel a myth that you seem to have heard. Although I'm sure admissions tutors might have individual prejudices against public schools or whatever, admissions aren't biased towards any particular group of people, based on race, school or anything like that. I'm sure someone somewhere has some stats to back me up on this.

I think there are two key reasons for being quite confident in the system. One is that the issue of admissions is so contentious that it is constantly being watched and scrutinised both within the university and by the outside world, such as the media. This means that tutors have to genuinely mean what they say when giving out admissions information in prospectuses and stuff. What's more, they want the best students- there's no point in asking candidates to display a skill or talant that the tutors are not interested in (they will not be asking you to throw any bricks through windows!)

The other big reason is that everything about Oxbridge admissions is so heavily individualised. Anyone who goes through the admissions process can tell you about the extra effort that they needed to put into applying to Oxbridge- early submission to UCAS, extra application forms, sending in written work, going for interviews and perhaps sitting tests whilst you're there. The tutors know that some schools, students will be very well taught and so generally have very good grades, whilst at other schools, the teaching is not nearly so good and so what might seem like relatively poor marks are actually the result of hard work, commitment to study and genuine intelligence. That's why they treat every candidate as an individual and they look at a whole range of factors to find out exactly what's right for you.

The individual aspect is not to be underestimated. We recently had a subject dinner where I asked one of my politics tutors about admissions in general, and she did mention that for PPE, they would not allow any student in that any one of the three subject tutors objected to. Obviously they don't expect everyone to absolutely brilliant in all three fields (very few are!) but you must be competent enough to satisfy the tutors.

There are limited spaces at any good university, and good candidates get rejected every time, no matter where you're talking about. Almost everyone who applies to Oxbridge has excellent grades, a strong personal statement and is likely to end up at top-flight university no matter what happens. It makes the decision incredibly difficult, and means someone will invariably feel hard done by and probably rightly so. That doesn't change the fact that everyone who does end up at Oxbridge does deserve their place.