‘You need someone on the inside’: the state school students helping peers into Oxbridge

Oxford University student Ellie Cassidy will never forget how unprepared and ill at ease she felt before her interview to study geography at Oxford two years ago. “I was terrified. I remember walking in, my heart racing, thinking in my head: turn it off, turn it off. I thought that I had to turn off my scouse accent, or they wouldn’t be able to understand me.”

She was conscious that no one from her Liverpool state school had managed to get into Oxbridge for years. “My school really wanted to help me. They tried their best, but they had no clue about how I should write my personal statement or how the interview worked.”

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As a result, she was left to face the intimidating selection process alone, struggling with impostor syndrome. “There was nothing out there that supported me. I couldn’t find any information about the sort of questions I’d be asked or the structure of the interview, or even help around the personal statement.”

Now, Cassidy is on a mission to demystify the Oxbridge application process for other students who, like her, have little or no support from their state schools. Like more than 2,000 other Oxford and Cambridge undergraduates, she is freely sharing her “insider” knowledge about how to get into Oxbridge online, via a new student-led project called Inside Uni.

“There’s so much mythology that surrounds the interview process. Unless you’ve someone on the inside tell you what it’s really like, you’ve got all these ideas that are very off-putting and can make you very nervous,” says the project’s founder Tommy Gale, who recently graduated from Cambridge.

He started Inside Uni two years ago after realising many of the private school students he met at Cambridge were “not even that clever”, but had received help with the application process from teachers, family contacts and peers. Meanwhile, more capable state school students he knew either failed to get in or were put off applying. “When I saw the massively different levels of preparation people had, it just felt really unfair.”

With help from nearly 2,000 Oxbridge student contributors, Inside Uni has created free, detailed online guides offering insider tips about each Oxbridge course and how to successfully apply. It also hosts Q&A virtual events which shed light on life at Oxbridge and the application process, with applicants who have a disability, or are from a BAME or low-income background, offered extra support.

Most importantly, the website has published students’ real-life accounts of their admissions interviews at the different colleges and for each subject. This includes not only the kinds of questions they were asked by interviewers and the students’ good and bad responses, but also how they prepared and what they wish they had known beforehand. All the content published meets editorial guidelines developed with Oxbridge admissions tutors.

Along with students who went to state schools, many former private school pupils have contributed to the project, Gale says. “It’s nice because we want to know what they’re being told – and they are sharing their knowledge with people who can’t afford to pay for it.”

He and Cassidy think the need for digital outreach programmes like Inside Uni has grown during the pandemic, as the advantages of attending a private school became more stark, with pupils benefiting from more online schooling compared to their peers at state schools.

Their views are shared by the founder of another free, student-led access programme, Team Upside, which also moved online during the pandemic. Sulaiman Iqbal, a Cambridge University student who grew up on a west London council estate, set up Team Upside just over a year ago to help get people from disadvantaged backgrounds into Oxbridge and other Russell Group universities. “Growing up, I saw so many young people with enormous amounts of potential and talent – but a lot of them were unable to realise that, because they lacked opportunities and guidance.”

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Currently, any young person who contacts the organisation’s helpdesk with an education or career-related question will receive free, one-to-one advice from members of the team, who are all from BAME backgrounds and attend top Russell Group universities. They also receive a weekly newsletter with useful educational resources and a video interview series that reveals how students from BAME or disadvantaged backgrounds at top universities wrote their personal statements.

“We want to provide nuance to what an Oxbridge student looks like, and where they come from. I think honest, transparent representation is key to demystifying people’s perceptions of Oxbridge and other spaces that are quite privileged and seem somewhat exclusive to a lot of people,” Iqbal says.

With the help of Int2_Law, a social initiative run by law students at Cambridge and the London School of Economics, Team Upside is running an Oxbridge mock interview day later this month for state school pupils with interviews coming up.

Like Gale and Cassidy, Iqbal does not think there is anything inherently wrong with the Oxbridge admissions process, including the interview. “Although it can be nerve-racking and involve a lot of stress, the benefit of the interview is that it provides the university with the opportunity to have a conversation with the candidate and contextualise their grades. It’s important for fellows to realise when a student has to overcome a lot of challenges and barriers to get where they are today,.”

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However, he thinks Oxbridge should offer its own mock interviews to state students, particularly from less privileged backgrounds, rather than relying on organisations like Team Upside. “We think it’s unfair that some students who go to really top schools are provided with so much more support and guidance than other students, when every student deserves an equal opportunity to succeed. It’s really just about levelling the playing field.”

UniRise

Offers a free online course on how to write the “perfect” personal statement, based on advice from 20 Russell Group admissions stutors. Includes a “statement bank” of more than 300 personal statements reviewed by university admissions tutors.

The Access Programme

Helps students at state schools “who may not otherwise be supported in their Oxbridge applications” draft their personal statement, prepares them for interviews and provides them with a mentor.

Zero Gravity

A mentoring platform aimed at low-income students. Pairs state school students with mentors from Oxbridge and other Russell Group universities.

Target Oxbridge

Identifies talented black students in year 12 and provides them with one-to-one support that improves their chance of success at Oxbridge.

CUSU Shadowing Scheme

Cambridge student union scheme targeted at prospective students from schools or families with little or no history of applying to universities. They “shadow” a current undergraduate for three days in late Jan/early Feb.

Oxfizz

A year-long programme for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, to help them win a place at a top uni.