From the middle of January onwards, the Ucas cycle slows down dramatically. Just as things start to relax, though, focus shifts to the Oxbridge admissions process, as decisions are released. 

Debates about admissions tests, vexing interview questions and cohort diversity resurface annually around this time. But, while invective floods the airwaves and Twitter grandees vent their spleen, independent schools up and down the country are already well on the way to their next successful round of applications.

Oxbridge admissions: Lessons from private schools

Here are five things we can learn from them.

1. Start early and think big

Even in non-selective independent schools, the process of priming promising candidates for applications for Oxbridge will start at the beginning of Year 12 or even earlier. A highly able cohort will look different in every school, and it is complicated by the non-linear development of outstanding university candidates. 

Casting the net wide and casting it early has two major benefits. First, it allows a wider range of students to benefit from guidance that helps them to target top university places. Second, marking out a broad pool of potential Oxbridge candidates early allows students to begin to self-select, developing the subject enthusiasm that underpins successful Oxbridge candidates. 

Setting sights high for the many, rather than an elite few - and then nurturing the most motivated - is how independent schools inculcate a culture of Oxbridge success.

2. Slow and steady wins the race

If students find themselves in a position where applications feel rushed and stressful, they will not only file less competitive applications, but they will also resent the process as a burden that is unlikely to bear fruit. 

On the other hand, if plausible candidates are exposed to the idea of an Oxbridge application early, then the process becomes much less onerous. The best private schools explicitly prioritise entrance to the top universities and courses for their best students. Normalising the idea of attending a top university allows students to start building competitive university applications while the stakes feel much lower. 

Students can be introduced to the university application process in Year 11 or even earlier. Providing students with supercurricular reading lists in their welcome packs in Year 12 provides bright, motivated students with the opportunity to start reading around their subjects. 

By treating a university application as the work of months - or even years - rather than a few weeks of sprinting prior to the deadline, the application period can become one of enjoyable academic exploration rather than anxious inertia.

3. Use your networks

For competitive courses such as medicine, dentistry, veterinary science and vocational Oxbridge courses such as law and engineering, the application rates are so high that the marginal differences between candidates can be razor-thin. This makes it much easier for state-school candidates to miss out narrowly. 

Just as Brad Pitt’s character in Moneyball found that baseball players don’t always have to hit home runs to help their team win, students would do well to realise that the careers they aspire to can be reached by routes they have not previously considered. Careers and universities events can be a great way to debunk the myths associated with different careers - in my experience, staff often have friends who are really keen to chat to students for an evening about how they got their job. 

Get parents on board, too: many students talk about the pressure they feel from their family to study medicine and similarly competitive courses, simply because they don’t have access to the range of professional role models with varied degree backgrounds that private-school students have. Helping students to find the right course for them early in the application process can prevent heartbreak further down the line.

4. Seek out expertise

With their high staff-to-student ratios and dedicated university advisers, private schools have an undoubted advantage in terms of the staff resources they can dedicate to Oxbridge and other early applications. 

If you know where to look, however, help is at hand. Top universities’ widening participation teams are falling over themselves to diversify their entrance cohorts: every school in the country has access to link colleges at each of Oxford and Cambridge. And Advancing Access provides outstanding free CPD for staff unsure how to write polished references or troubleshoot personal statements. 

Within school, gifted and talented programmes focused on university outcomes make a fantastic project for ambitious NQTs with recent experience of the system. And pooling resources with nearby schools, or getting involved with a local independent school through a partnership, can be invaluable for helping students to prepare for the rigours of admissions tests and interviews. 

5. Get them talking

It is no secret that performance at interview can make or break an application to Oxbridge. The confidence required to thrive at interview drives a wedge between state-school and private-school applicants, even before we take into account the detrimental effects of the pandemic on attainment among deprived students. 

In a world where oracy is only growing in its importance, the impact of being cooped up at home for the best part of a year will be disproportionately felt by students from deprived backgrounds, for whom teachers are crucial role models in communication skills.

The good news is that developing communication skills among older teenagers won’t just boost their chances of making competitive applications, it will also provide a welcome break from the monotony of online learning. Games like Just A Minute, Defend the Indefensible and If This is the Answer, What is the Question? can all be turned to curricular ends, and liberate students from the tyranny of their keyboards. 

Further down the line, practice interviews are a must. Student-led charities, such as Team Upside and Inside Uni, are fantastic in this regard, but it’s also useful for students to sit down with governors or other professional members of the wider school community, so that they can grow comfortable talking to a clever adult they don’t know. 
 

Amid all the uncertainty of this year’s admissions process, there is something reassuring about the immutable anachronisms of the Oxbridge admissions process and its close relations in medicine, dentistry and veterinary science.

After last year’s feast and this year’s famine, perhaps 2022 will be the year in which the brightest and best students from state and private schools alike can compete fairly for the university places they deserve.

Will Yates is deputy raising standards leader (sixth form) at Barnhill Community High School, in West London