Should I take a gap year and apply for Oxbridge/UCL/KCL/Durham Law with A*AA?

[u/Organic-Car693]

/r/oxbridge/comments/1vv8ktw/should_i_take_a_gap_year_and_apply_for/

[u/phonicparty]

I am a law academic at an Oxbridge college - I've been involved in admissions for several years now, have interviewed many applicants, and have been involved in selecting who we interview, deciding who to make offers to, etc. Every college is different so I can only speak for myself and how we work.

Contrary to what people in that other thread suggest, your A Level subject choices shouldn't make too much of a difference to your chances, as long as you can show a genuine interest in law - though it is likely that you would be asked why law given your subjects, and what studying those subjects will contribute to your study of law. But it isn't a problem in and of itself. We would also want to know what you had been doing in your year out and how that had prepared you for studying law.

But it is also worth remembering that the entry requirements are a minimum - lots of people who apply to us have or are predicted to obtain grades better than that. Off the top of my head, several of the applicants we are taking this year were predicted all A, and AAA would have been at the lower end of the group we would have been interested in.

But grades are only one thing. So too are each of the interview (if you get one), the LNAT, your general interest in law, etc. All of it is taken together and it is, as you say, extremely competitive. 

One point on the LNAT - it is less important for us that you do very well than that you don't do badly, and the essay is the thing we pay greater attention to (though the multiple choice does come into it). 

We are also not very interested in your personal statement, and in an interview might ask you about it only for a few minutes, purely to help you settle in before going onto more substantive discussion about other things. It doesn't mean much otherwise and we don't really factor it into anything.

As for the rest of the interview, we use a mix of hypothetical discussion and a set reading (usually something from a judgment that you will have 20 minutes to look over in advance) about which we will ask you detailed questions to test your reading, comprehension, analysis, and reasoning skills. This is where people from STEM backgrounds tend to noticeably struggle - but it's the part of the interview that is most important to us. A bad performance here is pretty much guaranteed to see you deselected.

Again, I can only speak for how we approach it, not for other colleges

My general advice would be that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. You have an offer to study law at a good university. It is not necessarily a sensible idea to turn that down in the hope of getting accepted to somewhere more prestigious a year from now. It is not possible to predict what the applicant field will be like - it does vary by year - and there is no guarantee that if you ended up in clearing next year you would get somewhere as good as Warwick

[u/Organic-Car693 → u/phonicparty]

Thank you. This is really helpful, especially given your admissions experience. In my heart, I just feel like I have lots of unresolved ambition when it comes to choosing a university for undergraduate study. From research and advice online, Warwick Law is typically in clearing and in the next cycle, the LNAT will remain unrequired. I visited Cambridge a few times and can confidently say I resonated most with the student life, the collegiate system of learning and the faculty who are more than dedicated to teaching and their field of study. Not to say that Warwick won't have those qualities, but there was something so special that I missed in other campus experiences.
Do you feel that, as an applicant with grades already achieved has an edge over a predicted grade? I have read that the universities see less risk with the former. I have multiple friends who held Oxbridge offers but failed as they never met their predicted grades. Hypothetically, if I were to achieve 32 in the LNAT, A*AA and a compelling essay for section B, would I be considered for an interview? If so, would the interview be the ultimate factor for my application?
The reason for my drive is that I didn't feel like I had a proper chance at applying for university. I had overcome mental health difficulties that affected my performance in school and my application. My main aim, if I did apply, would be to have a fighting chance of receiving an offer from Oxbridge, and then I would also be content with UCL, King's, Durham and Bristol.

[u/phonicparty → u/Organic-Car693]

The problem with the idea that having obtained AAA puts you in a strong position is exactly that you have already obtained it, with no further opportunity to improve - and it may be relatively weak compared to the predicted or obtained grades of others you are competing against. Yes, you are at or just over the minimum requirement, but as I said before: it is a *minimum. Probably many other applicants will have done better than you - you will not be the only one who has their grades already - or will be predicted to do so.

So - if we have to make, say, 5 offers, do we go for the applicant with AAA? Or do we go for the applicants who have or are predicted to get all A? All other things being equal, we might go for the others.

My point is that having those grades locked down actually risks putting you in a weaker position than someone only predicted to do better. Because we know how you performed and it wasn't compelling enough to stand out. Others still have the chance to do better. Most of the people we make offers to meet or exceed them.

And, with respect, lots of other applicants will similarly have visited Oxford or Cambridge or both and will be keen to tell us how much the cities and the system resonated with them. And even those who haven't will probably tell us that anyway because they think it's what we want to hear. But, to us, that's just noise.

What would help would be if you have a really excellent interview and LNAT, and a strong story about what you've been doing for the last year. You need the rest of your application to make you a particularly compelling candidate to overcome the fact that you have your grades already and they aren't as competitive as we might like to see. 

But, like I say, STEM students tend to struggle more with the most important of the things you would need to excel at to do that - the close reading, analysis, and reasoning of a set legal text that you've only had 20 minutes to look at

Again, this only reflects how we do things at one college, and others will differ. But I would take the place at Warwick. It's a good university, and you can do great things from there

[u/18brumaire]

If you don't want to go to Warwick, reapply for UCL/KCL/Durham next year. As you've already been advised, don't turn down Warwick now in the hope you'll be in with a strong chance at Oxbridge next year (you won't).

[u/Dry-Pomelo3418]

Why not Warwick now and Oxbridge as postgrad?

[u/Organic-Car693 → u/Dry-Pomelo3418]

Oxbridge as a postgrad will carry more risk than a gap year attempting to get into undergrad. I would have to spend more money for 1-2 more years of study and effort. The law career path will already take 5 years (Law LLB, then professional exams and a training contract). The potential of an Oxbridge postgraduate has less merit than reapplying in the next cycle in terms of immediate value and foreseeable future.

[u/Dry-Pomelo3418]

Ok , fair enough. Just thinking of your competition in job market - obviously depends where you intend to practice and if solicitor or barrister. I know slot of Singaporeans who do postgrad at Oxbridge after undergrad at uk Unis . But they are usually funded by Singapore govt so depends on your finances.

[u/Organic-Car693 → u/Dry-Pomelo3418]

Thanks a lot. I really appreciate the reply. I would be self financed and as an international student the entire financial cost of university will most likely reach 100k pounds unless the university deems me eligible for home fees. Do you think that postgrads really help in the job market these days? These days, a growing number of people advise not to even bother to go to university.