There are more people in space than care leavers at the University of Oxford
There are more people in space than care leavers at the University of Oxford
This week is National Care Leavers Week 2024. Is the admissions process biased against care leavers at the University of Oxford?
This week is the start of National Care Leavers Week in the UK. Every year, during the October holidays, the country is asked to pay attention to those who grew up in the state’s care, celebrate their achievements, amplify their voices, and raise awareness of their challenges. Please check them out; some of us are doing incredible things.
Here is a piece about the challenges Careleavers face getting into the top university in the world.
Last year, there were double the number of people in space than care leavers studying for an undergraduate degree at the University of Oxford. Out of the 9,000 care leavers who applied to universities across the board, only five were considered talented enough to get into the top university in the world. What is behind this seismic underrepresentation at Oxford? Is it that those from the care system are thick, or is there something lingering institutional bias in the admissions process?
This subject is an angry tenant in both my head and heart, as I am a careleaver studying at the University of Oxford. I'm a graduate student, so I don't fall within these figures. Regardless, the barriers are the same. It probably doesn’t surprise anybody that our most significant hurdle is financial. For instance, we don’t have parents to go back home to between term times, so we require accommodation all year round. Oxford does provide some financial assistance to help with this. £3,000 per year and a scholarship for undergraduates. But this is only up to the age of 25, yet 69% of applicants from the care system tend to be mature students. For graduates, there is now the Academic Futures Programme. However, these things aren’t always as accessible as they seem.
When I started in 2022, I found no specific support for graduate care leavers, but of course, there are the usual scholarships are open to everyone. The way Oxford University operates, to be eligible for any scholarship, you must apply before the January deadline and be offered a place during that round of interviews. I did apply on time, hoping to get a scholarship. However, I was placed on a waiting list to be considered after the March deadline. This small decision meant I was no longer eligible—no ifs or buts.
These arbitrary cut-off points in the admissions process fail people from the care system.
It's hard to be what you cannot see. When I left the care system at eighteen, I could hardly read or construct a sentence, let alone write a whole argument. Somehow, the dream of studying at Oxford got into my head. I believe that when you have a dream, you have a responsibility to make it happen. For ten years, I prayed at the altar of hard work, grit, determination, and resilience to realise it. But being told after my admissions interview, ‘We think you’re good, but we want to see if anyone better applies’, almost broke that ambition. I believed I had hit the end of the road. This is as far as someone from a children’s home gets to places like this.
Getting the offer to study at Oxford was one of the proudest moments of my life. I’d done what felt impossible. The offer contained one condition: a financial declaration. The euphoria quickly sank to panic. It felt like I needed to prove I had money to come to a university like this. That I couldn’t just blag that I’ll get an extra job or work harder. I’d need to prove two years up front that I had the money now. Despite still having my application in time for scholarship consideration, I was moved against my will to the March deadline, the university confirmed I would not get any support from them. Along with all the other challenges of being a careleaver here, would I now be able to afford it? The process makes no concession for background or circumstance.
I’m not saying the process needs to be watered down to let more people in. Far from it. I would hate for that sense of achievement to be devalued just to be seen to ‘do the right thing’. It should be hard. But the barriers must be the same for everyone, regardless of their background. Not a Takeshi’s Castle of obstacles littered through the admissions process, eliminating many of the care leavers until there are only a handful of us. I believe this institution is better than that.
You have to be the change you want to make. Is the University of Oxford ready to change the admissions process to be more inclusive to those like me from the care system? These things are slow and take time. But studying at Oxford shouldn’t be as tough as entering space.
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