University Admissions Tutors are easy to come by. Increased rates of success… not so much.
Tuition alone doesn’t provide the boost that many students actually need to be offered their dream university place. This may surprise you. Many people fall into the trap of using a single tutor for their entire application process but with competition so fierce, tutoring is no longer sufficient to guarantee a place.
Many competitive university courses have success rates of less than 10%, for example, Cambridge BSc Computer science and Graduate entry Medicine. This truly highlights the fact that, even with tuition, up to 90% of students will be unsuccessful.
Of students in higher education receive some form of tuition.
Of students in higher education receive some form of tuition.
What actually works?
With over 10 years of experience focusing strongly on Oxbridge admissions, we have discovered the key to success lies with a solid admissions strategy. Our Programme students have success rates of 57% for the most competitive university courses in the UK compared to the 20% average Oxbridge success rate. This is down to the structured syllabus we provide that allows multiple tutors to make a great impact on the areas that matter most.
You can easily find a tutor who claims to offer expert admissions support at a low cost, however, there are many problems that can occur when you put your time, effort and money into the wrong place. When searching for one-to-one support with your university application, these are the five factors you should be considering when looking for application support:
Our Oxbridge success rate is 3x the national avrage of 16%
Our 5-year medical application success rate versus the national average of 12%
1
Not All Tutors Are Created Equal.
A tutor for specialised Oxbridge application support must have personal experience of the Oxbridge application themselves. This is because the Oxbridge application is a unique process that comes with many nuances. Therefore, working on a syllabus that takes into account all of these nuances ensures that you will get the support you need to create the strongest application possible.
Furthermore, the process constantly evolves year on year, so many tutors lose touch with the reality of the application by not keeping up to date with the changes made. This will have a negative impact on the strength of your application if you are not revising for the right syllabus or preparing for an Interview that could be online instead of in-person, as we have seen during the pandemic.
2
What Experience Do They Have?
When considering university admissions support, you should be confident that the results you are promised are achievable by that tutor or service. For example, if you are looking for support with the UCAT Admissions Test, you should work with a tutor who scored highly in their admissions cycle and has a tried and tested syllabus to work through rather than a tutor who claims to be a Verbal Reasoning expert.
All of this experience adds up for tutors to ultimately deliver the highest possible standard of teaching through a structured Programme.
3
What Resources Do They Have At Their Disposal?
The resources available to a tutor for their teaching subjects has a huge impact on the quality of tuition they can deliver. An exceptional tutor with average resources will not be able to provide ongoing support to a student as they won’t be able to offer self-study materials for the student to work on in their own time. They’ll also be lacking strong material to work through during tuition sessions too. If you compare this with an average tutor who has access to exceptional resources, the true value of the resources begins to surface.
Resources are one of the factors that really widens the gap between working with an unprepared tutor versus a Programme that gives you access to specific textbooks, non-specimen exam papers, in-depth worked solutions and online resources to support the tuition process. Along with the resources offered by a tutor or service, you should also consider the processes they have in place.
Just like how a school curriculum operates, each tuition session should lead on from the previous lesson so that all topics are covered. Without a structured process in place for the tutor to follow, vital topics and sections can easily be missed, leading to a poorer Admissions Test score or weaker Interview.
4
Are They Best Suited For The Entire Process?
The Oxbridge application is a process that splits up into three clear components; the Personal Statement, the Admissions Test, and the Interview. Each of these components tests completely different skillsets, and thus need completely different teaching in order to be successful at them.
For example, if you were sitting Biology and Economics at A-level, would you work with the same tutor for both subjects? It’s highly unlikely. The expert knowledge required for each of these subjects, as well as the ability to successfully pass that knowledge on to a candidate, relies on different skills. Similarly, entrusting one tutor with all aspects of your application is often an inefficient way of preparing for it.
No other company matches their tutors as effectively.
5
What Assurances Do You Have In Place?
Unfortunately, with tuition being a service you cannot easily judge before your lessons, it can feel disheartening if you don’t get what you expected. Many individual tutors offer non-refundable lessons, as in their eyes, they’ve delivered what you asked of them. Similarly, many admissions support services don’t offer much in the way of reassurance if you aren’t happy with what you get.
