Supporting young people with their Oxbridge applications during Lockdown
OxFizz is working hard to continue supporting our young people during this challenging time. Young people face increasing uncertainty in their university applications and reduceD opportunities to access high quality support as a result of COVID-19. covid-19 disrupted our existing face-to-face deliveery model and we have moved our programme of support online to continue helping young people when they need us most.
What we’ve been doing
We have successfully delivered 1921 hours of online support for young people since the start of Lockdown. More than 250 young people, including those from our Access partners (The Access Project, Target Oxbridge, Villiers Park, and Ark Academy) are now receiving support virtually.
The agile way in which OxFizz has responded to CV-19 has resulted in more sustained contact and support for many of our young people; with digital workshops and sessions being run every month since March, alongside regular newsletter, instead of our usual two touchpoints in March and June. A massive thank you is due to the team at The Access Project for contributing additional staff time to make all of this possible.
Overall, we are pleased with engagement with our young people; 46% of our cohort have received 5+ hours of support (a combination of Q&A sessions, newsletter activities, subject seminars, and test workshops), and 98% of students have received 2+ hours of support. The breakdown of support is set out below:
Hours of engagement at each digital touchpoint
In recent years we have offered five scholarships to our 2-week-long Oxbridge International Summer School (OISS), where young people get the opportunity to experience academic study similar to that at Oxbridge. This year we offered an online version of our traditional 2-week programme, which increased our capacity and enabled us to up the number of scholarships on offer. We were able to offer fifty-five scholarships across 7 subjects, and twenty-nine of these were taken up. We will publish a separate blog on the OISS next week. We are incredibly grateful to our volunteers who gave up 2-weeks of their summer holidays to make this happen. The feedback we have received from students so far has been overwhelmingly positive. Thank you!
Unfortunately, digital provision has brought its own challenges and issues. These have included poor internet connections, insufficient devices, challenges in finding appropriate learning spaces and timetabling clashes. This has meant some young people who would benefit from our support have been unable to access it in a way that met their needs. Challenges that have been faced by many other organisations seeking to support young people online. We are scheduling additional sessions to try to counter some of these issues. If you are interested in getting involved please email Mano here.
Our digital delivery doesn’t end there either; we will be running online Interview Skills Workshops on September 26th and 27th, and 1:1 interviews in October and November (dates tbc). These activities will provide our young people with support to understand the structure and purpose of interviews, followed by realistic practice from our Oxbridge graduate volunteers. Our 2020 cohort is our largest yet, and we are always looking for volunteers who can spare a few hours to support our young people. If you haven’t signed up with us but would like to get involved, please complete this form and Mano will be in touch with more information.
