The following is the text of an email I sent to the Admissions Officers at Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
Dear Sir/Madam
I was passed this email address by [name], with whom I am given to understand you may have had extensive previous correspondence with regard to liaison with schools.
I write in my capacity as Secretary of Phoenix, a special interest group within British Mensa, whose purpose is to support people who were discouraged and held back as children for being bright, and to discuss ideas for getting educationally and professionally back on track in life.
In the four years I have run the SIG, I have encountered member after member who did not discover their intellectual abilities until later in life. While it is not my intention to discuss here the many reasons those talents may have been missed or disregarded by teachers and others, I believe it is a travesty that so many people with Oxbridge potential never even made it to higher education.
My own story is very similar. After I had been tested as an adult and joined Mensa, my mother finally confessed that, in fact, I had been tested as a six year old and scored on the 15 year old level! I was a voracious reader, an independent learner from a young age, and had the ability to seemingly teach myself anything. Unfortunately, my abilities were not nurtured at school and I ended up not being permitted to sit my O Levels.
I am therefore wondering whether any IQ tests or standardised tests are acceptable in lieu of school qualifications for older applicants, or whether you have any advice or other comments that may be of interest to members of the SIG?
Yours faithfully
___________________________________________
The (late) reply I received from Oxford did not address any of the specific points I raised, but merely referred me to the admissions criteria listed on their website.
I am yet to receive the courtesy of a reply from Cambridge Admissions.
I cannot honestly say that I am surprised. I believe I have sufficient evidence and personal experiences to explain my firmly entrenched cynicism about the “education” system on this planet. This only reinforces the sorry picture that should have become clear to anyone following the gifted education blogs – that there is no interest in providing for people with the most capacity to make a difference, and that even elite universities are insufficiently interested in the most extreme outliers to answer a few simple questions about the issues those people face.
SevenSigma Project 