The New Year has brought much to celebrate in the Malvern St James Sixth Form, as last week drew to a happy end with five students receiving Oxbridge offers.
Three girls have been successful in their Oxford applications: Margo Bondarchuk has an offer to read History and Politics at St John’s College, Elaine Chen has an offer from St Anne’s College to read Engineering and Angela Liu has an open offer to study Biomedical Sciences.
Angela said “I am so thrilled to receive an offer from the University of Oxford and I can’t wait to start university life there! At the same time, I’m so grateful for the huge amount of support MSJ staff and students have given me. MSJ has truly provided me with the platform to fully exploit my potential.”
Successful Cambridge applicants are Lucinda Hobden, who was delighted to be offered a place to study Modern and Medieval Languages at Gonville and Caius College, and Xing Zhou, who is holding an offer for Mathematics at Trinity College. Lucinda’s offer follows her hugely impressive track record in Cambridge competitions last year, when she won Corpus Christi’s Christopher Marlowe prize in English and came third in The Peter Lawrence Essay Prize in Modern Languages.
Lucinda explained “It’s definitely been a long few months with the application process – first, sweating over my personal statement, then admissions tests and essays, before I finally made it to the dreaded interviews! But when I opened the acceptance letter from Gonville and Caius last week, it all felt worthwhile. For me, applying to Cambridge has never been just about the kudos that goes with the name; what I’m most excited for is the chance to study French and German, taught by world-leading professors and surrounded by other passionate students. It’ll certainly be a challenge come October, but I’m looking forward to it!”
Mrs Olivera Raraty, MSJ’s Headmistress, said, “I am thrilled for the girls who have worked so hard to achieve this success and my thanks go to our teachers who have supported the girls’ ambitions. It is a very exciting and a wonderful way to start 2017.”
“As well as the Oxbridge applicants, I am delighted for all of our Year 13 girls, who are receiving more good news on an almost daily basis about where they will be heading to next. They should be really proud of their achievements, securing places on the most popular courses at the best universities in the UK.”
Other prestigious institutions where girls are holding offers include Kings College London, London School of Economics, University College London, Exeter, Warwick, Imperial, Bristol, Birmingham, Durham and York for courses as diverse as Mechanical Engineering, Law, English Literature, Criminology, International Relations, Geology, Psychology, Classical Studies, Physics and Electrical and Electronic Engineering. One girl is holding an offer for Veterinary Medicine at Liverpool, and two further Medicine applicants are interviewing shortly at Glasgow and Leicester.