With the news of around 150 offers of higher education places for Woldingham’s Upper Sixth, and more still to come, the Upper Sixth Form is full of excited talk about plans for next year. As always, the broad range of courses applied for reflects our students’ varied interests.

This month, we are delighted to celebrate the success of Sasha, Sophie and Annabel with their offers to study French and Spanish at St Peter’s College, University of Oxford; English at St John’s College, University of Cambridge; and HSPS at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge.

Other excellent offers of places at UK universities include those for Lauren, Chemistry at Bath; India, Business and Management at Bristol; Eleisha, Natural Sciences at Exeter; Alice, Neuroscience at Leeds; Cecily, Architecture at Manchester; Simran, Computer Science at Nottingham; Nina, Economics at St Andrews; Theodora, Drama, Theatre and Performance at Sussex; Renee, Law at Birmingham; and Jemima’s unconditional offer to study Business Management at Falmouth.

Further afield, we have high hopes for our students applying to American universities and colleges, such as Parsons School of Design, New York, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University, California. We are extremely excited to announce that Naomi has accepted an offer to study at New York University, which received more than 100,000 applications this academic cycle.

Upper Sixth Formers submitted around 30 applications to a wide range of international universities, including Trinity College, Dublin, University of Barcelona, Queen Mary Medical School, Malta, the University of Hong Kong (HKU), The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).

Outside of the UCAS process we have students applying to apprenticeships such as the EMEA Degree Apprenticeship, by Goldman Sachs, the Advanced Apprenticeship, by Jaguar and Land Rover, the Technology Degree Apprenticeship, by IBM and the Engineering and Technology Apprenticeship, by Thales, and Art Foundation courses at Goldsmiths, Kingston University and the University of Brighton.

The number of students applying for higher education places in the UK is at an all time high. UCAS has seen an increase in 18% of applicants for Oxbridge, Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Science courses and applications to the US from the UK have increased by 23% since 2019. The higher education team at Woldingham has worked exceptionally hard to ensure every student is supported on an individual basis to achieve their personal goal, whichever route they decide for their future.

We wish all our students the very best as we await further offers.

Miss Jamie Gallagher, Director of Higher Education & Careers