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Harris Experience

Harris Experience

Harris Experience Oxbridge offers 2023 update 

The Harris Experience Advanced team are delighted to announce we have received 19 offers for Oxford and Cambridge in this year’s Y13 cohort.

These offers represent 11 academies across London and Essex, and cover 16 different subjects, including our first-ever offer for a linguistics and an archaeology course. Other subjects include specialised courses where state students are particularly underrepresented such as PPE, law and art history - as well as STEM subjects where British entrants face high levels of international competition. We are also exceptionally pleased to report one of our students secured an offer for veterinary medicine at Cambridge, having faced the intense competition of the Cambridge application process as well as that of medicine and related courses.

At Harris, we are proud to say that our students are representative of the London boroughs from which they attend our academies. Our goal on the programme is to help students progress beyond barriers to further education, those that have made it historically more difficult for students from certain contexts to gain offers at top universities. To that end, we are very proud of the fact that our offer holders are largely bursary students, or have other contextual factors, including experience of the care system or living in a more deprived neighbourhood. We passionately believe every student should be given the full support to live up to their academic and personal potential, regardless of their life circumstances. As the most prestigious universities in the country, attending Oxford and Cambridge can represent a truly life-changing opportunity.

 

The Harris Experience is a two-part programme that takes place over five years. It aims to broaden the academic and cultural experiences of our most academically promising secondary school students.  

Visit the Harris Experience Website

Disadvantaged students are prioritised for places and one of the outcomes of the programme is that Harris students now attend Russell Group universities at a rate of more than twice the national average. 

In the long term, we see the programme shaping future leaders in all walks of life, helping to level the playing field for students from working class or disadvantaged backgrounds and bringing much needed diversity to key professions and public life. 

You can follow Harris Experience news on Twitter: @HFexperience

Harris Experience: Years 9-11 exposes students to a wealth of high-end academic and cultural experiences, ranging from world class art auctioneering with Christie’s Auctioneers to a trip to the Royal Opera House; from a day of Science in Action at Imperial College London to a bespoke day of lectures at Oxford University. 

Within their own academies, our Harris Experience students are taught to think independently, to express themselves effectively and to embrace learning for its own sake as well as to start the process of understanding their individual academic pathways. 

We hope that all Harris Experience students will enter a Harris sixth form, where they will automatically gain entry to the Harris Experience Advanced. 

Harris Experience Advanced: Years 12-13 is a Russell Group application programme providing expert guidance and individually-tailored academic opportunities for our most able sixth formers. The programme is aimed at students who have achieved outstanding grades at GCSE or who prove themselves to be making outstanding academic progress early in Year 12 and maintain this throughout their two years in sixth form. 

 

The programme comprises:

  • Whole group sessions
  • Academic tracking
  • Trips and masterclasses
  • University visits
  • Subject-specific societies to support academic stretch with subject specialist guides
  • An Oxbridge programme
  • A medical/dentistry programme
  • Weekly bulletins and follow-up on a wealth of academic opportunities outside of school
  • Guidance on writing very competitive applications to Russell Group universities
  • Interview practice and advice
  • Learning mentors for Oxbridge

 

Related Links & Articles

Harris Experience Website

"The students who made it to Oxbridge against the odds": interview with Harris students at Oxford and Cambridge universitiesTimes report on “Finishing’ schools prepare state pupils for Oxbridge”

Catching up with Harris Experience Advanced alumni at Oxford and Cambridge