Harris Experience Oxbridge and Medicine offers update 2024

The Harris Experience Advanced team are delighted to announce that alongside our successful Oxbridge applicants, we have 26 students who have received either a medicine, dentistry or veterinary science offer, which is a record for the federation. These offers represent 20 academies across London and Essex. Our Oxbridge offers include specialised courses where state students are particularly underrepresented such as Classics, History and Modern Languages, Anglo Saxon, Norse and Celtic, as well as STEM subjects where British entrants face high levels of international competition.  

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.  

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.  

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

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

Catching up with Harris Experience Advanced alumni at Oxford and Cambridge

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