Pembroke College Cambridge

Pembroke Access Bus

Last term our JPC Access Officers, and a team of volunteers, took part in an 'access bus', travelling around schools to talk to students about options for their future.

Today's blog is written by Amber and Eleanor about the importance of outreach work and the access bus scheme.

In Easter 2017, the first Pembroke Access Bus took place. Jessie (JPC Access Officer 2017-18) visited schools in her home region of Leicestershire, one of Pembroke’s Link Areas. It was our biggest aim as Access Officers to continue the Access Bus and make it an annual tradition and happily, in December 2018, the second Pembroke Access Bus was a success!

Pembroke college cambridge outreach work

We might have lost you already at “Access Bus” or “Link Areas,” which is really why we wanted to write this blog. Access is about widening participation at Cambridge, showing young people whose backgrounds don’t fall into the stereotype of a ‘typical Cambridge student’ (who doesn’t exist!) that Cambridge could be the place for them, or even encouraging them to consider higher education, which they might have thought was inaccessible for them. An Access Bus is just a fancy way of saying a bunch of students on a road trip, visiting schools and talking to the students there about their options for the future. The Link Areas scheme links each UK region to a Cambridge college, so that the college communicates with schools in their areas and might even run specific schemes for students from those areas (for example, Pembroke runs Leicestershire roadshows every year, and students from state schools in our link areas visit the college throughout the year).

Pembroke has a number of link areas, so our first step was to figure out our destination. We wanted to go big, so chose two! We visited Luton (Bedfordshire) on our first day, and Southwark (London) on the second. We used CUSU’s Target Schools website (a great tool if you are considering making school visits in your local area) to identify schools in those areas whose students might not think of applying to Oxbridge, despite being bright and capable of doing so. In the end, after communications with Pembroke’s Schools Liaison Officers, who we worked with closely on the project, six schools arranged for us to visit them. Two of those were very familiar to two of our volunteers as Maisie and Lewis returned to visit their old schools. We were also joined on both days by Amanda, another volunteer. We tried to get together a group which represented the range of backgrounds Pembroke students come from, and incorporated a variety of subjects, as well as having volunteers familiar with the areas we were visiting. It was lovely to have so much interest in helping, and hopefully this will continue as we try and keep the Access Bus going in future years.

Our presentations covered three main topics: how Cambridge works and what studying here is like, myths about Cambridge (and debunking them!), and the admissions process. The admissions part was the shortest, as we felt it was most important to share our experiences of Cambridge and give the students the opportunity to ask questions about life at university. We talked a little about the college system and explained how supervisions work, and then targeted three myths which we considered especially problematic: 1) Cambridge is more expensive than other universities, 2) everyone here is a genius and 3) everyone is really posh. Explaining how student loans worked was particularly important, as some students thought they would receive no financial support towards tuition fees or living costs. At the end of the presentation we opened up the floor for any questions, and it was wonderful to have really engaged responses at some of the schools, and perhaps have talked to some future Pembroke students!

We took a road-trip style approach to our first day in Luton (relying on a sat nav quite heavily!). This wasn’t without its moments though: at our second school we were delayed in leaving by locked school gates, but thankfully our final school was very understanding about our lateness! We then had a terrifying drive back to Hatfield when the sat nav decided to take us down some narrow and dark country roads. Luckily transport was less of a concern the next day in Southwark, and we made the most of being in London by stopping off at London Bridge in our lunch break.

The schools we visited were all very welcoming, with many of the teachers taking time out to chat to us about our experiences and tell us a little more about their school’s history (and offer us cups of tea). The students themselves were fantastic and in some cases we were bombarded with questions, ranging from ‘what is a personal statement’ to ‘which colleges have swimming pools’!

Some of the feedback we have already received from these schools has been overwhelmingly positive, and we feel that we definitely achieved our goal of helping to show a number of students that Cambridge could be for them, despite their previous apprehensions. We’re determined to carry on making the project an annual one, and it was definitely a highly enjoyable experience!

Here’s what our volunteers had to say:

“It was a privilege to volunteer on the access bus and speak to ambitious students in Southwark. Their questions about what Cambridge is like to live and study in reminded me of my own curiosity prior to coming here. It wasn’t that long ago that I too was a secondary school student with hardly a clue as to whether to apply, let alone how. It’s for this reason that I enjoyed the access bus so much. Projects like this give students from low Oxbridge participation areas the encouragement to apply to top universities and help to de-mystify places like Cambridge. I hope the Pembroke access bus will continue for years to come so that more students from backgrounds like my own feel that they can access top universities.” – Maisie Fitzgerald (2018), Medicine

“The Access Bus scheme taught me a lot about the importance of having real-life, relatable students talking to prospective students about Cambridge. It was so rewarding to see so many pupils completely change their mindset on what Cambridge is really like – and I think the most rewarding aspect was to see this come from students like myself; those who are from my type of background and are faced with the same worries and concerns that I had. I think the best part was talking to a group of year 11 students who were the most engaged (which was evident from the Q&A session that lasted longer than the presentation!) and the range of questions showed their genuine interest in applying. I think the main lesson that the trip has taught me is just how important it is to encourage applicants from WP (widening participation) backgrounds. It’s not enough highlighting the lack of diversity in Cambridge in terms of the selection process when diverse pupils are not even applying, so I really hope the Access Bus, and other future schemes, do change the composition of Cambridge applicants and Cambridge as a whole.” – Amanda Daud (2018), HSPS

Blog by Amber Turner (2017) and Eleanor Turner (2017), JPC Access Officers

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