On Saturday 28 April 2018, the UAE Alumni Group’s Schools Outreach Programme celebrated recent successes and organized a networking session involving 42 alumni and over 180 prospective Oxbridge applicants and their parents and school counsellors, kindly hosted by Nord Anglia International School Dubai.

Thanks to Which School Advisor, the online parenting guide for the UAE, invitations to the event were sent out to 69 schools across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah to pass on to their brightest and best students, enabling the alumni to reach out much further than has previously been possible.

The Schools Outreach Programme has continued to grow since its inception and over the last 2 admissions rounds combined, the alumni have offered support by conducting practice interviews to 242 applicants from across 19 schools, 41 of whom received offers.  Three of those applicants were the first students from their schools ever to be offered a place at Oxford or Cambridge and their offers coincided with the first year in which the UAE Alumni offered their support to those schools.

The Alumni Group’s support has varied over the years based on availability of alumni resources and the number of students seeking help, but has previously included speaking with aspiring applicants in schools, conducting mock interviews and some mentoring/personal statement reviews, as part of a coordinated effort with schools and students. 

Given the continuing increase in the numbers of schools and students seeking help from the alumni it seems clear that their support has been well received, and has hopefully played a part in increasing the numbers of UAE students applying to Oxford and Cambridge and in turn the number gaining access to an Oxbridge education.  However whilst applicant numbers have grown, alumni resources remain limited. 

The original idea behind the 28 April event, which was a scaled up version of one organised by Hoda Barakat and hosted by Dubai College in 2016, was simple: to provide a one stop shop to enable as many applicants as possible to connect with as many alumni as possible, across as wide a range of subjects as possible: something which individual school visits cannot hope to achieve.  This large scale meeting of minds also proved to be a very sociable and enjoyable occasion for all concerned with many alumni commenting on how much they had enjoyed meeting fellow alumni, and bright students, but particularly the opportunity to ‘wax lyrical’ about their university days.

Gill Shepherd, who has overseen the programme since taking over from Hoda Barakat in September 2016, welcomed everyone and shared details of recent Oxbridge successes and the alumni’s mock interview support. There then followed brief presentations from alumni speakers: Matthew Farthing, Principal of Nord Anglia International School Dubai, spoke about the need to be true to yourself, as well as the colourful language he was required to use at his interview. Dr James Williams offered valuable advice regarding what he and his fellow academics look for when faced with a large number of well qualified applicants.  Mohamad Al Dah then amused everyone with tales of his student years at Oxford, including some of the advantages of being a non-alcohol drinking Emirati/Palestinian. And finally Erika Marriott, gave an insight into her life as an undergraduate at Cambridge including the importance of being able to ride a bike and to maintain a work/life balance in the ‘bubble’ of an academic hothouse.

The main purpose of the event, however, was as a networking session.  To enable students to identify to whom they wished to speak, all the speakers and 37 further alumni schools volunteers took turns to introduce themselves, which included some interesting revelations as to what they did to ‘get out of the Oxbridge bubble’ before exiting the auditorium to allow everyone to mingle and have more focused discussions with specific alumni over light refreshments in the light filled atrium.

Abdulrizaq Yusuf from Brighton College Abu Dhabi hopes to study Economics & Management at Oxford and travelled 120 km to Dubai, along with 11 fellow students and a teacher, in order to attend, but said that ‘it was well worth the long journey and … allowed him to gain an insight which you don’t get by just looking at a website’.  Danielle Holt from Jumeirah College who is interested in studying Maths at Cambridge said the event was "both really useful and very enjoyable - thank you."  Whilst Aleena Razzaq, an IB Diploma student from Jumeirah English Speaking School who is planning to apply for Asian and Middle Eastern Studies said "It was a unique and unmissable opportunity for anyone from the UAE interested in applying to the Universities."

Many of the school representatives in attendance said they had also found the event very informative and now had a much better understanding of what more the students wishing to apply to Oxbridge needed to be doing. 

The event succeeded in motivating all concerned, not least the UAE alumni volunteers who are looking forward to developing further their partnership with local schools.  Mrs Shepherd reported that “The forthcoming round of applications for the 2019 intake looks set to be the biggest so far for the UAE Alumni schools volunteers to support, and will hopefully produce the most offers, given we are now in contact with 30 schools who have applicants seeking practice interview support for this November.”

All photos supplied and owned by Nord Anglia.