We are a charity committed to educational equality.
We aim to increase educational aspirations, student attainment and the chances of making a successful application to a highly selective university.
OUR MISSION
We want universities to enjoy the benefits of greater diversity while students from non-traditional backgrounds feel empowered and excited by their future in education.
We have identified three barriers faced by high achieving students from non-traditional backgrounds (non-selective state schools) aiming for and being accepted into a highly selective university:
We inspire more year 10 students from non-traditional backgrounds to strive for, apply to and be accepted by these highly selective universities.
Our Impact shows that initial research suggests Universify’s programme is having a positive effect on students.
We have had significant success in the key outcomes we identified as crucial to helping more students aspire to and make successful applications to highly-selective universities.
• Increased educational attainment — Our research shows that 84% of teachers have said that engaging in Universify’s programme has benefitted student attainment at GCSE. Increased attainment means our students stand a better chance of making a successful application to highly-selective universities.
• Increased educational aspirations — We transformed students’ likelihood to apply to highly-selective universities, like Oxford. Student surveys demonstrated that there was a 67% increase in students ‘very likely’ to apply to a highly-selective university. We also found that students’ increased aspirations from last summer were sustained with 89%of students likely to apply to a highly-selective university.
• Feeling at home in a university setting — 91% of students this summer said they felt comfortable in Somerville College and with the student group. Feeling comfortable at Somerville College — in large part due to the hospitality of our partner college — helps our students see themselves fitting in at a highly selective university
Our intervention model
In order to address these barriers we designed our intervention model around three core elements:
1. A six-day group residential summer course.
2. Monthly Academic coaching.
3. A three-day Easter residential.
We developed this model by working in partnership with Somerville College, Oxford. We designed a pilot programme for two groups of 20 students at Somerville in summer 2016, when student rooms were standing vacant. Schools were targeted in areas with low uptake of higher education, and in Somerville College’s link areas; Stoke-on-Trent, the West Midlands and Hounslow. Students were selected by teachers and then applications were reviewed by Universify. We provided teachers with a student eligibility criteria asking them to find students who matched as many of the following student criteria as possible:
• In Year 10 in the academic year 2018-19.
• Have the potential to do sufficiently well in their GCSEs to make a viable application to a high-demand university (six or more B grades — in the old system; six or more subjects at 6 points — in the new system).
• Are in danger of falling short of their potential — based on the teacher’s assessment of student’s potential and likely trajectory.
• Are unsure of whether to apply to a high demand university — based on a conversation between the teacher and the student.
• Show an interest in attending a six-day summer course in Oxford or Cambridge in summer.
• Have faced disadvantage — assessed in the first instance by school’s knowledge of student’s circumstances. As students had to opt-in we might expect students to have higher than average motivation — we controlled for this by using a pre/post survey to measure impact and control for these factors that would distinguish our cohort from the general national cohort.