Target Oxbridge has announced that it has helped 71 Black students earn Oxbridge offers for the 2021/22 academic year, with 34 offers made from the University of Oxford and 37 from the University of Cambridge.

The Target Oxbridge programme, which was created and is run by the diversity recruitment specialist and for-profit social enterprise Rare, sets out to increase the representation of Black African students and those with Caribbean heritage at Oxford and Cambridge, usually by organising visits and holding in-person subject sessions with academics at the universities.

However, in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, Target Oxbridge moved its programme online for the 2020/21 admissions cycle by hosting a series of webinars, which included Q&A sessions with Target Oxbridge alumni currently studying at Oxbridge, lectures and seminars from Oxbridge academics, and information sessions with the admissions and outreach teams from each of the universities.

In spite of the pandemic, the programme has succeeded with its online provision in equalling its record of 71 students gaining an Oxbridge offer from the 2019/20 admissions cycle, with this year’s numbers seeing an application to offer rate of over 40%. 

Target Oxbridge now aims to double the support offered to Year 12 students this year who will be applying in the 2021/22 admissions cycle, through the launch of Target Oxbridge Digital. This will see an additional 160 students benefit from online support and bring the total number of students supported by the programme to 320. 

Isaac Diarrassouba, one of the 37 Black students to receive an offer from Cambridge, was offered a place to study Computer Science at St John’s College in 2021/22, and highlighted the importance of a maths masterclass and mentoring support offered by the programme in their application process.

“Target Oxbridge has been the single biggest help to my application. I found the maths masterclass [...] to be particularly useful as the feedback I received really helped me to address my weak points and I found the questions we were tackling to be extremely engaging”, they said. “Without [Target Oxbridge] I would not have received an offer [,]I am extremely thankful for their help.”

Diarrassoube added: “Applying for Target Oxbridge has changed my life and I hope it continues to do the same to [the] lives of others.”

Meanwhile Rare’s Senior Manager for Schools and Universities, and Target Oxbridge founder Naomi Kellman, paid tribute to students’ perseverance and the adaptation of the programme to the pandemic. 

“I am absolutely delighted that over 70 Target Oxbridge students have received Oxbridge offers this year [...] I was concerned about the impact the pandemic would have on our students’ ability to apply to university [but] I have been blown away by the hard work and resilience of our students and am very pleased that they have secured such success”, she added.

Jon Beard, Director of the Cambridge Admissions Officer, also praised the achievement of students in gaining an offer in “extraordinarily different times”, adding that “this is testament to the students’ ability and we are delighted that the Target Oxbridge programme has been able to support them as they plan their futures.”

Reacting to Target Oxbridge's announcement, Cambridge SU's BME Officer told Varsity that "these results highlight the importance of targeted programmes of support for underrepresented groups, and would not have been possible without the dedication of students and student societies such as ACS [Cambridge University African Caribbean Society]."

They added that they "hope the University builds on these successes by working with Cambridge SU to better support student-led access projects and expanding its widening participation priorities to include post-admissions support and access at the post-graduate level, for example."

However, not all Oxbridge access initiatives have survived the pandemic. OxFizz, a London-based outreach programme which strove to ensure fair access for disadvantaged students to Oxbridge, had to close down permanently in December as a result of a lack of funds due to the closure of its academic school owing to the pandemic. The programme had helped over 3,000 students with university applications since it started in 2007.

Target Oxbridge’s achievement in this admissions cycle follows Cambridge’s admission of a record number of 137 UK-based Black undergraduate students last year, making up 4.6% of the 2020/21 cohort.