When you’re about 10 you tend to answer with complete confidence: to be a footballer, astronaut, safari ranger, musician. It is usually the last moment in one’s life one feels such certainty about a career. As a teenager, one adopts the more sensible, if slightly vertiginous, position of not having the faintest clue. All they know is what they don’t want to be.

All of Year 7 are invited to celebrate their birthday with the Headmaster over the course of the year - they are nearly teenagers! We asked him whether, in all his time at RGS - that's over 1,500 pre-teens - anyone had announced they would like to be a headmaster as their dream job. The answer was "no!" 

Meanwhile, at the Biology Society, their dreams were more certain, from medicine to zoology, to environmental and veterinary science. Not bad going since a fair proportion of the adult population are likely these days to say that the easiest way to ensure your dream job is a nightmare, is to have a long commute.

Be ambitious, be aspirational, and good luck!

Congratulations to those who have an offer from Oxbridge, to those who have received offers from their universities of choice and hold your nerve to those who are still waiting for offers!

Our Sixth Formers are in their penultimate term. Offers are now coming in from their chosen universities having picked their way through the choice of over 30,000 courses at 166 universities, they are closer to answering the ‘What do you want to be?’ conundrum.

Looking at all our Sixth Formers who applied to university this year, it is with immense pride that they have come thus far. The chance to go to university is an extraordinary privilege and the higher education landscape has never been more competitive. 

Oxbridge has a fearsome reputation, as do other institutions. We use the 22 months of Sixth Form to blitz all our students with the love of learning and interests beyond the curriculum to prepare them for their next steps. At this point in time, balancing the purely academic with life beyond the classroom for our Class of '24 is critical to personal growth and well-being.

Year 13 has a lot to look forward to before they go, including Leavers' Day and the traditional Leavers' Ball, all thanks to the Senior Prefects and those on the Leavers' Committee.

So, to all our students, be ambitious, be aspirational, and good luck, but don’t forget to enjoy the journey!

What you study and where you study have never been more important.

For more than a century Oxford and Cambridge - or Oxbridge, a term coined in 1850 by William Makepeace Thackerary in his novel Pendennis who briefly attended Trinity College, Cambridge - have been by-words for privilege, the golden ticket to a successful career in professions such as law and politics. It is a world of summer balls, punting and high-table dining, of ancient colleges and gilded youth.

Indeed, 24 percent of MPs attended Oxbridge, as did 38 per cent of peers, 56 percent of permanent secretaries, 71per cent of senior judges and 13 percent of police chiefs, according to the 2019 report Elitist Britain, which looked at the backgrounds of 5,000 people and was published by the Sutton Trust and Social Mobility Commission. Perhaps, then, it is not surprising that students are willing to try for several years to get in. For many, though, the fear of disappointment is simply too stressful and the cult of Oxbridge too sepia-tinted to be considered, or considered achievable.

While Oxford and Cambridge may be amongst the most sought-after universities in the world, according to UCAS, computing-related degrees including AI, video games design and robotics make it the fastest-growing subject of choice in the country. It is computer science graduates from Imperial College who top The Sunday Times league tables for best paid salaries, enjoying an average salary of £64,000 six months after graduation. The highest-earning subjects across all universities are dentistry and medicine, with median graduate salaries of £42,000 and £35,000 respectively.

Whatever your dreams and aspirations are, RGS will support you to aim high and help you answer the question, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’