Last week, a certain deadline for UK university offer holders closed (STFC for my area). I hope that everyone to who it applied are now enjoying the offer that they hoped to have.
What do you do when you have three offers from two amazing universities, got funding for one of them but want to go to the other?
That's how I ended up making a decision which probably almost everyone who hears about will consider objectively mad. We autistics get that a lot, because there are things to us more important than conventional things. Some might want a quieter environment away from people, others want to realise a dream they had, some (like me) want to be loved for who they are in a romantic relationship and accepted for who they are.
Some might have really hated the university that made me an offer.
Before my Cambridge- IoA interview, I was thoroughly shaken by the breakup of the first genuine, mutual relationship I ever had. My approach consisted of the 'conventional' approach: panicking and scaring yourself out of your mind before the interview. To top it off, one of the IoA interviewers acted like an absolute harpy, taking issues with everything I said. And to top it off, I was interviewed in the overseas pool, which has candidates all over the world beyond anything home students face off against. I was in tears afterwards.
The next day I had another Cambridge interview, for Cavendish. I didn't want this one, so was just treating it as a challenge. The interviewer on the other end was looking at me with wide eyes and repeatedly talking about funding at the end, leaving no surprise how it went.
I ended up receiving an offer from both the IoA and Cavendish, and the IoA set my academic condition to "You must graduate with at least a Pass".
Then, I had an Oxford interview. Oxford's physics department was...not good. Not good at all. I didn't want to go to Oxford, but did want an offer to print out and hang on my wall. I was not worried at all, and the day before I read a book called "How to win an argument" based on Cicero's writings.
I ended up unconsciously applying everything I read during the interviews and I scarcely was able to recognise myself. I never spoke like that before. It was like Cicero returned from the dead and was speaking. I myself would have accepted such a candidate on the spot.
Oxford ended up making me a funded DPhil offer for astrophysics. Out of 382 applicants this year, I was one of the 10 who received an initial offer just because I wasn't scared and was excited about it and wanted to practice interviews rather than get an offer.
Obviously, I didn't want to go to Oxford, for the following reasons:
1) The Oxford offer was generic. Cambridge-IoA made an offer through my dream college for a project the superviser of which developed that topic with me
2) Due to an incident in 2024 that exploded in 2025 and took the OIA's intervention to diffuse, I do not want to live in student halls again
3) I had an overwhelmingly bad impression of the Oxford physics department
4) My family lives in Cambridge already and I'm eligible for SFE loans, and that's before any full/partial funding is considered
5) I do need a quiet environment to function properly, and I cannot do this when I live in constant fear of the fire alarm and student noise
So I declined the Oxford offer, and subsequently did not receive funding from one of the possible Cambridge providers. What followed was half a week of emotional abuse from my mother, who previously was denying I had to go to Oxford because of money and that she wanted me to go where I wanted to be. I did just that, and she still blew up.
I then accepted the Cambridge offer, and will begin at the IoA in October.
I hope nobody has to go through this, but it again illustrates the problem we face when allistics say things they don't mean.
