Holy Cross College

shithole.

Holy Cross College in Bury does like to blow its own trumpet — look at us we’re in the top ten colleges again, look at how many people we practically forced to do four or five A Levels or how many got into Oxbridge.
The difference with Holy Cross is that this Sixth Form College actually does deliver exactly what the parents are after. I found the quality of teaching consistently high when I was a student and I am sure that this was a considerable factor in my doing well at A Level.
The General Studies module has always been a bit of a joke but the form classes we had to ‘prepare’ us for this exam were among the most interesting we had. There were debates on topics such as ethics and the big news stories at the time.
Their focus is academic — Lower Sixth students have to swipe their student card (there is no registration) at 8.40am regardless of whether they have lectures or not. How many people actually used this time to go to the often empty library, I’d be sceptical. Its on the top floor of one of their buildings and you can only enter from one set of stairs. it wasn’t exactly easy to nip in.
I didn’t find that any Catholicism was pushed down my throat — yes, the college was originally run by nuns or based on a school that was run by nuns, something like that. And yes there were frail, old nuns walking about every now and again. One other point, this may have changed but when I was there you could only take Philosophy with Theology, half and half. And obviously the majority of the Theology side was Christian, so that put me off a subject I would have otherwise taken (I went on to write my university dissertation on the beginnings of western philosophy).
I did two extra exams in my final year called AEAs in English and History and whilst the sessions were interesting and the exams clearly more challenging to both my memory and creativity, once you are getting three or four As what universities want to see is a more well rounded candidate, right? Sports, volunteering, drama, part time job.
There were plenty of extras at Holy Cross: dance classes, Fairtrade fairs, plus we halfheartedly set up a magazine there — not sure if that has lasted.