Why Doxa Should be Your Choice for Mentoring
If you’ve arrived at the Doxa website, it’s likely that you’re looking for tutoring, help with your university application, or both. However, there are hundreds of sites offering thousands of options. Why should you pick Doxa – what sets us apart? Quite simply, it comes down to our Mentors, our methods and our proven track record.
Our Mentors
Almost all of our Mentors are recent graduates or current students of Oxford and Cambridge. We also have a growing pool of Mentors from other top universities, such as Imperial, London School of Economics and University College London. Undeniably, our Mentors are bright and hard-working. Additionally, they have direct and recent experience of the admissions processes for these top universities. Doxa mentoring doesn’t rely on interview myths and rumours. Instead, we recruit Mentors who understand the admissions process – and who understand it well enough to be admitted in a top university. On top of this, many of our Mentors help their college or university with the interview process, making it impossible to find a better source of advice.
Aside from their university credentials, Doxa Mentors are picked because of their tutoring experience. After joining Doxa, Mentors have their sessions assessed by qualified educators, and are regularly given feedback on how to improve. This sets us aside from other tutoring companies, who often merely assume that Mentors are doing a good job. As a result, Doxa has Mentors who are described as “supportive” and “highly qualified” by clients.
Our Methods
The Doxa journey begins with a diagnostic assessment and goal-setting. You will talk about where you’re currently at and what you want to achieve with one of our highly-trained Mentors. We can either suggest how many sessions you need to achieve these goals, or you can come to us with a number in mind. Once you’ve been assessed and matching with a compatible Mentor, the real fun begins.
Our method of mentoring and tutoring sets you up to excel at university, wherever you end up going. Our Mentors use the “supervision” or “tutorial” style, as used by the teachers at Oxford and Cambridge. Our Mentors encourage you to think through questions aloud, express your opinions and back them up. These are the qualities that all university teachers want to see in their students, so being prepared for it puts you ahead of the game. Additionally, this method allows our Mentors to make use of flipped learning, a teaching style that maximises the effect of teaching time. This style of learning, where you are encouraged to reach a basic understanding of the subject yourself, allows for a much thorough understanding than the basic teaching provided by most tutoring and mentoring companies.
Our mentoring sessions also have a focus on using Bloom’s Taxonomy to deepen learning. Bloom’s taxonomy is the foundation of effective teaching; it labels stages of learning, beginning with “remembering” and climbing up to “creating”. However, students have to achieve the first stage before they can move on to the second, and so on. Our Mentors use this methodology to plan individualised lessons that will support and challenge you.
The focus of Doxa is not on teaching you what to think, but how to think. Using pedagogical methods researched by the educators in our team means we are confident that we are providing the best teaching and mentoring.
Our Track Record
I can discuss our Mentors and teaching methods, but what makes us so sure of how effective they are? That comes down to our proven track record. In the last application season alone, Doxa students applying to Oxbridge had a success rate of 36%. This is significantly higher than the national average of 20%. Most or successful candidates had a minimum of 13 hours of Doxa mentoring; this means that only 13 hours of your time could make you up to 80% more likely to be accepted at Oxbridge.
Finally, everyone here believes in what we’re doing. All the staff members at Doxa are Oxbridge graduates themselves. While this may lead to “discussions” over which is better (obviously Cambridge), it means that we all know what an incredible experience studying at one of the top universities in the world is. We want to help other people to enjoy that experience. And we think being mentored by Doxa is the best way to get there.
Author: Ashley - Mentor Manager
Doxa Staff
I’m the Mentor Manager for Doxa. I completed a Secondary English PGCE at Cambridge and have taught at top grammar schools. I recently finished an MEd at Cambridge and am in charge of Doxa’s mentors.
