[pjc50]

> done any expeditions, climbed high mountains

The thing is, doing those things at 16 is kind of set up for the purpose of filling in those forms. The UK's "Duke Of Edinburgh Award" scheme pretty much is designed to produce it. And of course it's part of the pipeline; the private school I went to strongly encouraged us to do either DofE, or the military cadets scheme, for at least a year. If you were good enough as an RAF cadet they'd even let you fly a plane eventually.

Having been placed on the Oxbridge pipeline, I arrived there to meet people from different parts of the UK with .. different experiences. Acquiring top marks at the nationwide maths exams despite being at a highly marginalised school, beyond the ability level of the teachers, despite a bomb going off in the distance during the exam, is definitely impressive.