While the rest of us look forward expectantly to Christmas, thousands of sixth-form students are anticipating their Oxbridge interview. And, as is only right and proper when the admissions circus comes to town, the debate as to how best to get applicants from non-traditional backgrounds applying to Oxbridge has been reignited. A recent Guardian article proposes that Oxford and Cambridge should have colleges that only admit state school pupils, similar in design to the all-women’s colleges. But I can’t help but feel all these proposals miss the point.

Before I came to Cambridge, I imagined supervisions would involve me sat opposite an old man, dumped on his armchair like a large sack of rotten potatoes, with a face as wainscot-faced as his room furnishings and a stomach nearly as big as his ego, talking at me in Latin. Then the entire Pitt Club would come bursting through the door on horses, each brandishing a rapier made of privilege. And then… And then, I can’t remember, because I stopped having those fears the moment I came here. Cambridge, for me, as a former state-school pupil, is just like home. Because here I have my meals cooked for me, books on my bookshelf, the opportunity to act in plays, and people who support me in my studies. Just like home.

It is evident that even those of us who do come from state schools are not the 'access' students the university should be targeting. I had great fun as a new fresher pretending I was a working-class hero, but my father is an academic, I buy my bourbons from Sainsbury's, and sometimes my family all gather around the TV and watch movie adaptations of Jane Austen novels. My school had not sent someone to Oxbridge for several years, but it was my socio-economic background that allowed the extremely hard work my teachers put in to end in a successful application. My friends from more disadvantaged backgrounds did not have the same opportunity.

Defining access targets by the number of ‘state school students’ provides too wide a term for any serious progress. 39 per cent of Cambridge students are privately educated, compared to 15 per cent of students in private education at sixth form. But the situation is worse even than that. States school students don’t necessarily equate to disadvantaged students. In 2013, only 300 students came from comprehensive schools: the rest of the access statistics are massaged into vague acceptability by the inclusion of grammar schools. Cambridge also takes one in every four places from only ten southern districts of the country. And this year only 50 pupils out of nearly 30,000 on free school meals got into Oxbridge, while 60 students out of only 260 from Eton alone got in. Cambridge also accepts 31 per cent of white applicants compared to 14 per cent of black applicants. So, unless you believe that children in poor families, attending failing schools, living in northern areas with black skin are innately less intelligent than the rest of us, then these facts are truly damning.

However, I do not believe colleges for only state school students is the answer; such a plan would undoubtedly see divisions extenuated and the colleges stigmatised in the way that happens now with all-female colleges. The problem is not particular to state education, and nor is ‘state schools’ a very helpful phrase in discussing disadvantage. Instead, we need more appropriate measures of positive discrimination. I would suggest that a policy of consistently lowering offers for non-traditional students would be incredibly helpful. It seems farcical that Cambridge is prepared to lower its offer so drastically for Prince William to come and study here, but not for a student that has struggled through adversity. And, secondly, I would start approaching schools that have not sent students to Oxbridge for multiple years with guarantees that at least one of their students will be offered a place should they choose to apply. Quotas for the number of ‘access’ and state school students colleges must accept would also increase diversity. These measures, to my mind, would go some way to readdressing the balance.

But the problem is so much bigger than this. The university must recognise that inequality not only disadvantages poor students; it disadvantages our entire society. Therefore, the university must campaign vocally against the inequalities inherent in the system; it must push for the abolition of all private schools and it must campaign for free university education. It can start by supporting Tristram Hunt’s proposal this week that private schools should share resources with state schools or lose their tax breaks. My state school taught me that everyone deserves the same opportunities in life, and it taught me to appreciate diversity and find beauty in the different. Why then should I be separated from the rest of the university in a state-only college? We must pull down barriers, not put more up. I am not more intelligent than the young girl who has to look after her sick father, or the boy who has to work two jobs after school to subsidise his parent’s benefits or the hundreds of children trapped in a dystopian society of zero-hour contracts and low wages. It is those people whom Cambridge must fight for. Not the privately educated. Not the wealthy. And not me. This is not a political issue; it is an issue of success.

At my fresher’s week we were told many times that “Cambridge has picked you for a reason – you are the brightest and the best and you deserve to be here”. But I can’t help looking around during my half-empty lectures and wondering who the students were that society forgot.