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How can a school get in many more students 'top "marks universities than any other with the same test? It may be worth mentioning a few secrets

Last week, a Cambridge tutor was visiting St Edward's college in Liverpool to talk to students about her subject – Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic – when the subject turned to university admissions. Neither Grace Taylor nor Natalie Allmark fancies delving into the murkier end of the Middle Ages themselves – they're hoping to study nutrition and engineering respectively – or indeed going to Cambridge, but they still found the meeting enlightening as they prepare to apply to university in an ever more competitive environment.

"She told us you've got to show commitment to your course, and go out and do extra reading," Taylor says. "You've got to show you're actually interested in it," Allmark adds. "I think that was really important."

It 's this kind of determination that St Edward \ half's, a Catholic academy with 1,200 students to one of only four non-selective state schools in recent Sutton Trust report as stamped in the well above its weight with regard commended on the number of students will get them both in the university overall, based on their test results and also in the 30 institutions, such as selective (the "Sutton Trust 30") are defined.

Much coverage of Degrees of Success, confidence 's study on the high school destinations of students concentrating in every school and college in England, to the astonishing fact that only five - Westminster, Eton, St Paul' s, St Paul 's Girls' and Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge - sent more students to Oxbridge over three years other than 2000 combined.

The statistics also showed predictable chasms between the success of state and independent institutions. But the same concern for the Sutton Trust, the large differences in the proportions entering higher education between schools were exposed to similar test results - especially for the highly selective colleges.

Such contrasts appeared at all levels of the results, the report said, and are a real cause for concern. He raises two high schools with almost identical test scores, of which 61% in Sutton Trust have 30 institutions, while the figure was only 27% of the other. At two comprehensive schools in the north of England, with similar results, the proportions 23% and 55%.

"Beyond the results they produce, schools appear to differ considerably in the levels of aspiration they engender in their pupils and in the quality of preparation for selection for higher education," the report says. "There are many good examples of effective IAG [information and guidance] throughout the state sector, but there is widespread concern that poor advice may be contributing to the low progression rates in many comprehensive schools and FE colleges."

So who's getting it right and how?

Allmark says she feels well supported over what is an increasingly fraught decision. "They don't just push you to apply for Oxford and Cambridge just because they're supposed to be the best. They're good at helping you make the decision that's right for you. Everyone feels the pressure to choose the right university. You don't want to go and then hate it."

"Many schools don't have a system whereby young people in the sixth form can book in with somebody who's trained in advice and guidance and talk through their individual situation.

Dover students take more subjects on average than those in the Torquay school – five as opposed to four, based on a belief that breadth and depth will make them "well-educated young adults who are ready for their futures". That means the grades they are getting to achieve similar overall scores are lower and they're making fewer applications to the top universities.