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The Oxford maths interview, shaking up admissions

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Re: The Oxford maths interview, shaking up admissions

#2

Post by at-fates-hands »

The rise of continuous assessment models and the ability to track students’ every interaction with digital learning content may allow for broader, more holistic evaluations of student potential.

This is merely a complex way of saying "metrics". Welcome to the real world Oxford kiddies.

Re: The Oxford maths interview, shaking up admissions

#4

Post by Smaug123 »

I wonder to what extent there is anyone who could cope with the Oxford course but who could not breeze through A-level Further Maths. I entirely understand that the converse is false: there are people who are extremely good at exams but who simply couldn't cope with the Oxford course.

Almost all of those on the Cambridge maths course (which I'm taking to be similar) found A-level maths/further maths very easy. Of course, the admissions process selected for such people, but I think "finds A-level maths content very easy" is a prerequisite for the course.

Re: The Oxford maths interview, shaking up admissions

#6

Post by agripa2 »

murkle wrote: post #5

If he thinks exams are a bad indicator... why does Oxford assess its students with... exams?

One on on interviews don't scale. I feel like it's the biggest problem in any admissions process; the best metrics are one's that don't scale, so you're forced to rely on less optimal ones.

Re: The Oxford maths interview, shaking up admissions

#7

Post by stuxnet79 »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #2

The rise of continuous assessment models and the ability to track students’ every interaction with digital learning content may allow for broader, more holistic evaluations of student potential. This is merely a complex way of saying "metrics". Welcome to the real world Oxford kiddies.

Academese, the English disease.

Re: The Oxford maths interview, shaking up admissions

#8

Post by Houshalter »

This is just speculation but I have some ideas of what effects might be in play here.

First the exams test knowledge, not problem solving ability, which is what he wants. It may be possible to design a test for problem solving ability. That's basically what IQ tests are designed to do. As I understand it, the SAT test used to be like an IQ test and highly correlated with IQ.

Second exams probably do correlate with IQ (it correlates with literally everything), but correlation isn't enough. You can't just take the top n results from a test. You can use a test as a filter, e.g. sampling the top 5% of results or whatever. But when you set the filter too high, you just get outliers.

E.g. the top 100 people who are freakishly good at taking tests, and nothing else. Maybe they have abnormally good memories and just remember everything they read in the textbook. Or maybe they have parents that pushed them to study excessively, or just did so on their own.

You only should use tests as a filter, a minimum standard. Not optimize for it directly.

Re: The Oxford maths interview, shaking up admissions

#9

Post by technotony »

Smaug123 wrote: post #4

I wonder to what extent there is anyone who could cope with the Oxford course but who could not breeze through A-level Further Maths. I entirely understand that the converse is false: there are people who are extremely good at exams but who simply couldn't cope with the Oxford course. Almost all of those on the Cambridge maths course (which I'm taking to be similar) found A-level maths/further maths very easy. Of cou…

My Cambridge interview tested for this explicitly. They gave you 45 minutes to prepare answers to 8 'further maths' type questions, then you had to solve some creative problems at the end. These creative problems required knowledge of further maths concepts but were unusual so you needed time to think about them and develop a mathematical framework for the solution, this therefore tested that you could do the further maths questions easily and quickly and that you could solve new problems.

The 'creative' problem I had was this: A mouse walks along an elastic band at 2 meters per minute. The elastic band stretches by 1 kilometer every hour. How far along the band does the mouse get? If you got that right, then they gave you a stretch question where the band doubles in length every hour.

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