Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

hotminute.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 446 posts

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#101

Post by misnome »

asib wrote: post #86
patanegra wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always the same argument. If you are world-class talent (someone who gets to Oxford), you should be capable of similar results as kids from independent schools. Like Joe Seddon did ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Seddon - growing up with a single parent mom, working as a therapist in NHS). It isn't fair to ask ones to have 4A* and others to have just 3As. Only 1 in 2600 gets 4 A . And 1 in 83 gets 3 As. Maki…

If it's so much easier to get into Oxbridge from a state school, why do you think people with the means send their kids to private school? They'd save so much money not doing so.

Maybe they aren’t doing it purely as a numerical exercise to get into a specific university 13 years in the future?

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#103

Post by peer2pay »

iirc the Times ranking has always been garbage as it weighs some "student experience" metric way too high. Do I really care about the result of some online survey equally or more than the academic achievement of the staff?

Back when I chose a UK university to attend, I valued the QS ranking much higher.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#104

Post by afavour »

scrlk wrote: post #96
afavour wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Middle class students, knowing they'll be discriminated against, are now applying to US schools I can't take that seriously. Middle class students in the UK would not take on the level of student debt required to study in the US, the sums of money required are vastly, vastly different between the two countries. Sounds like PG has a hobby horse he very much wants to ride no matter what the facts show.

Average student debt is £53k (~$71k USD): https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01... Given the disparity in middle-class household incomes between the UK and the US, I suspect a majority of UK middle-class students would be eligible for some form of financial aid from US universities (assuming Oxbridge vs US equivalents with need-blind + full-need international admissions), meaning their net cost…

> I would suspect that the majority of UK middle class students would be eligible for some form of financial aid at US schools

Very unlikely, most financial aid is not available to international students.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#106

Post by petesergeant »

asib wrote: post #86
patanegra wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always the same argument. If you are world-class talent (someone who gets to Oxford), you should be capable of similar results as kids from independent schools. Like Joe Seddon did ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Seddon - growing up with a single parent mom, working as a therapist in NHS). It isn't fair to ask ones to have 4A* and others to have just 3As. Only 1 in 2600 gets 4 A . And 1 in 83 gets 3 As. Maki…

If it's so much easier to get into Oxbridge from a state school, why do you think people with the means send their kids to private school? They'd save so much money not doing so.

Most people sending their kids to the very best British schools are not expecting their kids to get into Oxbridge.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#107

Post by mytailorisrich »

patanegra wrote: post #5
abxyz wrote: post #2

pg thinks this is because of letting in poor people: https://xcancel.com/paulg/status/1969334665375813679

This is extremely unfair framing. Oxford University has been discriminating people from independent schools for a while now. To get in, you need 4 A* from an independent schools, or just 3 As from state schools. That's not "letting in poor people" as you framed it. It's letting in dumber people, worse students. Lots of that is mainly based on classism (against people from middle class), racism (against white people).…

There is also the issue of "contextual offers" at most Unis. Offers can be made at a significantly lower level just based on the postcode of the applicant. So someone might get an offer at AAB or ABB purely based on their address while the standard offer is AAA or higher.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#108

Post by yorwba »

jansan wrote: post #33

I compared this to the QS ranking, where Oxford is still second in the world, and Durham, the new third place in the ranking mentioned in the article is 341. QS ranking does not even rank the first two, London School of Economics and University of St. Andrews. Does anybody know why? Edit: Sorry, I only looked at the Engineering ans Technology ranking. Anyway, QS ranking is vastly different from the Times' ranking.

The Wikipedia article on UK university rankings has an entire section on the differences to world university rankings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankings_of_universities_in_th...

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#109

Post by fidotron »

homeless_engi wrote: post #31

I think the real story here might be the line below: "Durham University improved by 30 places year-on-year" Seems a bit suspicious, no? What methodology change led to this result? How can a university that was previously not as well-regarded become the #3 in the country overnight?

My recollection from thirty years ago was a lot of people that were aiming for Oxford would have Durham as their backup plan. It's been hovering around there for a while although not so much in the the world tech people care about, for which Warwick and Imperial circle Cambridge far more closely.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#110

Post by Ar-Curunir »

scrlk wrote: post #96
afavour wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Middle class students, knowing they'll be discriminated against, are now applying to US schools I can't take that seriously. Middle class students in the UK would not take on the level of student debt required to study in the US, the sums of money required are vastly, vastly different between the two countries. Sounds like PG has a hobby horse he very much wants to ride no matter what the facts show.

Average student debt is £53k (~$71k USD): https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01... Given the disparity in middle-class household incomes between the UK and the US, I suspect a majority of UK middle-class students would be eligible for some form of financial aid from US universities (assuming Oxbridge vs US equivalents with need-blind + full-need international admissions), meaning their net cost…

Very few schools give international students any aid.
Post reply on HN