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

251–260 of 446 posts

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#251

Post by growse »

rcxdude wrote: post #240
growse wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kids worrying that Oxford and Cambridge will discriminate against them are among the smartest in the country. pg's lack of awareness that this has basically always been true smacks of naiveté.

To add to this: Oxford and Cambridge always get the smartest in the country, and they don't struggle to identify them. From what I know of the admissions process, there's three fairly obvious groups of applicants to oxbridge: people who are obviously ludicrously smart and driven and will not struggle at all with the course, who are obvious accepts but are not nearly enough to fill a year group; those who are obviousl…

Interestingly, some colleges tacitly subdivide these groups further.

Christ's Cambridge famously used to hand out "2 E" offers to those in the first group who they know would put the effort in anyway, but "3/4 A" offers to those in the first group they thought might just coast with a 2E offer.

A "2E" offer was certainly a mark of prestige.

(You get your offer in around December time, but sit your A levels in the summer).

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#252

Post by patanegra »

rcxdude wrote: post #237
patanegra wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you compare 1:83 vs 1:2600, it is so big difference, it deserves bold statements. In the UK, there's 1.5 million kids playing footbal. 1:83 ~18000 kids play in any professional club. 1:2600 ~580 kids get to play in Premier League, EFL Championship in a season What is Oxford doing is letting kids who play in absolutely any club, if they go to state school, or only those who got to Premier League, if they go to in…

And yet students at independent schools are twice as likely to get all As than those at state schools. Do you think it's likely that all the smart students happen to have the means to go to the independent schools? Keep in mind the grades are not the main filter for oxbridge: probably the largest is whether the students apply in the first place, and then the latter is the interview, which matters a lot for determinin…

Well, isn't it because kids in independent school are in the school from 8am till 6pm, including Saturdays, since the age of 9, and by the age 11 they board, and all their lives revolve around learning?

In my sons' prep school, I have seen kids playing musical instruments so good, they could do concerts for a general public. I have seen boys taking GCSEs in Year 6.

And 100% of parents are university educated, often high achievers. Don't let me start speaking about Chinese, where kids come from school 6pm, and they often get two more lessons at home (Chinese + music instrument most often).

Parents in state schools don't put in even half of the effort on average.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#253

Post by nobodyandproud »

paganel wrote: post #191
rayiner wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we know that it’s true. That’s why we have been using objective metrics like test scores for millennia, across societies are different as China, India, and Britain.

You could fairly say that China’s pre-Opium Wars obsession with testing and meritocracy based on said testing is what brought them into all that mess, I’m pretty sure that the Portuguese that had gotten all the way from their small country all the way to Southern China using some stingy boats were not clerks nor great (potential) test-takers, and yet it was those Portuguese seafarers that were to change the fate of m…

Testing and meritocracy of what, though?

Don’t forget that China chose Confucianism to put a halt to the perpetual, European style wars.

Stagnation was by design, and caught up with them after 2000 years.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#254

Post by danlitt »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #199
growse wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The very top aren't applying there any more at all, you don't need to: Stanford, Harvard, MIT, all better. The only people applying to those from the UK are the wealthy. If by "very top" you mean "richest", then maybe. But I'm not sure we care about that?

No, you can get a scholarship. Again, this is really the best of the best, those with the highest merit. If you have that, why would you study somewhere that has no people of merit? All they had to do was convince a bureaucrat their life was hard (usually based on rather unobjective criteria), everyone else has to pass exams. If you can't get the grades, you don't have merit. Debase the currency, surprised when it ha…

The mean talent at Oxbridge and at the Ivy League is pretty similar. The talent level of Ivy League scholarship holders is significantly higher than either. Obtaining a scholarship is a significant hurdle that not all applicants clear - so it is very naive to act as if any Oxbridge candidate could just walk into a scholarship. And if you agree that they couldn't walk into it, then it obviously is a hurdle, contrary to your comment.

> Debase the currency, surprised when it has less value?

This bizarre comment is not related to the issue at all.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#255

Post by lo_zamoyski »

alephnerd wrote: post #189
fsckboy wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think high school students preparing to go to university are most interested in rankings not least because for graduate schools specific areas of research are more important. and I agree with much of the parent post, and would add that "oxbridge" and/or "high ranking schools in subject areas" provide many of the professors to "lesser" schools or programs, so you can get a fine education from anywhere. however, the…

> high school students preparing to go to university are most interested in rankings Wouldn't league tables like Norrington and Tompkins be more important for them? I remember during my Britishphilia phase in HS and imagined doing a CS Tripos at one and then a BCL at he other before I removed the emotion and realized the services and network was inferior to a good UC like Cal or UCLA or a B10 like Mich, I was concent…

Anglophilia

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#257

Post by jgraham »

joosters wrote: post #52
patanegra wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).…

Oxbridge have never had to 'let in dumber people'. They are always heavily over-subscribed, and give offers to a small fraction of the people who come for an interview, let alone apply. The whole point of the interview process is to assess not just the applicant's past achievements, but what they might be able to achieve if they got their place at the uni. Part of that is looking at the applicant's background, and kn…

In addition, the colleges have a lot of data about the people they interview and how well they do during the degree programme.

My understanding (based on a discussion with one Natural Sciences admissions tutor at one Cambridge college nearly 20 years ago, so strictly speaking this may not be true in general, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't common) is that during the admissions process, including interviews, applicants are scored so they can be stack-ranked, and the top N given offers. Then, for the students that are accepted, and get the required exam results, the college also records their marks at each stage of their degree. To verify the admissions process is fair, these marks are compared with the original interview ranking, expecting that interview performance is (on average) correlated with later degree performance.

I don't know if they go further and build models to suggest the correct offer to give different students based on interview performance, educational background, and other factors, but it seems at least plausible that one could try that kind of thing, and have the data to prove that it was working.

Anyway my guess is that of the population of people who would do well if they got in, but don't, the majority are those whose background makes them believe it's "not for the likes of me", and so never apply, rather than people who went to private schools, applied, and didn't get a place.

(also a Cambridge alumni from a state school, FWIW),

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#259

Post by danlitt »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #202
exe34 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The supervision system guarantees all Oxbridge students weekly, small-group tutorials, We had that in Physics at Manchester in the 2000s. 4 students. I'm guessing they got the idea from Oxbridge, but I don't think it's been a USP for a very long time.

That sounds like a similar idea but I doubt it's to the same extent. When I was at Cambridge in the early noughties, supervisions for maths and computer science (and physics I believe but I didn't go to any of those) were 2 students in 4 1-hour sessions per week (1 per 24 hour lecture course). [Edit: hmm, actually maybe it was just 2 per week.] In maths, if there were an odd number of students then one would get 1 to…

When I was there (maths, 2010s) it was 1 supervision per course per fortnight. You had 4 problem sets in an 8 week course (for long courses). 16 lectures meant 3 sets, 12 lectures meant 2. I never heard of a college doing more than 2 students in a supervision.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#260

Post by growse »

patanegra wrote: post #252
rcxdude wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet students at independent schools are twice as likely to get all As than those at state schools. Do you think it's likely that all the smart students happen to have the means to go to the independent schools? Keep in mind the grades are not the main filter for oxbridge: probably the largest is whether the students apply in the first place, and then the latter is the interview, which matters a lot for determinin…

Well, isn't it because kids in independent school are in the school from 8am till 6pm, including Saturdays, since the age of 9, and by the age 11 they board, and all their lives revolve around learning? In my sons' prep school, I have seen kids playing musical instruments so good, they could do concerts for a general public. I have seen boys taking GCSEs in Year 6. And 100% of parents are university educated, often h…

> Parents in state schools don't put in even half of the effort on average.

I wondered how long it'd be before we'd see "parents who can't afford private education just aren't putting the effort in".

Post reply on HN