in thinking University Challenge should be for UNDER graduates?

[NotnOtter]

more and more I am noticing older students on the teams
Seems a little unfair......

I refuse to watch it since the time Paxman asked 'who was the English physicist who won the Nobel prize' and the answer given as correct was Rutherford. He's not bloody English- he was born and went to school in New Zealand.

Rant over. As you were.

Bogeyface Well, it's more that the rules are more strictly enforced now I think. As I'm sure you remember, Corpus Oxford were disqualified after winning because one of their team had graduated and was working. He was a final year undergrad who was planning to do a doctorate but didn't get funding so left after he did his finals. Granada (who make the show) have always had a rule that you must be a student for the full duration of filming. Because Granada split the filming over summer and autumn of two academic years, it meant that he was a student in the early rounds, but was working by the time of the finals. The team didn't tell Granada about this and the production team didn't check. And then when it all came out, they got disqualified.

So from what I have heard, they are now making people prove they will be students over the two academic years before filming starts. But that means that if you are a final year student in the year filming starts, you can't take part anymore. Which I think puts undergrads even more at a disadvantage as team members, as there is a world of difference between a 2nd year undergrad and a postgrad who is perhaps in the final stages of their doctorate.

NB There was talk that the filming schedule would be changed so that it would take place over one academic year. This may already have happened - I'm not sure. But would you really as a final year undergrad want to be filming UC probably in the middle of your finals/thesis writing?

Fish it sounds more complex than I'd thought ... Might ask ds to investigate... In the secret hope it spurs him to go on !!

I refuse to watch it since the time Paxman asked 'who was the English physicist who won the Nobel prize' and the answer given as correct was Rutherford. He's not bloody English- he was born and went to school in New Zealand.

I was ranting at the same time! And I'm not even a Kiwi!

Actually they did tell Granada (I knew someone involved) and Granada said that it didn't matter, the previous year's winner, or the one before that had had exactly the same position and no one had minded.

YABU it's university challenge, and university students can be undergraduate or postgraduate.

My University was barred from the series for many years
excellent claim to fame

I don't think there are more postgrads than there ever were - I've been watching it for about 15 years (yes, I have a fun life).

I do like the new-style questions that are not just straight 'knowledge' but also need some working out, like the homophones ones.

This series my ex boyfriend was on, as was a mate I did my undergrad with. Both came across as idiots, unfortunately!

Btw, I am stunned to hear anyone would be stupid enough to pay out 10k or whatever it is to do a Masters, just to go on university challenge. I'm sorry but that sounds like a myth to me given how expensive it is now!

A Oxford team and a Cambridge one would be awesome but colossally unfair on the other unis. I didn't make the cut for my college team...unsurprising as I am terrible at remembering facts!

Yes they definitely limit the number of Oxford colleges that are allowed to take place. The colleges have to do a pre-competition to see which ones get through. And it's not just the cleverest who get through, they like to have ones that look good as well. (I don't mean good looking btw, I mean the right look)

What is the 'right look'?

and if some of those teams represent the right look I'd hate to see the wrong one

haha I know! NOt sure what the right look is, but DH's team of four white public school educated boys wasn't it, they were (totally informally) told. Or perhaps they already had their quota of that look.

Good point tunip.

I think it's quite sweet when you get them sitting there in clothes you know they will cringe at in a few years' time. There's not a huge amount else on TV that lets you be an unashamed geek and most of the teams who win seem to really enjoy it.

'There's not a huge amount else on TV that lets you be an unashamed geek'

Absolutely

I wonder how many of them will graduate to Only Connect....

God I love Only Connect. Once one of the players was wearing what I recognised to be a very popular handknit pattern jumper (Owlet on Ravelry) and I was so excited - I think I gained a MASSIVE bonus of geek points for combining general knowledge AND knitting geekiness.

I refuse to watch it since the time Paxman asked 'who was the English physicist who won the Nobel prize' and the answer given as correct was Rutherford. He's not bloody English- he was born and went to school in New Zealand.

Is that definitely right? He was knighted and then elevated to the peerage here, which he couldn't have been if he didn't have British nationality. Is it possible that he was a British national despite having been born and raised abroad? Or sought and was granted it in later life (in which case UC wouldn't technically have been incorrect, though possibly a bit tactless)?

I want to see Scumbag College back on UC. :o

The undergraduate thing doesn't annoy me as much as Paxo's blatant Oxbridge bias.

He should just have done with it and ask for the colour of the JCR door at Brasenose etc as a starter for ten.

brown

When I was little I wanted to be on University Challenge but only if I could sit on the top deck. I was in my 20s before I understood the concept of split-screen TV.

That's probably one of the many reasons I never went to university.

Not in The Young Ones.

Whereas my uni got barred for throwing paper darts
off screen upper left
on screen lower right!
aeronatics has always been a strong subject there!

It still throws me to this day when they do a cutaway shot and you realise the two teams are side-by-side and not on a double-decker bus.

Rutherford was born before NZ independence, when it was a british colony. He was indeed British, and the answer was correct. He was a Baron, one has to be British!