That it used to be easier to get to Cambridge or Oxford than it is now??

[countingdownagain]

I know a few people that went to Oxbridge in the 70/80s that I struggle to imagine they'd have a hope of getting in today.

It strikes me that it if you were male, fairly well spoken, it was much easier to get in than it would be now??

I'm always struck on here of how many children are offered places when their parents attended. It must confer some advantages - knowledge of the 'system', cultural capital, educational advantages perhaps?

Yes, you are right. The numbers show that there are significantly more applicants per place now than a generation ago. More international applicants, more applicants from a wider range of UK schools/backgrounds. Bit of a reduction in international (especially EU) applicants due to Brexit, Covid, but longer term the trend is towards much more competition. The number of places available has barely changed.

I think it's cultural capital and expectation @Turmerictolly. And also the fact that DH's first degree heavily impacted his earnings which were invested in the dc's education. Notwithstanding genetics.

Interview vs offers might be a better stat to compare.

Not it isn't, because that is a policy decision. At Oxford (at least in the subjects I know about) we were interviewing the vast majority of applicants when I started 20 years ago. It was a crazy approach for heavily over subscribed subjects. Now I think almost all subjects limit interviews to fewer than 3 per place, regardless of the number or quality of applicants. They largely use aptitude tests to do that.

Several people in my year at school got in with a mix of As and Bs at A level in the mid 90s.

Lots of grade inflation since then. That is equivalent to a mix of A and A* now.

Lots more overseas students who bring money with them for the university.

Oxford makes undergraduate admissions decisions entirely independently of whether students are overseas (and bring more money) or not.

At the time, I think it was quite normal to get an unconditional or very low offer after interview. A girl I knew got an offer of 2 Es. Not sure if they still do that.

Only if you took the entrance exam. Which was stopped as favouring private schools etc too much.

Both universities have reduced places for U.K. students over the last decade. There is no pre-allocation of places for UK v non-UK students. Apart from medicine where there is a cap on overseas students. It's just on merit. But international students are taking more of the places due to globalization.

It's more smart educated people who work professional careers tend to role model and produce smart educated children who want professional careers

I think knowledge, aspiration but also passing down attributes which can include intelligence

Not saying it’s totally fixed though - you’d get a mix

This is not remotely true. Offers to international applicants have in fact gone down dramatically — to the point that both universities are concerned this year that not enough overseas offers are being made

As a very recent trend, yes. Due to the efforts on widening participation and also Brexit, Covid. But not if you compare to 30 years ago I think. I should probably look at exact numbers rather than relying on my memory of the last 3 decades though!!!

There isn’t really a “system” these days to have knowledge of — you apply and get interviewed but you don’t need connections or coaching or inside knowledge of anything to do well, just ability and potential in the subject.

Undoubtedly though, educational advantages get passed on by parents generally. Research has often shown that overall the mother’s educational level is often key to a child’s educational success — this is global and across the board not just in relation to U.K. higher education!

No, they really aren’t. This isn’t a trend that’s solely due to either Brexit or Covid. It also wasn’t the case that many more undergraduate offers were made to overseas applicants in recent memory either. It has more to do with the overall U.K. HE policy of target numbers for state applicants, and risk-aversion — specifically the fact that international applicants are less likely to turn up if you make an offer, so it’s a cover ratio risk on very small numbers of places.

eg. Individual subject interviewers might have six places for their subject. They are under pressure to increase the ratio of state vs private U.K. students. U.K. students are very likely to come if made an offer. International students not so much, because they also tend to be applying to other global universities — and they often either (a) come with their own government’s scholarship money, or (b) really want to go to the US if they can. The “cover ratio” (number of offers you need to make to get a specific number of students who actually make or take up the offer) is much higher for international applicants.

So: if you take up one of six places by making an offer to an international student and they don’t turn up, you lose that subject place. Whereas if you make six U.K. offers — say to four state applicants and two private — they are pretty much all guaranteed to take up the place.

Add to that, you’re under pressure to meet a higher ratio of state to independent UK applicants. It’s a lot easier to make sure you are doing so with a lower cover ratio. In this respect there’s a post-Covid effect, but only a weak one insomuch as subject interviewers and admissions tutors are having to be more risk-averse in general.

Both Oxford and Cambridge this year have been issuing internal complaints to admissions tutors about not admitting enough overseas students, and missing out on charging more overseas fees! But both universities are currently more concerned with meeting government targets to admit higher ratios of state and disadvantaged applicants, than they are concerned about overseas fee income.

I wrote that there are many mediocre ones. Twins from our family, public school educated, parents all Oxbridge graduates, all A*s at GCSE. They both eventually went on to get 100% in 2 out of three A level papers - top grades across the board but did not even get interviewed.

In the same year, I was tutoring grammar school kids with very mixed GCSE grades who were not standout interesting or impressive. They secured BBC offers (which they did not meet) and before you say it, their applications were not better on paper. One young man wrote something in the style of Horrible Histories which was utterly bizarre. There must have been others who met the lower grade requirements.

The result over time is that you get an intellectually middling bunch of graduates.

But surely you don't think that one anecdote where neither people with good GCSEs nor people with less good GCSEs gained places is actually evidence of a lowering of standards?

I could cite other examples but it is pointless if you are specifically here to defend the inclusion policies.

Sounds hard to get right but it’s a shame if academic standards are lowered

The weaker applicants were given the chance, the stronger ones were not even given the chance to demonstrate what they know. It was as though the name of their school was enough to rule them out. The few who got in were scholarship kids from disadvantaged backgrounds with weaker academics.

Maybe the 'stronger' ones personal statements weren't up to scratch?

Independent school parents can't have it all ways.
They want the independent schools for better education / advantage. O&C are trying to balance the playing field.
Oxford and Cambridge are looking for people who have reached an appropriate standard and who also have spark/potential. There are more who would cope than there are places. But going purely off results disadvantages those who are applying from less good schools / disadvantaged families.

Yes. My DDad was an admissions tutor until the late 90s and his College interviewed everyone who applied, regardless of predicted grades or anything else. (He was sceptical of a lot of school’s ability to predict accurately). He did say very occasionally they’d have a candidate who should never have applied and then they’d chat about where would be the best choice for them to go that wasn’t Oxbridge.

I am not here to defend the inclusion policies but just asking on what basis you think standards are declining and what you mean by that. It makes sense to me that candidates who can achieve without the advantages of a private education are seen as more desirable, and I believe there is evidence that on the whole they do better as undergraduates, so no wonder the universities want them. Tbh with a wider pool and more competition, I would expect standards to rise, not fall. Of course there are thousands of clever people who don't get in every year, but I don't think individual examples are particularly meaningful. Could it not be that even though they had all 9s at GCSE, something else about their application - entry test / interview / PS - was weaker than the next person? Or the tutors felt that they didn't suit the teaching environment? Or that a state school student was more impressive when educational backgrounds were taken into consideration? For some schools all 9s at GCSE is not that remarkable, for others a mix of 7/8/9 is very good going.

I understand it must be difficult for high achieving students to be rejected by Oxbridge and I guess if believing in a decline in standards helps then that's fair enough if a bit bizarre - "I didn't get into Oxbridge because I'm too good" - but the bottom line is always, the university has a very limited number of places and they wanted someone else more.

What I think was easier was the admissions process - sit the exam, have an interview and if you were sucessful you got a 2E or unconditional offer. Now its sit the exam, have the interview and stress all year about getting AAA or more as you need to meet your offer. Not having that pressure was hugely beneficial to my mental health compared with my classmates with offers from Durham/Bristol/London etc.

We don’t get a choice. Why not take your grievances up with government instead, and specifically the OfS, which regulates the targets for the sector, not us?

As an interviewer, I can say that it’s undoubtedly the case that independent schools have some excellent candidates who are fully deserving of a place.

They also put forward to us a fair number of mediocre students who have good results, and are clearly lovely well brought up young people, but can’t demonstrate much evidence of independent thought or ability/potential/talent beyond their school teaching.

It’s our job to sort the first from the second category. We still want the first category; but these days, we’re a lot tighter on the second than we used to be.

Sure, some of that second category could probably do fine here and enjoy themselves and come out with a mediocre okay degree. But why should that second category get preference over state applicants who have exactly the same grades without all the advantages of nice schools and wealthy families?

We now get a huge amount of contextual data about applicants’ schools and backgrounds. It’s not unfair to look at someone getting 8 8s or A*s from Westminster, and compare them with someone who got the same from Bog Standard Comp, Northern City.

There is no law that says that naice people really must get in. And sone independent schools teach to the test so much that they can churn out A*s from students who are in fact quite intellectually mediocre when it comes to independent thought.

No idea why my italics went rogue there! 😂

You can't compare A level grades from thirty years ago. C was seen as a perfectly good A level grade then and there were very few A's awarded. Now people pass out at a B.

I went to Oxford from a state school. I took the entrance exam so had a 2 E offer. The entrance exam was a lot more interesting than A levels tbh. It provided the opportunity to show what you knew rather than highlight what you didn't know. Finals were like that as well thinking about it. Don't know whether that has changed.

I do think it seems like a much more pressurised place now - not sure I'd enjoy it as much.