Oxford -- PPE or Economics with Management

[shockthemonkey]

This is the question one of my charges is struggling with.

We all know how hard PPE at Oxford is -- but its acceptance rate at 15% appears better than for Economics and Management at the same uni, with just 7% of applicants accepted.

Whilst he's looking closely at course content, and discovering more about the other four choices he'd be going for in either scenario (PPE or Econ with Mgt), does anyone have any thoughts about the programme choice?

I have no reservations about his academic level nor his commitment to doing what it takes to give him the very best chances. I just know, though, that he'll ask me whether one is "easier" to get in for than the other.

Before looking at the acceptance rates, I would always have said PPE is harder. Even looking at the 15% vs 7% I still think this may be the case -- Econ and Mgt may be attracting more "borderline" candidates than PPE because I cannot imagine schools in the UK encouraging anyone other than their very brightest to go for PPE.

Does anyone have any experiences to share? Thanks!

So how come Oxford, Warwick and Durham make an offer of an A in Maths for pure Economics?

And for PPE Oxford you don't need maths at all!

The offer is not the same thing as the average attainment of students actually on the course.

Possibly, but they if you offer you an A in Maths, and you get the A then they have to give you the place. Therefore they must consider an A in Maths good enough to do the straight Economics degree....

No. They considered that candidate, to whom they gave an offer based on the whole of his/her application, good enough if he/she got an A. Do you understand the difference?

Yes, but your argument was based on Maths attainment only. You stated that if you only achieved an A in Maths you would struggle relative to your peers - or words to that effect. My DS has achieved perfect scores in everything (inc Physics) at IB - the only thing he underachieved (arguably) at was HL Maths. You stated that he would struggle based on his Maths score - now you're saying you have to look at the whole picture.....

halvedfees - you seem determined to feel as if your DS has been hard done by, even though his application went against the better judgement of his school (who has been proved correct). I have given you the information that I have that would correlate with the information your DS' school had. There are multiple variables involved, not just the one you are focusing on (5 at HL IB Maths = as good as A at A-level Maths = minimum requirement for courses DS was interested in).

I am sorry you and your DS are disappointed but it really doesn't sound as if there has been any injustice.

I agree there hasn't been any injustice on the surface - they asked for a 6 - he didn't get it. I just disagree that a 6 is the same as an A in Maths, when there is ample evidence to prove otherwise. Warwick seem to have got it, why can't the others. I also disagree with your assertion that my DS would have struggled with the Maths side of Economics - Warwick seem to disagree with you as well! (Who happen to be 2nd this year after Cambridge for Economics - see www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings?s=Economics)

PS We only went against the school's advice for Oxford PPE (who don't require Maths at all) - they said he was more than capable of getting in, but it was a total lottery. We thought that if he's applying for PPE elsewhere, he might as well try Oxford.

Halvedfees is right - for PPE and EM at Oxford (as well as most other Arts/Social sciences course) essentially all A-level students get an AAA offer. There is almost no variation for 'special cases' currently. The AAA offer is agreed for the course at the department level and colleges agree to go along with it. For EM this must include maths, but not for PPE (though in practice the vast majority have maths). While obviously the average student exceeds AAA, there are plenty of successful EM/PPE students with 'just' an A in Maths.

The offers for other qualifications including IB vary more. Because the number of candidates involved is smaller, the central guidance is less clear and colleges don't feel as compelled to follow it. But there is evidence, formal and informal, that IB candidates are often being set more demanding offers than the AAA for A-levels. I think there are a number of reasons for this. First, lack of familiarity with the qualification. Second, grade-inflation at A-level means the AAA offer isn't what it used to be, but resistance to change means we still use it - other qualifications aren't affected in the same way. Third, individual colleges and tutors might want to set a higher offer, but feel they cannot for A-levels, but can for other qualifications.

Halved fees, I agree with you. "A at A-level Maths (without FM or Physics) would be very weak relative quantitative preparation for Economics at UG level on a very good Economics course." is a strange statement.

A level performance is influenced by a number of things, aptitude being only one.

1. How well is it taught. There is a massive shortage of maths teachers,. and some, frankly, are not very good.

1. A student's perception of themselves, their motivation and their character. Some work astonishingly hard. One overseas friend of DS was sent to a tutorial college every Christmas and Easter for his whole secondary education. DS, curiously suffered from being at a very selective school where 50% of the year group take double maths. At University he has discovered his is more able than he thought he was.

1. The peer group. If you have a set of bright students you will be motoring and perhaps not realise it.

Maths seems to be one of those subjects where students can plateau at different points. So success at A level does not necessarily predict success at higher levels. Universities will want to pick potential. They will have to specify a minimum level of attainment/prior knowledge but will want to look at an application in the round. This is why for maths, engineering and, occassionally, economics degrees MAT and STEP are requested as a way of trying to figure out whether a student can solve problems rather than simply pass exams.

For competitive courses average attainment will be higher than required entry grades. However if they needed more than the required entry grades Universities would ask for more. Warwick presumably value your son's impressive IB attainment and other aspects of his application (and presumably rejected mine despite some 100% UMS scores at AS and a prediction of 4A*s because they had enough candidates they considered more suited to the course.) If they think your son's maths is good enough, it will be good enough.

DS has noted a number of his peers at LSE have had to self-teach themselves FM to AS level. He knows the first year was easier for him with further maths at A2, though he has had to learn the art of working things out for yourself rather than being able to rely on good teaching. I doubt if this group will end up doing any less well than their peers. If anything the group who seem to struggle are students who have been hitherto very hard working and very over-achieving. Either they let go when parental/school pressure is reduced, or despite working incredibly hard (and DS knows some who were doing all night sessions in the library in their first term) the step up is too much.

A certain amount of maths is required in all economics degrees, however outside the four quantitative courses it should not be that heavy. And even within those courses there is usually scope to take fewer mathematical options. Obviously there is less maths in PPE, economics history and so on. So I would not worry too much about the grades you get, assuming you secure the place, but more about whether you like maths. Eg if your son could have done better at HL maths if he had paid more attention and owrked harder, this is probably better than if he struggled to get the grade despite working flat out. If you stuggle with maths, you want to choose your course and your options within a course carefully.

*HL Maths is well-know to be harder than A level - this study

www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-eps/college/stem/Activities/stem-education-network/Understanding-the-I-B/James-Hanscombe-TMAT-Paper.pdf

confirmed a 5 at HL was equivalent to an A at A level, and an A at A level is all Durham wants. However, like Durham, most universities haven't woken up to that fact yet.*

Or, alternatively, universities make their decisions about what the true equivalence is based on their own very extensive experience of students with IB HL and A level maths rather than basing their decisions on one study by an educationalist. (As an academic who has taught a lot of students with HL and A level maths I don't agree that 5 at HL is equivalent to A at A level and I wouldn't use such a relation for my own department's entrance requirements.)

Needmoreslep - thanks for agreeing with. He is a better Mathematician than his result suggests - he esp liked calculus so he should be ok - hopefully!

Spinoa - I appreciate your opinion, but I think you are becoming more and more in a minority. Most people involved in education at either secondary or higher level who really know both systems admit that IB HL Maths is harder than A Level, mainly because of the type of questions asked are less "sectional". Hence the University of Birmingham paper stating a 5 is equivalent to an A and a 6 to an A*.

Irregularegular and Spinoa : The research by Jesus college on the IB www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/admissions/research/docs/ib_performance.pdf

proves that universities (including Oxford) need to be more flexible in their approach to the IB - for example 775 at HL significantly outperforms 766 and 666 when it comes to 1st/2:1s in Humanities. So not to consider my DS as he has 775 when you want 666 is clearly wrong imho - esp when the 5 is in Maths :)

halvedfees, and now I disagree with you. Earlier in the year Spinoa gave some very useful insights into issues students have to face when stepping up to University level maths (and my poor DS will end up taking more applied maths courses than many of his engineering friends). (Thanks!)

From what I can see, based on DS' experience (and despite a mid-year wobble he has done exceptionally well), that of a number of his peers who have headed off to quantitative courses, and what I read from Spinoa's insights, school results, whether IB, French Bac or A levels, are a very imperfect predictor of the next step up.

In part it may depend on the course and what precise skills are needed. Academics teaching that course have to be in the best position to look at past performance and come to a view. And grades are not everything. An A at a bog standard comp may be far harder to earn than my son's A. But then again my son's A* may mean more than one from a child used to spending three or four hours at a tutor each day after finishing school. (Something one of DS' Asian friends did, and apparently a cultural norm where she came from.)

Top courses are all very oversubscribed. As long as you get one its fine, and you move onto the next challenge of doing well there. Its not worth overthinking entry qualifications. Good candidates get accepted, good candidates get rejected. There are differences, though this will depend on the student. DS' experience at LSE is that you need to be a self starter. Impressively renown senior academics appear more than happy to help keen and motivated students, even first year. But noone is going to come looking for you. Unless you set out to engage it could be quite an isolated experience. This will be different elsewhere. I would like to think different Universities are guided by previous experience and select the right student for their course.

No I agree - I think final school exams are no predictor (necessarily) of success at uni, however the Cambridge study I mentioned above suggests that certain combinations of IB results can be a good predictor

My main thrust with Spinoa is that I disagree that 5 is less than an A - and most people i have talked to tend to agree with me (even well before the results were out!). But because Durham, for example, think that it is (unlike Warwick) - my DS is sitting on a near-miss for PPE whereas if he had done A level he would most likely scored an A - again imo :) - and have a confirmed place.

The analysis in the Cambridge link is not relevant, though, to decisions which are based on IB grades in specific subjects. This analysis looks at the overall points score, not the breakdown by subject, and doesn't say anything at all about how one should view 5,6 and 7 in HL maths. Internal departmental data does however analyse how IB students progress on average, given specific score breakdowns by subject.

Similarly it would be irrelevant to talk about progression according to A level grades without breaking this down by subject. It is quite common for students with AAAA to be rejected by my subject at Cambridge in favour of students with AAAA/AAAA - the reason is that Maths UMS scores and STEP are the main discriminators, not the overall A2 points score. So a low A in FM with low STEP score plus A*s in all other A2s would virtually always be rejected in favour of ~100% UMS in FM plus high STEP score plus As in the third or fourth A2s.

I am not in the minority, btw, in my view of how an HL maths 5 correlates to progression at university level in my subject. My subject (maths) is not however PPE or economics, although the same view would apply to Maths with Economics/MORSE courses. A 5 in HL maths would ring alarm bells and suggest that a student wouldn't succeed in MORSE/Maths with Economics, even if they had 7s in other IB subjects. Outside the top few universities most places couldn't afford to turn away a student with an IB points score of 40+ but most academics would have concerns about taking a student with 5 in HL maths for a highly mathematical course.

Spinoa - I agree with you that in a pure Maths or mainly Maths-based course , then a 5 at HL would ring alarm bells. But, then again, wouldn't an A at A level (not FM)? From what I've seen of uni Maths if you couldn't get an A* at A level then the step-up would be vast. However, if you did well at the STEP, would it really matter what you got in the final Alevel/IB (within reason).

My main argument is that for courses outside Maths that is it just too glib to ask for a 666 at HL, when the Cambridge study shows that other combinations fare better at uni. In addition, Maths HL is hard, and that a 5 in Maths HL is the same, say, as a 6 in Philosophy, for example.

I would never in a million years suggest my DS could Maths at uni. However, I do feel that a 5 is more than good enough for PPE/econ (and Warwick agree with me - even for their pure econ course) and certainly good enough for, say, History -even at Oxbridge.

halvedfees - Economics at the better universities is a lot more mathematical than many people realize.

Yes Bonsoir it is, but Warwick are happy with a 5 - for PPE or pure Econ - and have never been outside the top 4 in the league tables (for what they're worth!)

Does your DS want to go to Warwick or does he want to try again for 2016?

He could do a gap year to learn a language and apply for ESPS at UCL (very very popular among really great candidates I know)?

However, I do feel that a 5 is more than good enough for PPE/econ (and Warwick agree with me - even for their pure econ course).

Maybe they agree with you, or maybe they just can't find enough students with higher maths grades to fill their course. As several others on this thread have said, economics at the top universities requires high levels of maths.

BTW a minimum of 6 in HL maths would be desirable for many courses outside maths: economics, engineering, computer science, physics,....

Some very interesting contributions, especially from irregular concerning the disparity between offers for A level vs IB. I would imagine the same principle (fewer numbers and, occasionally, unfamiliarity with the qualifications of different systems) would be at work with the French bac too, also leading to comparatively stiffer offers?

I am clear about the "delta" between a successful applicant's actual attainment (at the time of application, more often his expected attainment) and the offer given. I have seen students get offers of 14 from Oxford (literary courses) but only those of a calibre to be predicted 18+. As an interesting aside, it renders the task of confirming an "insurance" choice tricky (although happily redundant, as the low offer basically guarantees them their Oxford place).

Just to address a comment made upthread, concerning whether or not to "risk" applying to Oxbridge or LSE... if a student is a "good bet" for places like Warwick but literally "dreams" of Oxbridge, and the family understands the chances of success, then I would always support them in applying to Oxford/LSE/Cambridge (as long as his bac stream was the correct one for the intended degree).

Put another way, if all my charges got their first-choice university, I would feel I was not encouraging them to be ambitious enough. And as Bonsoir has seen, many French families have France or Canada as their backup plan and go for gold in the UK.

Oxford are selecting more rigorously for interview for EM these days, that's something I am interested to read.

I would always encourage a French bac UCAS candidate applying for e.g. Philosophy to aim very high because they will get offers. But Economics? I find it much harder to be optimistic and therefore don't want to waste an application on, e.g. Oxford or Edinburgh, which are so difficult for French bac/French resident candidates to obtain.

As for LSE: I know literally dozens of French applicants to LSE over the past 3 years. Those who got offers didn't make them and those who were refused offers (the vast majority) would have easily fulfilled the standard offer made to those who didn't make it. Go figure...

I know it's maddening about LSE. I had something very similar with Imperial. Along with a very unfair stringing-along of the superior candidate only to be rejected at the very last minute.

Packing one very happy French boy off to LSE this autumn, but it has brought in his younger, slightly less academic cousin who says she wants the same. And I have no idea why he was successful when so many others were not.

It may please you to know, Bonsoir, that if my charges put Oxbridge down then we warn them off Edinburgh in no uncertain terms! Two highly risky choices esp for Econ.