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Original poster

Oxford -- PPE or Economics with Management

210 replies

shockthemonkey · 27/07/2015 13:24

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!

OP posts:
halvedfees · 29/07/2015 20:05

Though I haven't seen any studies on it unlike the Cambridge IB one

www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/admissions/research/docs/ib_performance.pdf

Don't forget though Ib students sit 6 subjects across a broad range. And again you're falling into the trap of equating a 5 with a B....

Bonsoir · 29/07/2015 20:05

Yet we all know that AAB when your offer is AAA is a (near) miss.

However unfair that may feel...

Bonsoir · 29/07/2015 20:09

French bac students sit even more than six subjects. A candidate of mine was offered 16 overall/16 in English/16 in Maths/16 in Physics & Chemistry/16 in Life Sciences by Imperial. He met every condition of his offer bar Life Sciences (13) and in fact got >18 overall, with fab grades in Spanish and History/Geography.

Still a miss...

halvedfees · 29/07/2015 20:11

Welcome to the Ib offer world :)

Needmoresleep · 29/07/2015 20:16

Again not necessarily IB. A friend of DS got a five A level offer from Imperial. He missed the grade he needed for FM. DS says he should have got it, and thinks it was nerves.

Its tough for all of them.

Bonsoir · 29/07/2015 20:17

That's my point: it's not just the IB offer world. As irregularegular so wisely remarked earlier in the thread, universities don't dare make A-level conditions harder (for fear of alienating candidates from bog standard UK comps). Fair enough. But the rest of the candidates have to meet realistically stringent conditions...

irregularegular · 29/07/2015 20:29

That's not exactly what I said Bonsoir!

Bonsoir · 29/07/2015 20:30

That is what I understood. Please explain what you meant if I misinterpreted.

irregularegular · 29/07/2015 21:23

Which of my posts did you understand as meaning that?

HocusUcas · 29/07/2015 21:24

Sorry if I am being dim halved but did your son do the interview and was accepted for a conditional offer, and then failed the offer or was he rejected in January and did not get an offer. (I know IB have different result times than e.g. A levels. )

halvedfees · 29/07/2015 22:59

He was rejected in January despite

a) 12A*s at GCSE
b) predicted a 43 at IB
c) having just won the college's ancient philosophy essay comp
d) 69 % in the TSA
e) 75% in Econ interview, 67 and 68 at the other 2 interviews ie a 1st, and 2 high 2.1s

What bemused me is that he wasn't "pooled" ie sent to another college for an interview. Oxford claim to be able to pick out the best students because of this "pooling" method. Wrong imo.

As my DS's school said "the selection for PPE is brutal and doesn't always get it right"

However, he did score his 43 - just slightly differently than predicted. Though I would like to think Oxford would have still taken him :)

HocusUcas · 30/07/2015 04:29

halved

I can see why you are a bit upset . Your DS is obviously very clever. However, he was interviewed and not given an offer if I now understand.

My Ds is simply Wink one of those History (where the candidates are excellent but a tier down from PPE) DS may not get his grades in August and that's a thing. But , he actually wants to study history. My advice would be do not let your DS give up an excellent place at Durham or Warwick for PPE (if that is his thing) to apply to Oxford for history just to go to Oxford.

Bonsoir · 30/07/2015 06:45

halvedfees - clearly your DS is very clever and very hardworking. I have had French bac PPE candidates who were very clever and hardworking (and were quadrilingual with extraordinary extracurricular achievements and fascinating work experience) who didn't get in to Oxford for PPE but did go on to do Economics Masters at Cambridge/PhDs at LSE/Harvard etc. However great your DS you have to be philosophical and realise that he was being compared to many other exceptional candidates and, this time, wasn't selected. But there are other roads ahead!

QueenOfNothing · 30/07/2015 06:50

Do you have to do 3 interviews for a PPE? One for politics one for philosophy and one for economics?

summerends · 30/07/2015 06:51

halvedfees basically colleges choose who they view as the best from the interviews in the ways that they can measure. PPE requires that 'best' to be across three subjects. One year your DS might have got in but this year there were stronger candidates in the eyes of the tutors (who after all are the people who will be teaching their accepted students and normally will be pretty good judges from past experience).
I am sure that you realise that academic attainment or prize essay writing is only a crude measure. One of the other candidates may have had more original thoughts or be more perceptive or followed the train of the interviewers' questions more rapidly than your DS in the interviews
Basically somebody who has real academic potential will be apparent at the next stage should they wish to do a higher degree.

SheGotAllDaMoves · 30/07/2015 08:00

halved the system is not perfect. Oxford does not claim it to be so.

In all subjects, there are far too many excellent candidates, which means that some excellent candidates will not get an offer and some surprises might get one (though this doesn't necessarily mean there's been a mistake, more that the interviewer/interpreter of data saw something/didn't see something that they were looking for. Personality plays a part here on both sides).

When I'm doing the rounds to widen access, I tell everyone to give Oxbridge a punt, but to never set their heart on it. It is a numbers game (those able in maths should understand this better than anyone Wink).

What I do know, is that being rejected is not a big problem for the many excellent candidates who are. Or it shouldn't be. Spending time trying to work out why, criticising the system is a fools errand.

The world beyond university entrance is much worse. Much more competitive. Much less 'transparent'. Young people are served well to realise this IMVHO.

Bonsoir · 30/07/2015 08:13

I suspect that the real question your DS needs to answer now, halvedfees, is whether he wants to take up the Warwick offer for 2015 or whether he would prefer to try again through UCAS for 2016. It's none of my business but if it were my DC with that background/achievements and those grades I wouldn't be advising him to go to Warwick.

HocusUcas · 30/07/2015 09:14

The world beyond university entrance is much worse. Much more competitive. Much less 'transparent'.

And isn't that the truth.

Out of interest Bonsoir - what would you recommend? This is out of curiosity only.

halvedfees · 30/07/2015 09:29

I'm not upset - just frustrated. I don't blame Oxford - however I am a bit bemused if he was scored by the interviewers themselves as highly as he did, what more he had to do. Maybe there were 7 candidates more able than him on the day. I think the mistake , if there is one, was to apply to a college so high up the Norrington table.

My main frustration - and the main thrust of my argument - is despite a 43 he is unable to apply to Oxford again, and is a near-miss for Durham. The 5 in his HL maths is the problem. He took Maths because he enjoyed the challenge, and thought it would help his PPE application - he knew it was the toughest IB exam subject. (He could have taken SL and prob scored a 6/7 without affecting his UCAS application). It has backfired a bit, mainly because of the inflexibility of universities such as Oxford to recognise that 775 is actually a better predictor of success at Uni - as backed up by the Cambridge study I mentioned.

Bonsoir - why not Warwick?

Needmoresleep · 30/07/2015 09:31

Big surprise, but I am (sort of) going to disagreew ith Bonsoir.

Back to the origional thread but lots of very good candidates don't get places for PPE or E&M. These are very very competitive courses. And the process is not foolproof.

A lot of very good candidates will then go elsewhere, a large proportion of whom will want to avoid London. For those wanting a more mathsy economics course Warwick is the standard fallback (as it is for maths). I dont know as much about E&M type courses but have seen people look at Warwick, Durham and Bristol.

Each University has a different offer, but if he goes to Warwick, I would expect he will discover like other dissapointed Oxbridge candidates have done, that plenty of his fellow students are also very strong (all those French who did not get places at LSE!).

Reapplying would be risky. Top courses, and Warwick economics is one, are a gamble at the best of times, and having offered once they may not offer second time. And his maths grade will be lower than the predicted grades of quite a lot of other candidates.

That said you need to want to go to University and certainly don't want to go somewhere you consider second best. One excellent candidate (the college feedback was 11 strong candidates, only three places!) decided to try again. He did not get a place second time round either but was able to look at the alternatives with an open mind and fouond himslef making an active choice between attractive alternatives. Plus he had a great gap year.

The caveat here is the maths grade,. Whatever you think of the arguments, its clear that some University recruiters will question the maths grade. And with lots of other good candidates to consider, he will be at a disadvantage. I would have thought it was worth retaking the maths paper in November.

MrsUltracrepidarian · 30/07/2015 09:36

compared to many other exceptional candidates
Exactly - it is not just a tick box and if you tick the boxes you should get a place. There will be many others who also tick those boxes.
DS is hoping to apply to Oxbridge next year. On paper he also ticks al the boxes. However, not the, the school, and his friends are all aware that it is one choice of five - there are so many external unknowns in the other candidates who will all be stellar that there is not point getting aggrieved if others are better fits for the courses. And it is a sop to the candidate for the school to say that 'they sometimes don't get it right' just feeds the candidates sense of 'injustice' Hmm if they are that way inclined. They do get it right - they have done this for centuries and they are successful.

halvedfees · 30/07/2015 09:44

They do get it right - they have done this for centuries and they are successful.

Even Oxford and Oxford admissions tutors admit they don't always get it right. However, because they have such a surfeit of exceptional applicants, it is difficult to pick someone who wouldn't do well at Oxford - so their "errors" (for want of a better word) get a 2:2 :)

MrsUltracrepidarian · 30/07/2015 09:44

A major difficulty is that schools which don't send many candidates to Oxbridge may have a slewed sense of just how good all those other candidates are. I work in state secondaries where a maximum of one a year will got to Oxbridge and max of a couple more may get into a top ranking university for their chosen subject.
The DC in those 6th forms do have an inflated sense of their ability as they have always been at the top of the classes they have been in and see it as snobbishness by university admissions that their 'top grades' don't entitle them to a place. (The Laura Spence/Gordon Brown fallacy)
The challenge for those schools is to focus the DC not to be complacent about their 'brilliance' when compared to their immediate peers, or blame their lack of achievement on a middle class 'closed-shop' access to Oxbridge or conspiracy to keen 'bright children form comps' out.

halvedfees · 30/07/2015 09:47

Actually when the school refers to Oxford "not always getting it right", they are referring to PPE and E&M courses only where it does seem to be much more of a lottery. Other courses - such as History, Classics - they are much more predicatble.

halvedfees · 30/07/2015 09:52

A major difficulty is that schools which don't send many candidates to Oxbridge may have a slewed sense of just how good all those other candidates are

I agree, but my DS was at a school who gets 25+ into Oxbridge each year, so I think they are well-experienced enough to say that PPE is a lottery.

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