Is this fair comment or does it lead to an 'anti southern bias'

[mids2019]

More northerners to Cambridge but how do you progress with this? Does this sound alarm bells for those in the south?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-68386836.amp

It can also be enlightening to see how other people live who have more money - it can make a teenager decide they can do that too and want that kind of life or the opposite - that it is materialistic and meaningless. It the exposure to different people, rich and poor etc which is one of the good things about leaving home and living at university with different kinds of people of all types. There have been similar benefits shown from people who eg go into the army out of a life of poverty, do well and travel abroad for their duties and are shown a whole new world and thrive and I am sure it works the other way round - people from better off backgrounds understand less well off people by mixing with them.

TizerorFizz · Today 09:10

@NoraBattysCurlers What it shows is that the Welsh do apply to Oxbridge but not in the numbers you think they should. So again it’s wringing hands by commentators but according to many posters here, those DC are entitled to not apply.

No @TizerorFizz that is not what the numbers I quoted show.

To assist you, I will present the figures again, highlighting some relevant parts.

From the most recent Cambridge admission statistics published:

12.6% of applicants from Wales who applied to Cambridge received an offer
20.7% of applicants from the South East who applied received an offer

The above shows that applicants from Wales who applied to Cambridge had a much lower success rate in receiving an offer than applicants from the South East.

Similarly, from the Oxford admissions statistics

3.9% of UK applicants who apply to Oxford are from Wales
Only 3.1% of UK students who are admitted to Oxford are from Wales
4.1% of UK students who receive AAA and above in A-levels are from Wales.

4.1% and 3.9% are not hugely out of kilter. The number of students from Wales who apply to Oxford is at most a little lower than expected.

What is very much out of kilter is that only 3.1% of UK students who are admitted to Oxford are from Wales even though students from Wales make up 3.9% of UK applicants.

Students from Wales are applying to Oxford. The problem is that applicants from Wales have a much lower chance of being admitted to Oxford than those who apply from the rest of the UK.

I fail to see how any sane person can look the admission statistics for Cambridge or Oxford, including the figures quoted above, and mention an 'anti southern bias' in the same breath.

3.9 - 3.1 isn’t much difference. Patronising tone too. Maybe you don’t understand not all bright students want Oxbridge. People who read stats do want to change their minds. Of course many bright people are in the SE! Even ones from the North. It’s obvious it will have higher numbers going.

@NoraBattysCurlers forgive me as I have not looked at the source data, however does it provide any breakdown on the admission stages? Both Oxford and Cambridge use pre-tests, for most subjects I think, do those data sets show the success rate at that stage; and then at the interview stage.?

are a greater proportion from Wales falling at the pre-test hurdle? or are they on par at least with the South East at that stage and it’s the interview stage where the gap really appears?

that would be interesting to know.

Maybe they prefer Cardiff, Bristol, Birmingham….

@TizerorFizz you could probably lose the maybe from that sentence.

granted if we sorted in numeric order the 6 most popular unis for undergrads from Wales are indeed all in Wales - South Wales, Swansea, Cardiff, Trinity St David, Cardiff Met and Bangor - accounting for 55%. No doubt for some they would be insurance or clearing choice.

thereafter to get us to within a whisper of 80% it’s the following unis : UWE, Liverpool John Moores, Bristol, Chester, Exeter, Liverpool; Manchester, Bath, Birmingham, Manchester Met, Bath Spa. The thing as your comment alludes to is that what all these English unis have in common in that they are on the western side of England and all in reasonable proximity to the main population centres in Wales.

glyndwr and Aber would fall immediately after UWE numerically but of course are in Wales, though dependent on which bit of Wales someone is in it’s probably quicker and easier to get to Bristol / Birmingham / Manchester than it is to Aberystwyth.

It’s both. But outreach can only go so far.

When supporting young people through their decision making you get to hear their rationale. And sometimes it is unfounded. And sometimes I cannot fault it.

@TizerorFizz, it is a significant difference as is the fact that only 12.6% of applicants from Wales received an offer from Cambridge compared to 20.7% of applicants from the South East is also significant.

It's more than a little ironic that you accuse me of a patronising tone, considering the tone in which you have addressed so many of the posters on this thread.

I struggle a bit with stats, but on a purely numbers game, most young people live in the South East, and more of them are applying, so admissions have a bigger pool to choose from. I understand the percentage acceptance rate, but when you have a smaller pool, you would be in danger of potentially accepting a less able student just to up the percentage for that area. The key therefore us to get more to apply, but then you are back to the numbers game, where there are just way more youngsters in the South than in Wales and you will never have the same numbers to choose from.

@NoraBattysCurlers It is not! Look at transport from London, higher achievement in London and then look at what @boys3 has written with regard to preferences. These students might well be not as good as SE applicants and we simply don’t know why they didn’t get in but it won’t be because they come from Wales.

The very bright Welsh kids do appear to prefer the unis listed so possibly are not so heavily invested in Oxbridge anyway. It’s also surely impossible to know why Welsh applicants don’t get in but thousands and thousands don’t from all over and many are very bright indeed. Unless you know degree subject (highly competitive or not) , GCSEs, A levels taken, test results and interview results we just don’t know.

Let me get my tiny violin out for all the Southerners

Oh wait... there isn't one.

And yes, they will cry till they're blue in the face that they are not prejudiced against Northerners, but they are.

@boys3, I don't believe that there is a further breakdown from Cambridge on why applicants from Wales have just a 12.6% success rate while those from the South East have a 20.7% success rate.

One issue that Oxbridge itself needs to address in the coming years are the wide disparity in application numbers and success rates between programmes. I would suspect that one of the reasons is that applicants from Wales are applying to more competitive programmes.

For example, 43.1 per cent of applicants to read Classics at Cambridge receive an offer, while just 8.4 per cent of applicants to Computer Science and 10 per cent of applicants to Economics receive offers.

The number of applicants per place at Imperial College and other universities is now higher than Cambridge and the A-level performance of students admitted is also higher. I think we will see both Cambridge and Oxford address these issues in the coming years, as otherwise they will eventually lose ground to top universities across the world.

A discrepancy that should be looked at though. It is a significant difference between welsh acceptance rates and SE acceptance rates.

i’ve just looked at the Cambridge 2022 cycle stats which is the latest on their website; presumably 2023 should be published fairly soon.

49 pages long but…………hmmm can’t help thinking it could have explored some of the issues that standout.

spare a thought for Scottish applicants first, 9.4% success rate. Once beyond Scotland and Wales the variance was less than I expected. Overall success rate 18.8%. In descending order

• South East 20.7%
• London 19.5%
• East 19.2%
• East Midlands 18.8%
• Yorks and Humber 18.7%
• West Mids 18.3%
• South West 18.0%
• North West 17.8%
• North East 17.6%
• Northern Ireland 17.3%

by home applications school type, succcess rate

• Maintained schools 19.6%
• Independent 18.9%

but within the maintained

• Grammar 25.8%
• Sixth Form colleges 19.7%
• Comps 17.4%
• FE and Tertiary 12.3%

no regional breakdown by school type.

they have cycle reports back to 2013. Success rates for Wales, plus the region with the highest success rate

• 2013 19.6%, SE 29.6%
• 2014 26.0% SE 29.9%
• 2015 24.5%. East 29.9%
• 2016 20.7% SE 29.3%
• 2017 20.2% NE (not a typo) 26.6%
• 2018 20.8% SE 24.1%
• 2019 26.0% NE 26.6%
• 2020 24.8% SE 25.1%
• 2021 14.8% NE 23.4%
• 2022 12.6% SE 20.7%

Between 2013 and 2019 applicant numbers from Wales were fairly steady ranging from a low of 255 in 2013 and a high of 308 in 2018. Bit of a jump in the last two years with 433 in 2021 and 419 in 2022 - maybe linking with TAGs rather than sat exam grades / pre grade restoration to pre-covid levels???

I don’t think it’s just about Oxbridge ‘teaching’ kids from the NW etc that they’re clever enough. It’s about making themselves an attractive proposition to those kids. I don’t think you have swathes of bright kids here in Manchester who don’t apply because they don’t think they’re able enough. I think they don’t apply because the experience doesn’t appeal to them.

Any campaign needs to be careful it’s not being patronising by assuming that it’s all to do with low self esteem and encouraging kids to ‘aim higher’.

See, you're doing it again!
Equating applying to Oxbridge with social mobility. I don't think you understand my point.

By talking about 'social mobility' you are implicitly assuming that an Oxbridge degree is linked to improved life outcomes. But then, you are seeing the university as a place for people to get into good jobs... not fulfil their intellectual potential. Which are two separate things.

In a truly 'socially mobile' world, people's university backgrounds wouldn't matter. There would be zero hand wringing about people 'not applying to Oxbridge' because well why should they? What advantage is that going to give them in the job market, over another university?

Rather than a world where we implicitly accept that someone needs to go there, in order to be 'socially mobile'. And therefore try to push a 'diverse' cohort in. We should be working on getting people into positions of power that come from ANY university. Just pushing a more diverse group into Oxbridge solves the symptoms not the disease.

If you want to discuss 'social mobility' someone doing Computer Science at Manchester, then getting a big tech job is way ahead of the game compared to someone doing, erm, Music, or even veterinary science at Cambridge. Neither of these are particularly well-paid fields. Of course you can be all 'a Cambridge degree enables you to enter any job blah2' but again, once you get past the first few years of working life, except for very select fields like maybe politics this isn't true. And as I mentioned above, having all our politicians come from only 2 institutions is not something we want to be aiming for, in the long term.

Interesting stats!

Wonder what happened in 2019 to even the numbers up?
and between 2013-2014 to increase success rates of Welsh applicants.

I posted the numbers upthread for LSE which is more competitive.

It could be because of international students though. Most of them go for the same few 'employable' degrees. Also because in order to work here they need to get a sponsored job. Fields that offer it are far and few in between especially now that the Graduate Route has been removed. Computer Science and Economics obviously are two of those fields.

I don't know how Oxbridge can address this disparity when, in any university, some subjects are always going to be more popular than others. MFL for example is in decline across many respected institutions as posted in another thread. How is Oxbridge magically going to make more people apply for that compared to Computer Science? Or even Theology? What are the stats like compared to people applying for Theology in all other universities? These subjects are going to be niche in any university. Unless you're suggesting that people should apply to these solely to get into a prestigious university ignoring the content of what they're going to be studying?

Furthermore, If you're thinking about it, it's actually a mark of higher confidence and self-esteem if most students are applying for more competitive programs. They're not being put off, and going for what they want.

BTW, it's an interesting comparison to the US Ivy League With a much stronger culture of legacy admissions etc. It's pretty obvious that the main goal of going there is to network with the upper echelons, academia yes but it's that exposure you get. We in the UK are well 'trying' to be more inclusive in the corporate world, even in the Civil Service. That doesn't square with having elite universities.

And even in the US ... the background of top Fortune 500 CEO's..
https://fortune.com/2023/06/14/fortune-500-ceo-colleges-ivy-league/
Plus you can always do an MBA.

For heavens sake @PingvsPong the world snd his wife complains about Oxbridge alumni in positions of power! That’s what others want the under represented to achieve. That’s often linked to social mobility snd getting to Oxbridge can help a great deal. Dc have to want it of course and a place at Oxbridge isn’t a magic wand but it helps. So stop the sneering.

Why are you accusing me of 'sneering' instead of intellectually engaging with my very reasoned argument? A PP said they associated politicians with Oxbridge and hated them. That's not what I mean.

Your logic is - 'well, currently Oxbridge has a stranglehold, so getting more diverse DC and under-represented DC in means more of them in positions of power'.

There are two things potentially wrong with this.

1. You are assuming that the Oxbridge degree itself helps, when it could be the other way around. The powerful and privileged might have tended to go there, and then ended up in positions of power, that they might have ended up in anyway regardless of what university they went to. Or they went there, with all their friends (there are people whose father and grandfathers went to the same college before them) and this just had the reinforcing effect of the 'old boys network', whether they let anybody else join is an open question.

This is borne out by the stats regarding private education - a disproportionate number of people in positions of political power have been privately educated. So is it the degree, or their initial background that makes the difference?

2. As I stated earlier, the above aside, while your statement in the short-term might be true. Is that what you really want? For our political leaders to come from only two universities? No matter how 'diverse', underprivileged, etc, they are, that's still implicitly saying that it's OK for others to be shut out, we have a 'representative proportion' of people already. There will always be many people who were good but just missed the boat, or someone else was better.

Try to think beyond individual opportunities, to the greater social good.

To me, the ideal is that all who are able, and willing, are supported and get to go to Oxbridge. Or at least, have a fair shot at applying and getting in. Because it suits them intellectually, mentally and physically, for the same reason people choose other universities.

That is a different argument to getting people to apply because their opportunities are going to be restricted otherwise, especially for positions of power. Things like academia, OK, maybe, can't control how much research funding different universities can it's down to them to form individual links.

Interesting discussion to be had.

Is upholding Oxbridge the right thing for societal fairness?

I don’t know what the answer is to ‘level up’ or have equality of opportunity.

I do know that the students I work with have a lot to contend with. We are fighting fires and trying to support students just to get through never mind saying you’re capable of Oxbridge. And even if they are we don’t have the knowledge nor experience to give it a good go. Applying for these successfully means applying strategically. Which degree, which college?

Also 'which' of them to apply for because well you can't apply to both! 😉
Outreach events can certainly do a great deal to advise. Young people these days are also quite savvy in finding forums, I know a couple of charities that partner young people with current students, etc.

Even without all of that it's clear from the steps that applying to Oxbridge involves extra effort - the exams, the interviews. There are some attempts to acknowledge this burden, for example both universities have a foundation programme for disadvantaged students requiring only a written assessment. The cynic in me however notes that this is only for the humanities, which we've already established mostly have a much higher offer rate anyway.

Some PP will complain that I'm trying to dissuade people but the psychology of applicants is really interesting. In some families, even going to university is a big achievement. In others, it's a given. Similarly, in some families going to Oxbridge is a given. Of course they need to get the grades it's 2024 not 1984 but tutoring for A-levels makes a lot of difference.

It would be interesting - how many of these people truly have a burning academic passion? For how many is it just the 'done thing'? And how many of those, with a burning academic passion, are put off , due to what factors?
As opposed to just 'bright students' who have no desire to explore their subject further and just really want the £££? But people think they have the grades and so should apply. That argument applies for any other uni because well it's the same personal statement but Oxbridge actually requires effort!

Interestingly, looking at Cambridge's undergraduate outcomes
https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/why-cambridge/careers

I'm very surprised to see that law and the civil service aren't among the top professions.
University researchers are the only ones where these two, as opposed to any other uni, might make a massive difference.
Finance/management consulting - LSE holds its own. The place is a production line for those people!
Programming (my profession) is well paid yes but university name isn't the biggest determinant, it really depends on what type of software development job specifically.
Teachers, nursery professionals - again, could do that with other unis pretty easily, especially as these professionals are currently quitting in droves.
Not sure what marketing associate and other 'business associate' professional means.

Maybe the lawyers, civil servants and future politicians are too busy or CBA to fill out this survey? Who knows.

CarrieCardigan · Today 18:11

I don’t think it’s just about Oxbridge ‘teaching’ kids from the NW etc that they’re clever enough. It’s about making themselves an attractive proposition to those kids. I don’t think you have swathes of bright kids here in Manchester who don’t apply because they don’t think they’re able enough. I think they don’t apply because the experience doesn’t appeal to them.

I completely agree.

In an increasingly competitive world, Oxbridge will need to up its game to attract these students.

4/10 Cambridge grads in teaching of some description. So widening access has achieved what? Most of these jobs could be done by non Cambridge grads. Civil Service fast track is frequently suspended. Numbers recruited can be low. I’m surprised law isn’t higher but it’s variable year on year. I assume the people who could be lawyers prefer business or teaching. Very odd job results.

Ah yes - which one to choose.

Agree that the driver for students is interesting. Some are after prestige, others money or a vocation.

I met the outreach for one of the colleges at Oxford uni at a conference. As soon as she found out i wasn't one of her designated schools she pretty much blanked me. I was quite taken aback. And if I was a student it would’ve put me off.