Is Doxbridge a thing?

[mids2019]

Oxford and Cambridge both outside top 3 in uni rankings for first time https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15114137/Oxford-Cambridge-outside-three-prestigious-university-rankings-time-London-School-Economics-first.html?ito=native_share_article-top

I think the DM was trying to make a point about social inclusion but given the Times is a reputable university of guide is this a beginning of a shift where Oxbridge aren't undisputed in their dominance?

Durham is a really good university and in 2025 is it that Oxford and Cambridge have competitors?

For econ and engineering, respectively?

For Computer Science Imperial has great job prospects with lots of tech companies recruiting there!

Yes yes.

Durham isn’t in the same league. For engineering and science Imperial is considered the best by those in the industry but they highly rate several other universities especially in specific fields, Durham didn’t appear on the list my dd had, nor did Oxford interestingly but Manchester did, Bristol did and Southampton did for certain courses. If you want to do Anglo Saxon studies, classics or languages then Oxbridge are the best.

as for Warwick, they don’t mention the drop out rate, I know several from maths and physics, sink or swim approach which doesn’t suit all

What was disappointing about Durham compared to Notts? What was your degree in?

Don't forget UCL. It probably has the highest ratio of international prestige to domestic prestige.

@Muu9 Agreed

Don’t know how you’ve assumed that I was automatically always going to choose Durham over Oxford! I originally applied following a mixture of parental and school pressure. During the interview process it became clear to me that Oxford just wasn’t the right fit for me, for a whole host of reasons.

Ended up as a postgraduate there later on, purely for the specific course that I couldn’t follow elsewhere. Simply served to reinforce that my initial judgement in favour of Durham was sound.

A few years back when my eldest DS was doing international Maths Olympiads we met a bursary kid from Eton who was truly amazing but was eventually rejected from Cambridge but went to Imperial. I could tell then that Imperial was going to do well. It was just complete madness to reject this kid.

My DS is doing Computing at Imperial. Only 45% of his 200 strong cohort are from the UK and for the majority from the UK they were bursary kids from the very top of the top UK private schools. He said most of them are genius level mathematicians and coders and he just loves being around them as he is learning so much.

He is not a bursary kid himself, he is just a hard worker from a middling (private) school.

It's good - for him - to be somewhere where you are judged only on performance. I am not saying this is fair or right to others who come from unprivileged backgrounds (like myself). But it has certainly lifted up the performance of Imperial and my DS is being inundated with offers for placements and jobs.

Well yes, but that’s because outside the U.K. the only cities people know are London, Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, and then maybe Manchester at a push.

The overall rankings in The Guardian say Oxford, St Andrews, Cambridge, LSE

A girl in my year and I were both encouraged to apply to Oxbridge - she went for it and ended up on a course and a college which she did not want to go to. I applied to the other top unis at the time, went to Durham, studied what I wanted at a college I wanted to go to and had a brilliant time.There were a lot of private school snobs there. But also a lot of quite normal people. Not sure why people are putting it down - its a great place.

Yes, all the different ranking lists have slightly different orders to them. And they change yearly. They assess slightly different combinations of things, and gather statistics that are going to naturally vary. Hence there’s no point looking at only one list for only one year - look at them all, see if there are any meaningful trends, compare previous years, look at the statistics that feel most important (student satisfaction? Money spent per head? Research quality? Graduate prospects? UCAS entry requirements?).

As for the people saying it wasnt academically great - there was quite a bit of back and forward of professors between Durham and Oxbridge when I was there, so Oxford and Cambridge certainly did not seem to see it as that inferior.

It’s always been a thing!

I mean the top unis are there for a reason

"It's good - for him - to be somewhere where you are judged only on performance"

Aren't Oxbridge also like this? How has it lifted the performance of Imperial relative to Oxbridge?

Yes understood. It's something unis are only bothered about if they drop down significantly in several major listings. Also if they make a very strong showing in a list. ARU was ranked highly for student welfare and had posters all over the place about it. Understandable.

I'm not sure what Oxford and Cambridge make of these lists. I suspect they are a lot more bothered about the ref and making sure they have highly regarded academic staff as well as good teaching. The former is likely to impact on the latter.

The business school list the THE mag publishes always looks like a less than comprehensive document on the face of it.

I don’t think UCL, LSE or Imperial are well known outside the UK. Sure academics or elites in the relevant fields will recognise them, but it’s only Oxbridge that will be recognised by a random non-college graduate anywhere in the English speaking world.

St Andrews is well known on the US East Coast, where it is considered on par with the Ivy League. This is further cemented by all the well-healed US alumni who promote it for the rest of their lives.

25 years ago, in Durham the term "Doxbridge" was used exclusively to refer to the sports/booze tour to Dublin, as a PP's noted.

As a lot of other posters have noted, ranking are determined by various metrics - it's very hard to objectively say which HEI is ultimately "better" than another.

I think this is mostly a question of metrics. For instance, most ranking systems take contact hours and teaching group size into account, but some have recently started to exclude the college element of Oxbridge teaching from consideration (I think because it’s unusual and quite varied between subjects and also between colleges, so it’s more complex to input). But since the colleges hold the tutorial system, which is how most Oxbridge teaching, and pretty much all compulsory Oxbridge teaching, happens this has the effect of artificially depressing the overall score. I haven’t looked into whether that’s the case in the Times rankings, but I would take it all with a pinch of salt.

St. Andrews is a step below the Ivy League - it's more along the lines of Rice or Northwestern or Williams or Amherst

To br fair the difference between an oxbridge student and an oxbridge reject id in most cases luck.

The Hendricks arose during the industrial revolution to an extent so will the tech revolution again bring about a new generation of HE? If Elon Musk were to drop 50 -100 billion in a new tech campus in the UK in some hypothetical scenario (student politics would be interesting ) how would that break the mould in terms of what we view as prestigious in the UK?

I just wonder as the tech revolution unfolds in the coming years whether those universities that have invested more in tech education will gain in recognition and prestige? 30 years ago people hasn't heard of Google but now certainly working for the company has its women prestige so it shows times can change quickly.

I amazed in my field how many high quality scientific publications are coming out of China and I suppose that shows a cultural bias. A Chinese colleague of mine points d out universities in China I certainly hasn't heard of as prestigious institutions. Maybe our British bias out the ancient universities on pedestals when we should be more open to a rapidly changing world?

Back to Durham and I think their high intake of privately educated pupils adds to its prestige as pro aren't educated pupils still seem to enjoy advantage in careers despite decades of trying to improve social mobility. If in some hypothetical situation Oxbridge were only to take on state pupils and we still found that 60% of judges went to private school, 40% of conservative politicians etc. etc. what would we make of this. Would Oxbridge hold the same prestige?

certainly I think Oxbridge might. draw slightly back from inclusion and social mobility if it finds brilliant minds from private schools are going elsewhere be wise Oxbridge needs them.

Redbricks doh!