Is Trinity Hall Cambridge right about elite schools?

[mids2019]

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/jan/07/cambridge-college-elite-private-schools-student-recruitment

Interesting position but maybe there are those at Cambridge that think encouraging students from the state sector has gone too far? Wonder if other colleges will follow suit.

@Marchesman I wanted to follow up on your earlier post: at Cambridge 47% of students from comprehensives are from top SES quintile, but 35% of students from independent schools are from top SES quintile.

So I think this means the comprehensive students are significantly more likely than the private school students to come from richer families.

And admitting lots of state school kids is actually resulting in admitting kids from wealthier families rather than actually getting to hard to reach demographics.

Have I got the right end of the stick? Because that’s pretty wild if so.

They are all people, and the sooner Oxford and Cambridge start assessing them as individuals on their academic merits and not as members of different tribes the better.

There can be no mistake about the discrimination, Cambridge has been very clear in its admission plans that it discriminates between students from state and independent schools. There is also no doubt about the difference in their subsequent performance, and by Cambridge's use of the data they certainly lay themselves open to the accusation of obfuscation.

As they have apparently dropped the state school target, it seems reasonable to ask whether the gap in performance has reached a point that instead of being concerned about the proportion of state educated students, they are more worried about potential demands for curricular changes.

What is your view on Oxbridge interviews given your earlier comment that better doctors are chosen when selection is purely on academic results?

Agreed 💯

Beyond belief really that these centres of academic excellence are being so disastrously poor in their decision making.

Yes, but when was this. My DC were still at school when your DDs were out working and earning. The number and range of applications from the schools they went to, has changed exponentially. When your DDs were leaving school, places like Latymer Upper were only sending one or two to US Universities, largely organisedby the parents themselves. Now all selective London independent schools will have US admissions advisors, host US college fairs even take trips to the US during autumn half term.

Obviously not all will feel the need to go or be able to afford it. But the numbers were (this year may be different) increasing fast.

A shame really that the US is such a bin fire atm.

@Marchesman
they are more worried about potential demands for curricular changes.

That’s interesting. What sort of curricular changes? Removing some subjects or making the curricula less demanding?

🙈🙈🙈🙈

Cambridge university and independent schools are socially and academically selective. I was highlighting the hypocrisy of the people who are turning on Trinity Hall, and used Cambridge's comprehensive school intake - which contains a higher proportion of top SES quintile students than is found in independent schools - as a yardstick,

The increase in students from comprehensive schools has mainly been from better of families. Comparing 2021 with 2017, 135 more students belonging to the top SES quintile were admitted from comprehensive schools; and those admitted from the bottom quintile increased by only 19.

I don't know, both probably. Oxford classicists created a fuss a few years ago when they proposed reducing the language content of the course, to make it more "accessible" but that seemed to go very quiet. Mods and Greats handbooks for past and future years are available online but I haven't compared them.

Francis Green, Professor of Work and Education Economics, UCL Institute of Education, was one of the people the Guardian rounded up to pontificate about Trinity Hall, he said that if the college has difficulty recruiting suitable applicants from the state sector, rather than encouraging applicants from independent schools they should "adjust their educational offering".

Sciences disappeared from many medical courses to make them more palatable after admissions took a non-academic turn. Oxford and Cambridge appear to be on a similar evolutionary curve.

Interesting. Purely anecdotally, I know a current Masters student at a London university where quite a large share of the Masters students have always historically come from Oxbridge. This friend, who didn't do her undergraduate degree in the UK, was pleasantly surprised (from her POV) to find the ex-Oxbridge students little better prepared for the Masters degree than she. Her assumption was that she was going to struggle to keep up with them, but no.

Dumbing down is very worrying indeed. The dons at Oxbridge must understand this. Craven.

I imagine one factor in the lower quintile of indie pupils will be those attending indies on bursary/scholarship places. Then tend to have to score v highly in the entrance exams so are likely to be in the upper echelons of their school year and therefore be in the Oxbridge applicant group.

More rich students go to state schools than private schools - this is true for every income decile. So if wealth equates to getting into Oxbridge you wld expect a higher %. (I don’t necessarily think it does but some on this thread do.)

Also, the Oxbridge figures use the school type at the application stage not the school
type at GCSE (although as noted above this can be taken into consideration when deciding whether to make an offer). So there will be students classified as state who only went to state school in the 6th form.

There will also be students who appear to be from state but are actually educated in their A level subject(s) at private schools (especially when it comes to classics which is where this thread started!).

This obsession with state vs private is a poor proxy for family wealth, quality/experience of school or privilege/depravation. Whilst we obsess about that, overseas applicants are besting our best students from both sectors - especially in STEM. That should be concerning us all, and especially the govt.

Agree, how could more than 50 percent of the seats in certain courses at our leading universities are given to overseas students ?
Over 60 percent of imperial students are overseas students . That’s not right!!

That’s for computer science at Imperial college

According to the Complete University Guide pretty well two thirds of students at LSE are from overseas and half at UCL, RCM, RAM,LAMDA and UAL.

@Ceramiq That was bizarre thinking though. Oxbridge doesn’t necessarily choose the most academic students or those with all the highest A level scores would walk in, but we know they don’t. Many high quality universities here are populated by Oxford rejects and it turns out they are just as good. It wholly depends on subject too. My DD did 2 post grad courses. Oxbridge grads were bright but so were people from Durham and elsewhere.

That is not the comms in the international rankings. This young friend was educated at undergraduate level at a university that is so invisible in the international rankings (both overall and for her specific subject) as to be a sort of non-entity! Though she did do an Erasmus exchange with a much more visible and highly ranked university. She assumed that Oxbridge students, coming from far higher ranked institutions, would be at the very top of the academic performance range and know all sorts of things she didn't. But no.

If those international students are prepared to pay the eye watering fees that subsidize the education and research activities of the university, what is the issue? Higher education is an export like any other and one of the UK's most successful. It is wrong to think that places are being denied to UK students.

Depends on the institution - a big one may be able to absorb a large number of international students without reducing the number of places available to UK students. A tiny institution like RCM/RAM/LAMDA less so in which case those places are not available to UK students.

That’s not true, if more than 60 percent of your intake is from overseas.
It does affect the home students
should the government not have a cap like how they do in medicine ?

UK students make up 6% of this year’s full time MBA cohort at Imperial College. I was pretty shocked by that.

The universities have become money grabbing , social engineering machines. Do feel sorry for the current cohort of students who are caught in this !!