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.

I don't agree. My sister sat her A levels in a school going through special measures. She went to Bristol Uni and yes they did give her a lower offer but she also came out with a higher degree than the people she was sharing a house with who had gone through the private system. She also had skills that some of her housemates didn't have especially in independent research and teaching herself to pass an exam.

Are you misunderstanding the type of student we're talking about? Wealthy foreign students whose families can easily afford the fees are in abundance and universities rely on them to pay the bills. Lots are also sent to UK independent schools, or go to the branches of those schools in Asia.

You’re mistaking the idea that academics might want to take excellent students from both sectors for saying that “that only pupils from a tiny subset of elite private schools are capable by the age of 18 of excelling in certain subjects (basically, arts subjects).”

This simply isn’t correct. Nobody is saying this, either in the article or on this thread. Cambridge already admits a majority of state educated students by a long way, and has done for a long time. Wanting the best independent students as well as the best state ones is hardly saying that only independent schools are capable of excelling, and it’s extremely disingenuous to suggest that it is the same thing.

AI search result.

Trinity Hall at Cambridge welcomes international undergraduates, with the University of Cambridge overall having about 24% international students, representing a diverse global community, though specific numbers for Trinity Hall aren't detailed in snippets, they'll need financial proof and meet entry criteria. Applying involves proving sufficient funds, meeting English language/qualification standards, and potentially admissions assessments, with the process emphasizing strong academic potential for this competitive college.

I think it's every bit as likely that they are trying to ensure they can keep running these degree courses, and there aren't enough potential students coming from the state sector.

What about my argument that the current Government has basically implied that the only high value subjects worth anything economically are Maths and Science etc and that the rest is a privileged waste of time anyway?
Kids going into debt for uni and worried about never purchasing a flat/house are going to be doing subjects that offer them some hope of paid employment and promptly, especially the brightest state school kids.

My 4 DC were all excellent at Classics and Music and Languages but also good at Maths and Science. They simply chose the latter because of long term job prospects. They would rather all do the more vocational course at Durham or Imperial or LSE or whatever, then go do Classics, languages at Oxbridge.
And that includes my 17 year old DD who would have loved something more creative, on a heart level, but the brain says no. There are no assisted music places left for those of us in the middle. So Maths and Science it is, even though both my boys regularly read academic papers from the humanities, politics, whatever (joys of open access).It is not that they do not have the ability, they have chosen a different path, that will make them money. Music/journalism/academia etc are poorly paid careers now. Bright kids without trust funds, will choose banking, law, engineering, medicine, IT, business. They are all super worried about not getting a job, AI taking over, not affording a house and most have heard that the private sector no longer cares about Oxbridge or not. It is all down to psychometric tests and job performance and the places go to the most competitive graduates and society and politicians are valuing STEM more currently.

here are last year’s overseas undergraduate stats @januarybikethief

https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/publications/ug_admissions_statistics_2024_cycle.pdf

Sure, but if your sister took the place of someone who didn’t have lower entry requirements then what would be the outcome on a wider scale? It’s entirely obvious dumbing down entry requirements would lower overall standards, otherwise why have them? Just have a lottery or some one deciding who is most worthy. People might not like it, but a standardised entry requirement is the fairest way, not arbitrary quotas or such nonsense.

Look at the percentages for the offers and acceptances. Vanishingly small numbers of EU students these days, and the highest numbers by a long way are from China and Singapore. Singaporean students, importantly, take British qualifications (IGCSEs and A-levels), and come with Singaporean government scholarships. They, and the Chinese students, overwhelmingly study STEM, because that’s what their countries fund. They are not applying for Classics or German. They’re concentrated in Maths, Natural Sciences and Engineering. And they come with state funding from their governments (and/or in the case of Chinese students family money from business).

Singaporean government scholarships (and others from far East Asian countries like Malaysia) are extremely generous, but often contain commitments that the student must return to work for a long period of time in their civil service afterwards. They are highly prized, but they do not lead to big donations from super-rich parents! They are a way of East Asian counties educating and then keeping their academic best and brightest in their own economies.

It may be what it's about (I agree) but it's not based in fact. It's based in snobbery. Choosing to believe that private students are actually more able and intellectually superior, when really it's just about maintaining class privilege and power.

We all know they're no better. And that dumbing down isn't real. But if the system admits it, it has to massively increase its intake of state students.

But it HAS massively increased the intake of state students. That’s the point!

Singapore educational standards are also exceptionally high. Yes, massive privilege also, but they also study for 14/16 hours a day. School, crammers, tutoring.

Cambridge administers, sets and marks the Singapore N Level (Native Level), O Level and A Level English exams. Their English standards are in excess of the vast majority of British students.

But that is about to reduce.

Yes. Their education system sends a huge percentage of their children to higher education per se, and the government actively invests in paying big grants to their most academic 18-year-olds to study overseas, with the promise of a guaranteed job in the elite civil service (and conditions attached to it). The high numbers studying at Cambridge are the result of their very specific government education policies, and not evidence of the global super rich paying their way in or whatever. They are also largely concentrated in STEM subjects, with their education system heavily focused on maths and engineering. China, Hong Kong and Malaysia similarly, though with more private money as well as government funding.

NB Cambridge Assessment is an independent exam board. It falls under the aegis of the university’s Syndicate, but it is a completely separate company that has nothing to do with the university in day to day terms.

I don’t think it will reduce. This is just a policy to ask independent schools to send their best students to apply to Cambridge again. Many have decided that their best students are being discriminated against, and so are advising them to apply overseas or to other universities like Durham, St Andrews etc., or even to Oxford (there is a perception amongst independent schools that Oxford is more favourable than Cambridge). Nobody wants to teach rich but dumb kids. But they might want to teach the best kids, wherever they’ve been to school.

It's depressing isn't it.

The implications are indeed, dramatic. The issue is that colleges don't want to plough/don't have (depending on the college) the massive resources required to bridge the gap. I know everyone thinks Cambridge has masses of $$$ but unless we start defunding libraries, orchestras, the Fitzwilliam museum, the Botanic gardens, the choirs, the societies, cancer research, the counselling service...we can't plough their whole budget into fixing a problem that should be fixed years before they get to Cambridge. What would a programme look like to truly bridge the gap? You can't just throw a reading list at people and say 'Go away with this and you'll know how to spot a Gospel parable or a piece of Euripedes in Shakespeare'. You'd need to take them to art galleries and masses of theatre and music. Intensive Radio 4 listening. Years of intensive 1-2-1 tutoring on how to structure arguments. Public school kids haven't all got that because they don't need it - it's been gently drip-fed to them over nearly two decades so they can make connections without needing to ever listen to Radio 4 much, and certainly not intentionally.

Also remember, supervisors' first jobs isn't teaching kids to structure arguments and write in full sentences - it's to do research. They take on undergraduates 1) to earn a bit more money (so, an inconvenience), 2) because it's part of their contract with the college so they're obliged to (an inconvenience), or 3) because they enjoy their youthful but intellectual curiosity and ability. If they're not showing 3, then it's a real pain to be stuck with just 1 or 2. So supervisors are desperately keen to admit good students, and I have had rough diamond state school candidates whom I've really liked, and taken a punt on knowing that they'll need more polishing. But if I only took those students, and the college only took those students, and the university only took those students - or if I, the college, or the university intentionally took a high percentage of those students over ones who were already showing that capability (and the capability of excelling even higher by the end), that's a massive risk. Many of them may not fly, and either fail or end up as an earlier poster described themselves - as a solid 2.1, not extraordinary. And we'd be intentionally lowering the standards overall of the emerging graduates.

Also, I don't think you can dissect the two issues of Oxbrige needing to attract good students in non-state school subjects, and state schools not producing the kind of thinkers and rhetoricians that Oxbridge wants to accept and shape in quite the way you want. Because while more state kids going into STEM than the arts (and as someone who is relatively impecunious, I will be counselling my own children to think carefully about taking a huge loan out for an English degree!), the most well-rounded thinkers have grown up doing lots of different things. So they're good English students because their school also offers Latin and German, etc. One of the best violinists in my year at Cambridge read for the maths tripos.

As I said, there are state-school exceptions here. But there were far more exceptions twenty years ago. I have not come across an 'exceptional' non-grammar kid for a long time now.

If you think I was expressing approval at the status quo, you misunderstood me. It's deeply depressing. It's why I almost break myself to send my children to a fee-paying school now, despite the fact that tonnes of the schools here being thought of a 'good' or 'outstanding' (when actually they just seem very average institutions to me, with lots of good teachers who just don't have the resources, time or funding to provide what I'm describing above). I am a Labour-voting, state-educated, normal person.

I'll come back on the foreign student question. It's not uncomplicated. But I need lunch!

What an ignorant comment to make.
My daughter- comprehensive educated, first generation to attend university would certainly disagree. Wonderful outreach team who encouraged her to apply and with AAA* Trinity Hall were definitely not dumbing down on who they accepted.
Financial support was amazing too.
She would loved to have studied Classics, but what comprehensive schools offer those?
Yes, there are universities that offer a 4 year course for “beginners “ but you would need to be financially sound to take that risk rather than say a STEM subject.
So it’s naturally going to be private school educated pupils who will take those places.

Really? I think it’s one college focused on a narrow range of subjects that state schools are less likely to teach. I don’t think that will move the university level wide stats very much.

Do you mean no contextual offers?

Sadly, so true.

I suspect that we probably know each other IRL. But my college always takes a big proportion of those “rough diamond” state students (I was one myself). They often do extremely well. We have had fantastic students from every type of school.

But we have been under pressure to actively reject very good independent students for years now, and now we aren’t even getting any applicants from independent schools at all as a result. This doesn’t seem to me to be a good solution either. We want the best from whatever type of school, ideally in the proportions that students aged 16-19 attend each type of school (which is different at 16-18 than for younger students).

Ooh now I am curious! What have I said?!

Like I say, I think there are exceptions, and I don't think there should be policies against state admission. And I do think foundation courses are brilliant and should be funded. I even think that if a state school rough diamond shows up, a lower offer could be given. But the idea that we should only prioritise state candidates will rob the universities of brilliant indy students and lead to a lowering of standards.

Now I'm thinking about what I might have given away! I don't think I have said what subject I am...?

Anecdata

but I went to Cambridge (a few decades ago) from a state school. I was one of those kids that read every book they could get their hands on and my primary didn’t know what to do with me.
when I was at school there were free music lessons and I was put forward for all kinds of outreach and gifted and talented stuff.

i come from Lancashire.

when I got to Cambridge, I loved it. It was full of people who like me loved learning and loved reading and loved discussing things.

but even then it was apparent I was so, so behind just in terms of exposure to ideas and understanding the world. I’d never left the uk when I went to Cambridge, I didn’t really believe anyone actually lived in other countries and I’d never heard anyone speaking a foreign language who hadn’t learnt it in school.

my kids went to private school. I took them to French classes from age 2 (we did singing French nursery rhymes etc). They started Latin age 8, were offered Ancient Greek as an extra curricular age 9. My DS learnt three instruments and the prep school offered more ensembles than you could shake a stick at.

the difference between my state education (and mine was in the 80s with free music lessons etc) and their education is just night and day.

i don’t live near Cambridge anymore, but the Cambridge private schools are full of kids whose parents were state educated but went to Cambridge. They know the difference between state and private.

I don’t know who you are 🤣 But many of my colleagues say very similar things to this so it all sounds very familiar!

Nobody is rushing to salivate over taking the dumb Etonian kids of super-rich oligarchs - why on earth would we want to? We want to admit and teach good people from all backgrounds. We want the kid from Westminster who will get a brilliant degree as much as we want the rough diamond who’s going to do the same. I would really like state secondary education to be much better, especially in arts, humanities and social sciences. The current secondary national curriculum is dire and dreary and mistakenly pushes kids towards STEM even if their talents lie elsewhere. I’m massively disappointed in Labour for continuing this, and for not having more vision and ambition for education. At least under Blair/Brown we had NAGTY, a push to diversify school quals into the IB and others, lots of funding of the creative arts. The current govt seems disappointingly determined to punish any attempt to give kids something beyond a narrow, uninspiring and unaspirational secondary education.

I’ve really enjoyed your thoughtful posts, @cantabsupervisor.

I went to Oxford to read Classics in the early noughties. I’d been to a pretty shit state secondary school, then a very good but still comprehensive state sixth form. I took Latin GCSE whilst at sixth form through a combination of self-teaching and having a tutor for an hour a week in Y13.

I was clearly quite unusually driven (if I’m totally honest, a large part of my motivation was a desire to get one up on everyone who’d made my life a misery for being a ‘boff’ at secondary school, and to ensure that I didn’t have to mix with people like them anymore), but I found first year really tough psychologically, because I just didn’t know how to work in the way that most of my peers knew. I’d been able to coast through school as the ‘cleverest’ because I read voraciously and picked A levels that played to my strengths and interests (including French, which was diabolically taught at my secondary but very well taught at sixth form). I’d never really been pushed or challenged on any of my thinking, and I’d never had to sit and battle with a concept or text I found difficult. Luckily I persevered and came out with a 1st, but it was absolutely a shock to the system.

I’ve since taught in a range of private schools and on balance, the pupils who’ve gone on to Oxbridge have been pupils who deserved to be there. I’ve seen plenty of pupils apply and get rejected because they don’t have the intellectual curiosity or drive that’s needed to succeed under the tutorial system, even if they have a string of top grades, so I totally disagree that there’s an admissions bias towards independent school pupils.

I think there’s a real issue with state education in this country, and I don’t think it’s Oxford or Cambridge’s problem to solve.