No Affirmative Action in University Admissions: US Supreme Court

 From The Economist

Should a fair country allow citizens to be treated differently based on the colour of their skin? Most people would say that it should not. But others insist that it should—if the ends are suitably enlightened.

Not long after America dismantled two centuries of slavery and segregation, it embarked on a project of “affirmative action”: a system of legally sanctioned positive discrimination for African-Americans (later expanded to other “under-represented minorities”) who sought entry to selective universities. At the time the affront to liberal norms of fairness and equality under the law was assuaged by the fact that the beneficiaries of the policy were oppressed not long ago. Yet after half a century, one marked with more racial progress than setbacks, it remained the case that an applicant to America’s top universities with the right skin colour had a much better chance of admission than one with identical credentials but the wrong skin colour. On June 29th the Supreme Court terminated the scheme.

It was right to do so. That is because affirmative action rested on contorted constitutional logic. It was also broadly unpopular outside progressive circles. Worst of all, it only marginally ameliorated America’s yawning racial gaps. Despite the sermonising of its administrators, even with race-based affirmative action the country’s best universities never represented America. The very same universities offer extreme preferences to children of alumni and donors—a shadow, unjustifiable affirmative-action scheme for the white and wealthy hidden behind the prominent one for black and Hispanic applicants (a disproportionate share of whom were wealthy themselves).

The Supreme Court’s ruling will reverberate widely. “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in his majority opinion. This will surely encourage lawsuits to end racial preferences in other areas, such as government contracting. But the immediate impact will be on university admissions.

A touch of class

Something better can come out of the demise of the present regime. Start with the shaky legal justification for race-conscious college admissions. After the civil war, America’s constitution was amended to guarantee all of its citizens due process and equal protection under the law, regardless of their race. Yet for decades, under Jim Crow, many states prevented black people from voting, forbade inter-racial marriage and enforced racial segregation in schools, among other outrages. After the correction of the civil-rights era, America began to try to live up to its constitutional promise. It passed landmark civil-rights legislation that forbade unequal treatment “on the ground of race, colour, or national origin”.

Yet for decades the Supreme Court allowed positive discrimination in universities. How so? The policy was justified, the justices of the day argued, not as reparations for a terrible past, but because the value of diversity was compelling for promoting “cross-racial understanding and the breaking down of racial stereotypes”. It was always odd that affirmative action was explicitly crafted for the benefit of students’ white peers. Nonetheless elite universities leapt on the rationale of diversity, using it to construct racially balanced classes while suggesting that these were the happy result not of quotas, which are banned, but of “race-conscious” holistic admissions schemes that treated people as individuals and not as avatars for their racial group.

Contrary to the dissent of the court’s liberal justices, who claim the new ban “will serve only to highlight the court’s own impotence in the face of an America whose cries for equality resound”, Americans were not happy with the old policy. In 2020 even liberal Californians voted down a referendum to reinstate affirmative action, banned in the state since 1996. Polls show that many more Americans oppose taking race into account for admissions than favour it. That is true also of Asian Americans, who typically lean left but bear the heaviest cost of race-based admissions because they are deemed “over-represented” (despite suffering discrimination in their own right).

The court’s decision could be the catalyst for fairer admissions. The extraordinary benefits that Harvard and Yale shower upon the children of alumni and donors make a mockery of meritocracy and those institutions’ self-professed progressivism. Those practices should go.

Universities that wish to do their bit for social justice should stop using race as an (often inaccurate) proxy for disadvantage and start looking at disadvantage itself. Instead of giving a leg-up to members of groups that are on average badly off, they should favour individuals who are actually poor. One randomised controlled trial found that simply offering application-fee waivers to promising students from poor backgrounds dramatically increased the chance of their applying to, and attending, highly selective universities.

There is reason to worry that elite universities will seek stealthy ways to preserve racial preferences. Many are dropping requirements for standardised tests, which would make quiet discrimination against members of unfavoured groups who do well on such tests harder to detect. Some are busily searching for loopholes. In a letter sent to its students and alumni, Harvard, which was party to one of the Supreme Court cases, quoted a portion of the majority opinion that opens the door to considering race if an applicant were to write about it in a submitted essay. “We will certainly comply with the Court’s decision,” its leadership wrote, impishly.

Rather than coaxing a generation of minority students into drafting adversity statements—and continuing to admit the hereditary mediocracy through the backdoor—schools like Harvard would do well to try to craft a fairer system of admissions. These universities should not be proud of the well-monied (albeit multicoloured) monoculture they have inculcated. They should take the opportunity to become the progressive institutions they claim to be. ■

Sixth-formers able to haggle for top UK universities under new grading system

Experts warn ‘sharp-elbowed’ middle classes more likely to talk their way into places as institutions look to expand writes Anna Fazackerley in The Guardian

A-level results day at Rochdale sixth form a year ago. This year, experts say, students will have much more power to negotiate their university places. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer 

School leavers may feel that, with A-level exams cancelled, they have lost control over their future. But experts say they have never had more power to talk their way into their first-choice university, even if they miss their grades.

As sixth-formers nervously await next month’s teacher-assessed results from the exams regulator, Ofqual, research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that in the aftermath of coronavirus, the UK higher education sector is facing losses of between £3bn and £19bn in the new academic year, depending on how many students enrol.

Many universities expect to lose 50-100% of their lucrative international student intake, a blow that will hit the most selective institutions hardest. While they have agreed to a government cap on student numbers to maintain stability, it was set with enough room for successful universities to increase UK student numbers to make up some of the shortfall.

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute thinktank, says: “The way they are grading A-levels this year gives [young people] much more room to negotiate. You can easily ring and make a case for being let in based on your grades being wrong.”
He says that if universities have lots of empty seats this year they will be “in compulsory redundancy territory”.

Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at Oxford University, agrees school leavers have “an unusual level of power this time”. In ordinary years universities, particularly the elite ones, have been wary of letting in too many applicants with lower grades for fear it could affect their position in the all-important league tables.

Marginson predicts this year could be different. “No one loses competitive position if everyone shifts the same way at the same time, as seems likely. The name of the game is organisational survival and everyone knows that.”

However, many academics are concerned that more disadvantaged candidates might be less likely to negotiate offers and hunt down good places in clearing.

Barnaby Lenon, former head of Harrow public school and chair of the Independent Schools Council, has urged university admission authorities to look beyond “dodgy” A-level grades, which “could be wrong”, when deciding who to admit.

Everyone has heard tales of middle-class parents picking up the phone to Oxford or Cambridge to argue for their child’s place. Lee Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, says: “Never underestimate the adeptness of the sharp-elbowed middle classes at exploiting opportunities. And no opportunity is more prized than a place at a prestigious university.”

Elliot Major worries that next month’s frantic last-minute market for places may further skew the playing field against poorer young people. “There is a genuine fear that many disadvantaged pupils who would have excelled in their A-levels this year will be penalised with lower scores by the system of calculated grades, which estimates grades on the basis of historical averages of schools,” he says.

Some believe Ucas, the admissions service, is not helping. Mark Corver, former director of analysis and research at Ucas and now founder of dataHE consultancy, has warned the government there is not enough detailed data publicly available to allow students and teachers to prove if the Ofqual grading process has gone wrong for them.

“We’ve asked Ucas repeatedly to release some simple tables showing the typical exam grades that applicants with different predicted grades get in a normal year. They have steadfastly refused,” he says. “We’ve found them reluctant and obstructive. Given they are a charity and not a commercial organisation, it’s very disappointing.”

However, Richard O’Kelly, head of analytical data at Ucas, denies the organisation is being obstructive. He says it cannot publish the data set, which breaks down results by factors including gender, ethnicity and social background, because it creates an “unacceptable risk” of individual applicants being identifiable. He adds: “We have published more data during this year than ever before to promote confidence amongst students and universities.”

Sophie Hatton, an 18-year-old school leaver from Birmingham, says she is feeling “increasingly anxious” waiting for her A-level grades. “At first I thought it was great having all my exams cancelled. Then it hit me how terrifying it is that two years of work could account for nothing as I have no full way of showing my potential.”

Hatton is hoping to study sociology at Nottingham Trent University, but she says that if she doesn’t get the grades she needs she will get on the phone and try to negotiate, “to prove I am a determined, hard-working student”.

Kate Spalding, another 18-year-old waiting for her results, in Southampton, says she was upset for days after hearing she could not sit her exams: “I felt all my work had gone to waste.” Now, she says, she has decided to trust her teachers and is feeling more confident.

She is planning a gap year, but if she does not get the grades she needs to study drama at Manchester or Leeds, she intends to retake her A-levels later in the year.

Despite the government’s cap on student numbers this year, with financial penalties for those that exceed it, many selective institutions are planning for expansion, within the boundary of an extra 5% on last year’s enrolment forecasts.

Prof Colin Riordan, vice-chancellor of Cardiff University, a member of the Russell Group, says his university is anticipating a 2% growth in UK student numbers this year. “Given the way the cap has been set, it is conceivable that quite a few selective universities will take marginally more students than last year, and altogether that could be quite a lot,” he says.

Yet Riordan admits that for institutions such as his, international students and not UK ones make the real financial difference – and their numbers will be unclear until October or November. “Really we won’t know how many international students we will get until they actually turn up – or don’t,” he says.

Vice-chancellors say the way A-levels are being calculated this year is making them nervous. Another Russell Group head, who asked not to be named, says: “We have thousands of students who have put us as first choice and accepted our offer. Usually we can be pretty accurate on what percentage will achieve the grades. But this year if there is even 10% inflation on that, that’s a big difference.”

The government has confirmed, in new guidance issued earlier this month, that it will not penalise universities for going over their cap because a larger number of students than expected meet their offer grades. But the vice-chancellor says that, in a Covid-19 world, a big increase would put pressure on facilities. “There are two nightmares: one where no one turns up, and one where everyone turns up while we are trying to do social distancing,” he says.

If prestigious institutions expand, they could suck up some students who might have chosen mid-ranking universities, leaving some of those institutions without enough undergraduates – and their £9,250 a year fees. Marginson says this would leave universities at the bottom of the sector “facing very difficult times”.

Dean Machin, head of policy at the University of Portsmouth, agrees. “We have potentially got the worst of both worlds. For sector stability we enabled government to control the number of people who go to university – and unfortunately it is unlikely to provide all universities the protection they were seeking.”

The Office for Students regulator is consulting on new powers to intervene faster to protect students in case any universities or colleges are at risk of closure.

Americans really pay a bribe for a good education? In Britain, we’ve got far subtler ways

The deviousness that some routinely resort to here puts the US scandal in the shade writes Catherine Bennett in The Guardian

‘Emily Thornberry hoovered up three precious places at an outstanding part-selective school.’ Photograph: George Cracknell Wright/Rex/Shutterstock


“Dude, dude, what do you think, I’m a moron?” Thus, one of the parents accused of involvement in the US college bribery racket. He’d been warned – by a wiretapped conspirator – not to reveal that he paid $50,000 for his daughter’s fraudulent test results, part of a system the fixer calls “the side door”.

Appropriately soothed – “I’m not saying you’re a moron” – the accused father is recorded, by the FBI, assuring the scam’s organiser that he’ll deliver, if required, the agreed fiction. “I’m going to say that I’ve been inspired how you’re helping underprivileged kids get into college. Totally got it.”

Although many of the best bits of an FBI affidavit – presenting the case against the accused parents – have been widely circulated, this sublime page-turner deserves to be enjoyed in full, if not put up for literary awards pending film adaptation (Laura Dern has been suggested for Felicity Huffman), and made compulsory reading in all admission departments. It’s not just that extracts can’t convey the fathomless entitlement and mendacity exhibited by affluent, ostensibly respectable parents. They can’t begin to do justice to the affidavit’s entertainment value as savage social comedy, something productions of Molière often attempt, but rarely achieve.

Even the dramatis personae, in the investigation the FBI named “Operation Varsity Blues”, reads like an updated Tartuffe: “Todd Blake is an entrepreneur and investor. Diane Blake is an executive at a retail merchandising firm.” Here, too, cultivated, fluent people, many of whom also sound deluded, greedy and hypocritical, appear to be playing with their children’s lives for no reason beyond self-gratification. But the dialogue, when not jaw-dropping, races along (“And it works?” asks a defendant. “Every time.”), the plots and motives are horribly plausible, and the jeopardy is evidently real to the alleged conspirators, even if the all-encompassing irony of their alleged scheme is not. “She actually won’t really be part of the water polo team, right?”

And from a fellow future defendant, on the risks, if this status-enhancing, child-perfecting scam were to be discovered: “You know, the, the embarrassment to everyone in the communities. Oh my God, it would just be – yeah. Ugh.”

Are FBI affidavits regularly as good as the tale of Operation Varsity Blues? If so, the death of the novel should be easier to bear. Although this document has one overriding purpose – to show that accused parents and witnesses colluded in fraudulent applications – special thanks are due to special agent Laura Smith, the author, who never writes a dull page. Maybe the individual cases were fully as compelling as this edited evidence suggests. Or maybe agent Smith’s organisation of her material really does indicate considerable, dry artistry? Either way, you cherish the detail when an accused parent replies, following an allegedly fraudulently extracted college offer: “This is wonderful news! [high-five emoji].”

  Actress Felicity Huffman has been indicted in the university admissions scandal. Photograph: David McNew/AFP/Getty Images

Ditto Smith’s generous quotation from a statement provided for a girl who has been reinvented, apparently for scam purposes, as a “US Club Soccer All American”: “On the soccer or lacrosse etc I am the one who looks like a boy amongst girls with my hair tied up, arms sleeveless, and blood and bruises from head to toe.”

Not, of course, that’s there’s anything illegal, here or in the US, about reproducing personal statements from professional suppliers or collaborating with a teacher and/or parent – the latter, though risibly unfair, is routine. Another Varsity Blues alleged tactic, that of buying a diagnosis requiring extra exam time, may have no exact UK parallel but, according to a 2017 BBC report, one in five children in independent schools received extra time for GCSE and A-levels. David Kynaston and David Green, in a powerful critique of independent schools, recently pointed out various advantages, made possible by high fees: “Far greater resources are available for diagnosing special needs, challenging exam results and guiding university applications.”

If, mercifully, UK universities are low on dependable side doors, the shamelessness of some of the US defendants, as they appear to pursue their imagined birthright (Ivy League bragging rights) can still sound uncomfortably familiar. Many British parents, equally fearful of mediocrity, are similarly unabashed on local tricks and stratagems – not only private education, but house moves, music lessons (for reserved school places), intensive coaching, internships, resits, religious conversions, fake addresses, and, the Times now reports, FOI requests to Oxbridge, from disappointed parents – that will end up, added to financial and cultural capital, delivering much the same outcome as the US scandal. Legal or otherwise, the result is enhanced educational opportunities for the privileged and untalented, fewer for the talented but disadvantaged.

The pervasive cunning is hardly surprising given the official esteem for “sharp-elbowed” parental operators, who, David Laws once argued, set a fine example. It follows, as demonstrated by UK politicians on all sides, that extreme resourcefulness in, say, keeping places from less fortunate residents, is readily passed off as understandable dedication as opposed to insatiable self-interest. Don’t we all want [smiling face with halo emoji] the best for our kids?

Following some unspecified epiphany, David Cameron, of previously wavering faith, secured places at an oversubscribed church school, some distance from No 10, requiring proof of “Sunday worship in a church at least twice a month for 36 months before the closing applications date”. Equally instructively, my own, affluent MP, Emily Thornberry, had, earlier, hoovered up three of the few precious places at an outstanding, part-selective school in Hertfordshire, 13 miles from home, which tradition annually reserves for her Islington constituents. On Twitter, she has reminded critics: “All my children educated in the state sector.” There is no suggestion that either MP has broken any laws.

There must be, beyond legality, some ethically significant factor that makes non-paying wangling infinitely superior to the ugly, US variety. But you probably have to buy a place at Harvard to find out what it is.

Meritocracy is a myth invented by the rich

The college admissions scandal is a reminder that wealth, not talent, is what determines the opportunities you have in life writes Nathan Robinson in The Guardian 

 
‘There can be never be such thing as a meritocracy, because there’s never going to be fully equal opportunity.’ Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images


The US college admissions scandal is fascinating, if not surprising. Over 30 wealthy parents have been criminally charged over a scheme in which they allegedly paid a company large sums of money to get their children into top universities. The duplicity involved was extreme: everything from paying off university officials to inventing learning disabilities to facilitate cheating on standardized tests. One father even faked a photo of his son pole vaulting in order to convince admissions officers that the boy was a star athlete.

It’s no secret that wealthy people will do nearly anything to get their kids into good schools. But this scandal only begins to reveal the lies that sustain the American idea of meritocracy. William “Rick” Singer, who admitted to orchestrating the scam, explained that there are three ways in which a student can get into the college of their choice: “There is a front door which is you get in on your own. The back door is through institutional advancement, which is ten times as much money. And I’ve created this side door.” The “side door” he’s referring to is outright crime, literally paying bribes and faking test scores. It’s impossible to know how common that is, but there’s reason to suspect it’s comparatively rare. Why? Because for the most part, the wealthy don’t need to pay illegal bribes. They can already pay perfectly legal ones.

In his 2006 book, The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges, Daniel Golden exposes the way that the top schools favor donors and the children of alumni. A Duke admissions officer recalls being given being given a box of applications she had intended to reject, but which were returned to her for “special” reconsideration. In cases where parents are expected to give very large donations upon a student’s admission, the applicant may be described as an “institutional development” candidate—letting them in would help develop the institution. Everyone by now is familiar with the way the Kushner family bought little Jared a place at Harvard. It only took $2.5m to convince the school that Jared was Harvard material.

The inequality goes so much deeper than that, though. It’s not just donations that put the wealthy ahead. Children of the top 1% (and the top 5%, and the top 20%) have spent their entire lives accumulating advantages over their counterparts at the bottom. Even in first grade the differences can be stark: compare the learning environment at one of Detroit’s crumbling public elementary schools to that at a private elementary school that costs tens of thousands of dollars a year. There are high schools, such as Phillips Academyin Andover, Massachusetts, that have billion dollar endowments. Around the country, the level of education you receive depend on how much money your parents have.

Even if we equalized public school funding, and abolished private schools, some children would be far more equal than others. 2.5m children in the United States go through homelessness every year in this country. The chaotic living situation that comes with poverty makes it much, much harder to succeed. This means that even those who go through Singer’s “front door” have not “gotten in on their own.” They’ve gotten in partly because they’ve had the good fortune to have a home life conducive to their success.

People often speak about “equality of opportunity” as the American aspiration. But having anything close to equal opportunity would require a radical re-engineering of society from top to bottom. As long as there are large wealth inequalities, there will be colossal differences in the opportunities that children have. No matter what admissions criteria are set, wealthy children will have the advantage. If admissions officers focus on test scores, parents will pay for extra tutoring and test prep courses. If officers focus instead on “holistic” qualities, pare. It’s simple: wealth always confers greater capacity to give your children the edge over other people’s children. If we wanted anything resembling a “meritocracy,” we’d probably have to start by instituting full egalitarian communism.

In reality, there can be never be such thing as a meritocracy, because there’s never going to be fully equal opportunity. The main function of the concept is to assure elites that they deserve their position in life. It eases the “anxiety of affluence,” that nagging feeling that they might be the beneficiaries of the arbitrary “birth lottery” rather than the products of their own individual ingenuity and hard work.

There’s something perverse about the whole competitive college system. But we can imagine a different world. If everyone was guaranteed free, high-quality public university education, and a public school education matched the quality of a private school education, there wouldn’t be anything to compete for.
Instead of the farce of the admissions process, by which students have to jump through a series of needless hoops in order to prove themselves worthy of being given a good education, just admit everyone who meets a clearly-established threshold for what it takes to do the coursework. It’s not as if the current system is selecting for intelligence or merit. The school you went to mostly tells us what economic class your parents were in. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

A CV of failure shows not every venture has a happy ending – and that’s OK

Julian Baggini in The Guardian


 

‘JK Rowling was a single mother on benefits, but others talked this up into a rags to riches fairy story.’ Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian


In my memory box I have a fine collection of rejection letters from editors and agents unimpressed with my first attempt at a book. Unsurprisingly, these mementoes of failure are the odd ones out in a collection that generally catalogues the highs rather than the lows of my life. We do not generally keep pictures of ex-partners from disastrous relationships on our mantelpieces, or photos of our sullen selves trapped inside a rain-swept, half-built motel.

But according to Princeton psychology professor Johannes Haushofer, we should do more to remember our failures. He has tweeted a CV of his setbacks, including lists of degree programmes he did not get into; papers that were rejected by journals; and academic positions, research funding and fellowships he did not get. Ironically, this little stunt has been a huge hit. “This darn CV of Failures has received way more attention that my entire body of academic work,” he said. Expect a TED talk and book to follow.

CV of failures: Princeton professor publishes résumé of his career lows


But the irony runs deeper. Haushofer probably would not have paraded his failures in the first place if he were not now a high-flying Princeton professor. Admitting to past defeats is easy if ultimately you have emerged the victor.

Haushofer’s confession has been praised as a breath of fresh air, a brave display of honesty. But sharing our past trials and tribulations is mainstream, not radical. No success story is complete without the chapter about overcoming adversity. Indeed, I often suspect that many people exaggerate their earlier problems in order to fit this standard narrative and if they don’t, others will do it for them. JK Rowling was a single mother on benefits, but others talked this up into a “rags to riches” fairy story. She has explicitly denied that she ever wrote in cafes to escape from an unheated flat, a story that never made much sense, given the price of a cappuccino in Edinburgh.

It is much harder to, if not celebrate, at least embrace failures when they are more than temporary setbacks. Would Hausfhofer have shared his list of rejections had they not been followed by acceptances? If so, he is braver and more honest than most. Increasingly our culture peddles the myth that with enough belief, determination, and perhaps even hard work, you can achieve anything you want. So if you do terminally fail, that can only mean that you have not tried, believed, or worked enough.

This is pernicious nonsense. The harder truth to accept is that success is never guaranteed. Luck plays its part, but there is also the simple fact that we do not know what we can achieve until we try. Success requires a happy coincidence of talent, effort and fortune, so if you try to do anything of any ambition, the possibility of failure is ever present. When our plans fail, there is no reason to think that necessarily reveals a deep failure in ourselves.

I’m not sure what I was thinking when I saved all those rejection letters. At the time, I didn’t know whether they would record mere setbacks or a thwarted ambition. But either way, they would have served a purpose. Had I not go on to have a writing career, they would have reminded me that I did at least try and that the reason I did not succeed was not for want of effort. That reminder would be sobering and humbling, which is why it would have been so valuable. If we are to go to our graves at peace with ourselves, we must be able to accept our disappointments and limitations as well as our successes.

Since I have gone on to earn my living by writing, I could wrongly take them to be proof of how my refusal to take no for an answer ensured that my talents were eventually recognised. The more honest way to see them is as evidence of how fortunate I was that eventually someone chose to take a punt on me.

In Hollywood, every failure simply serves to make the eventual success more inevitable. In real life, every past failure should be a reminder that a happy outcome was never guaranteed. Our failed relationships, terrible jobs and bad holidays reflect our characters and the reality of our lives at least as much as the good times, which often hang on a thread. Thinking more about our failures might just help us to be more grateful for the successes we enjoy and kinder to ourselves when, more often, they elude us.

Teachers increasingly boosting predicted A-level grades to help pupils win top university places

Richard Garner in The Independent

Increasing numbers of teachers are boosting their pupils’ predicted A-level grades to help them secure offers of places at Britain’s top universities – which in turn are accepting more students who miss their targets, largely to increase their income.

Figures from Ucas, the university admissions body, show that 63 per cent of all candidates are now predicted to get at least an A and two B grades at A level – up 9 percentage points from four years ago.

Yet the data shows that only a fifth of those predicted to score ABB actually achieve those grades – a 40 per cent drop from just six years ago.

READ MORE
Students increasingly admitted to university without three A-levels

The ploy by teachers has been successful because growing numbers of universities are offering “discounts” on their conditional offers to prospective students when A-level results are released.

This is because the Government decision to lift the cap on the number of places universities can offer has increased competition among the institutions when it comes to signing up students.

However, many teachers still reckon they need to bump up their students’ potential A-level grades to ensure they are noticed and are given a provisional offer by universities. More than half of pupils accepted on predicted A-level results – 52 per cent – missed their conditional offer grades by one grade or two, another substantial rise on four years ago. Senior academics say controversy over the issue could reignite calls to move to a system whereby pupils apply for their university places after they receive their A-level results.

Many teachers believe they need to bump up their students’ potential A-level grades to ensure they receive offers by universities (iStock)

The change was called for by a government inquiry headed by former Vice-Chancellor Steven Schwartz a decade ago but disappeared from the table when universities and schools could not agree to the changes necessary to the education calendar to implement it.

The new figures and the trend they highlight were disclosed by Mary Curnock Cook, chief executive of Ucas, at a conference at Wellington College on the future of higher education.


University admissions in numbers

63% of all candidates predicted to get at least an A and two B grades at A-levels
One in five actually achieve those grades
495,940 university applicants in England
52% of candidates accepted on predicted grades miss them by one grade or two
44% of students being admitted with three B grade passes or lower, compared with 20 per cent in 2011

Ms Curnock Cook said that, in discussions with teachers, she had asked: “Surely you wouldn’t be over-predicting your students’ grades last summer?” She told the conference: “I have teachers coming back to me saying: ‘Actually, yes we would.’

“The offers are being discounted at confirmation time,” said Ms Curnock Cook, referring to A-level results day. “It’s been [caused by] the lifting of the number controls that has increased competition [amongst universities].”

“You have to hope you can unlock some latent talent [in those taken in with lower grades],” said one university source. “If you don’t take them in, they could be snapped up by a rival and their reputation increases.”

As well as lower-ranking institutions, high-tariff universities – those most selective in their intake – are also lowering their entry requirements, with 44 per cent of students being admitted with three B-grade passes or lower, compared with just 20 per cent in 2011.

Professor Michael Arthur, provost of University College London, said his university had dropped a grade in 9 per cent of admissions.

Many universities have seen huge rises in the numbers of students they are enrolling. Professor Arthur said the number of students at his university had soared from 24,000 six years ago to 37,500. Part of the increase was down to mergers with other bodies such as the Institute of Education – but at least half was due to a rise in student numbers.

READ MORE
Record number of GCSE and A-level exams sent to be regraded

However, the number of university applicants from England decreased on the previous year by 0.2 percentage points to 495,940, the new figures show. The number of 18-year-olds applying also fell by 2.2 per cent.

Overall the number of university applicants for this autumn has held steady – with 593,720 applicants (up 0.2 percentage points on last year) by the time of the January deadline. But the increase was down to a significant rise in applications from the EU – up 6 percentage points to 45,220.

The figures show that more disadvantaged pupils applied than ever before – up 5 percentage points in England, 2 in Scotland and 8 in Wales.

Ms Curnock Cook urged students to be “bold” in their Ucas applications and take advantage of the fact that leading universities were lowering their admissions criteria. Speakers at the conference said parental pressure was partly to blame for teachers upping predictions for their pupils. 

The UCAS clearing house call centre in Cheltenham (Getty Images)

Another teacher said that performance-related pay, which means teachers’ salary increases depend on the results of their pupils – was leading them to predict higher grades.

“Performance-related pay and performance-related management play a part,” they said. “It is why you have to be a little bit aspirational.”

However, it was acknowledged this could be a double-edged sword – as failure to achieve the grades could result in teachers being penalised for failing to meet their targets.

Ms Curnock Cook also predicted that the number of students taking the A-level route to university would continue to drop over the next four years,

Last week Ucas showed that the number of students taking the vocational route through Btecs had almost doubled from 14 per cent in 2008 to 26 per cent last year. Predicted outcomes showed the number taking the traditional A-level route was likely to decline by 25,000 by 2020 – while the number with vocational qualifications would go up by 15,000.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: "We trust teachers to act in the best interests of their students by giving fair predicted A level grades that accurately reflect their ability.

"Distorting grades would be unfair on the pupils involved and could result in universities having to artificially inflate their entrance requirements, rendering it pointless in the long run."

Cambridge University to introduce written admissions tests

Prospective students will have to complete assessment as part of their application ‘to prove potential to succeed’

Cambridge University is to introduce the tests in autumn 2017. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA


Press Association

Tuesday 2 February 2016 10.48 GMT


Potential Cambridge students will have to sit written tests as part of their application in future, the university has announced.

In a change to its admission system, the prestigious institution confirmed it was introducing written assessments, tailored to each subject, which will be taken by candidates either before or at their interview.

The move will affect students applying for courses starting in autumn 2017 – when in a major overhaul of the exams system sixth-formers will sit the first batch of new GCSEs and A-levels in some subjects.

In a letter to UK schools and colleges, Dr Sam Lucy, the university’s director of admission, said the change would provide “valuable additional evidence of our applicants’ academic abilities, knowledge base and potential to succeed in the Cambridge course for which they have applied”.

“This move is a result of responding to teacher and student feedback, a desire to harmonise and simplify our existing use of written assessments and a need to develop new ways to maintain the effectiveness and fairness of our admissions system during ongoing qualification reform,” Lucy added.

Cambridge University has been outspoken about a key plank of the government’s exams reforms – the decision to hive off AS-levels from A-levels to form a standalone qualification.

It has argued that for admission to its courses, AS-levels are the best predictor of how well a student will perform in every subject except maths.

In November 2014, it wrote to all schools and colleges urging teachers to continue to offer the qualification.

From summer 2017, sixth-formers will be sitting new A-level exams in some subjects, and existing A-levels in others.

In addition, while some schools and colleges will opt to keep one-year AS-levels and teach them alongside A-levels, others are set to drop the qualification to focus on the two-year qualifications.

Oxford University tutors finally open up about admissions interviews

Oxford marks undergraduate application deadline by publishing selection of interview questions including ‘How much of the past can you count?’

• Richard Adams, education editor 
• 
  
• The Guardian, Wednesday 15 October 2014 18.48 BST

The questions published by Oxford confirm the stereotype of the contrary and offbeat, satirised by The History Boys. Photograph: Robert Harding World Imagery/Alamy

The mysteries of the Oxford admissions interview have been laid bare by the university, in an effort to explain the questions at the core of the fraught 20 minutes in an office that can change the course of a life.

To mark the deadline for 2015 undergraduate admissions, the university asked admissions tutors to open up about the interviews that all UK undergraduate applicants are subjected to – and what the admissions officers are looking for.

But rather than shine a spotlight on a process criticised for admitting a disproportionate number from independent schools, the questions published by Oxford instead confirm the stereotype of the contrary and offbeat, satirised by the Oxbridge applicants of Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys.

A question from Nick Yeung, an admissions tutor for psychology at University College, asks: Why are Welsh speakers worse at remembering phone numbers than English speakers?

“This question is meant to be deliberately provocative, in that I hope that it engages candidates’ intuitions that Welsh people aren’t simply less clever than English people,” Yeung said.

“The key point is that numbers are spelled differently and are longer in Welsh than in English, and it turns out that memory and arithmetic depend on how easily pronounced the words are. I would hope the student would pick out this connection between memory and how easy to spell or pronounce a word is.”

Other questions published by Oxford included: How much of the past can you count? “In this case, the question gets at all sorts of issues relating to historical evidence,” said Stephen Tuck, a fellow at Pembroke College.

“Of course, much of the interview would be taken up with discussing in depth the history courses the students have studied – the interview is not all about unusual questions.”

Samina Khan, Oxford’s acting director of undergraduate admissions, said for many students the interview is the most daunting part.

“We know there are still lots of myths about the Oxford interview, so we put as much information as possible out there to allow students to see behind the hype to the reality of the process,” Khan said.

But a former admissions tutor at a Russell Group university said that while the questions were reasonable, Oxford’s over-reliance on interviews to select undergraduates was part of its problem.

“It seems to me though that by revealing the mysteries of the interview, Oxford is continuing the fetishisation. It is Oxford, not interviews, that is weird,” he said.

The university interviews more than 10,000 applicants over two weeks in December, for around 3,200 undergraduate places.

Applicants to read biology might be asked ‘Why do some habitats support higher biodiversity than others?’ while prospective art history students are shown a painting and asked if they recognise it. “It is the only question for which there is a single, correct answer, which is ‘no’,” said Geraldine Johnson of Christ Church, explaining that she wants applicants to discuss works they haven’t seen before.

Cambridge University medicine admissions show race gap

Applicants with three A*s at A-level are 20% more likely to get offer if they are white than if they are from ethnic minority

• James Ball and Kurien Parel
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 March 2013 12.56 GMT

Cambridge University released the detailed admissions data, covering 2010 to 2012, for medicine only in response to a freedom of information request. Photograph: Brian Harris/Alamy

People applying to study medicine at Cambridge University with three A*s at A-level are more than 20% more likely to be given an offer if they are white than if they are from an ethnic minority, according to new data released by the institution.

Cambridge University released the detailed admissions data, covering 2010 to 2012, for medicine only in response to a freedom of information request. The university refused a similar request a few weeks before, which covered more subject areas, on the grounds of cost.

The data, which covers applications from within the UK by people who declare their ethnicity, shows that 329 out of 586 white applicants for medicine who went on to achieve three A*s were given an offer of a place, versus 190 of 412 applicants from ethnic minorities – representing success rates of 56% and 46% respectively. The difference between the two groups is statistically significant.

Both Oxford and Cambridge have been challenged by MPs and campaigners to do more to get students from ethnic minorities into their institutions, particularly as the headline admissions figures for the two institutions show a substantial gap in success rates between students of different ethnicities.

The universities have said this gap is explained in large part by students from ethnic minorities disproportionately applying for the most competitive subjects, such as medicine – but these new figures show that even within the competitive subjects, white students are more likely to receive offers.

Cambridge's race gap for medical applicants is substantially smaller than that of its rival, Oxford University. Figures released to the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act, published last month, show white students applying for medicine who went on to achieve three A*s were 94% more likely to be offered a place than those from ethnic minorities.

A-levels are only one of several factors taken into account by admissions tutors for medicine at both universities. Applicants are also required to take a specific entrance exam, the bioMedical admissions test, while work experience and performance at interview are also factored in to whether to make an offer. Those handling applications may also be unaware of the ethnicity of prospective applicants rejected prior to interview.

A spokeswoman for Cambridge University said analysis of applications based on A-level grades "ignores a significant number of relevant variables" and is therefore "superficial".

"Admissions decisions are based on students' ability, commitment and their potential to achieve," she said. "Our commitment to improving access to the university is longstanding and unwavering … [and] we aim to ensure that anyone with the ability, passion and commitment to apply to Cambridge receives all the support necessary for them to best demonstrate their potential."

She added that Cambridge had run initiatives to encourage gifted students from minority backgrounds to apply to Cambridge since 1989.

Oxford University declined to comment on the difference in size of the medical race gap of applicants between itself and Cambridge University, but said in an earlier statement it constantly reviewed the race gap of its applicants.

"Oxford University is committed to selecting the very best students, regardless of race, ethnicity, or any other factor," a spokeswoman said.

"This is not only the right thing to do but it is in our own interests. Differences in success rates between ethnic groups are therefore something we are continuing to examine carefully for possible explanations."

The Oxford spokeswoman also noted Cambridge made more use of students' grades at AS-level than does Oxford, and said ethnic minorities were well represented at the university, making up 22% of all students and 13% of UK undergraduates.

How foreign students with lower grades jump the university queue

By Holly Watt and Claire Newell

10:00PM BST 26 Jun 2012 The Daily Telegraph

The official agent in Beijing for universities in the elite Russell Group claimed that it could secure over-subscribed places for a Chinese student purporting to have scored three C grades in their A-levels - when British students are required to have at least A, A and B.

Undercover reporters were also told to tell the UK authorities that the student would be returning home immediately after graduation - even if that was not their intention – in order to secure a visa.

Universities were accused of profiteering by rejecting tens of thousands of British teenagers, currently sitting A-levels, so they can fill places with more profitable foreign students.

Universities say that even the new £9,000-a-year tuition fees for British and European Union students do not cover their costs, and they need to turn to foreigners who are charged 50 per cent more.

Headmasters at some leading private schools have told The Daily Telegraph that some of their foreign pupils were being offered places with lower entry requirements than their British counterparts.

Following concerns raised by academics and schools, undercover reporters visited Golden Arrows Consulting in Beijing, which placed more than 2,500 students in British universities last year, purporting to being looking for a place for a Chinese student.

The firm is the official agent for more than 20 British universities and acts as their representative in China.

The fictitious student was said to have achieved three C grades at A-level – far below the entry requirements of most leading British universities. However, they were offered a place at both Cardiff and Sussex.

The agent, Fiona Wang said: “We send student [sic] to Cardiff Business School to study accounting and finance with ACD. So with CCC we can help her”.

An applicant would normally need AAB to study this subject at the university, so the reporter asked again about the potential offer.

“If the student wants to study economics, it’s three Cs. So economics she can also do”, the agent replied.

When the undercover reporters asked what universities the student could go to if they re-sat their exams and managed to obtain three grades Bs at A-level, Ms Wang explained that those grades would mean that as well as Cardiff and Sussex, she could “choose” between the University of East Anglia or Southampton University.

“Even some high ranking universities, but not Bristol, not KCL [King’s College London], not Warwick”.

The undercover reporters were referred to another employee of Golden Arrow who offered to doctor documents to help the student’s application, including paperwork required to obtain a visa to study in Britain. Assistance with the personal statement that each student is required to fill in was also available.

Universities are able to make discretionary offers to students and there are no rules governing entry requirements.

Headmasters at some top private schools confirmed that they were experiencing growing problems with British students facing discrimination.

Many wealthy parents would be prepared to pay the higher fees charged to foreign students but the system bans this from happening.

Andrew Halls, the headmaster of King’s College School in Wimbledon, south-west London, said: “There was a boy this year who told me that he was made an offer dependent on him being a non EU candidate, and when he clarified the fact that he was a UK candidate, even when he appeared not to be, they said that the offer doesn’t stand.

“There are occasions when I have said to a candidate, if you can apply as an international candidate it slightly strengthens your hand.”

He added: “Universities are disincentivised from taking UK candidates. We have to address it.”

Richard Cairns, the headmaster at Brighton College, said: “Universities are increasingly searching for, and needing, overseas fees. It’s something we have noticed. It’s tougher for British students to get into top universities than overseas students… There is a higher offer rate to overseas students.”

A third leading headmaster said he was aware of cases where a pupil had dual nationality and applied to university from abroad with lower grades than would be accepted for a British candidate.

Since 2006, the number of foreign students has risen by a third to almost 300,000. Teenagers from China represent the highest proportion of overseas students. At the same time the number of British students missing out on a university place reached a record high last year of 180,000.

Last month, 68 chancellors, governors and university presidents wrote to the Prime Minister warning that the government’s immigration crackdown should exclude students, to drive the economy and boost university income.

The recruitment of foreign students by overseas agents is big business – almost all university websites have pages dedicated to listing their “partners” in each country for prospective students to contact about obtaining a place. Agencies compete for business with some being paid by both the student and agent.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said that “money is the main factor” in universities recruiting foreign students.

“The reason universities are recruiting more foreign students, is at its heart, about fees. Universities are business, they have to secure their future, they look at their income streams.

“There is the risk of standards being compromised if the driving force is the extra money these students are bringing in”.

From September the government will remove a cap on the number of British students a university can recruit if the applicant had A, A, B grades at A-level to ensure that high-performing teenagers are not denied places.

Next year the threshold will be lowered to A, B, B, but so far only a handful of universities have said they will participate because of concerns over costs of admitting more UK students.

The Daily Telegraph will expose further issues with the system later this week. The disclosures are expected to lead to demands for a review of entry requirements.

Golden Arrow admitted that it had found a place for a student at Cardiff with A, C and D grades at A-level but insisted this was an exceptional case.

It said it had “never” sent a student to Cardiff University with C, C, C grades, but that lower grades could be accepted during clearing for a number of high ranking universities.

The firm denied offering to doctor visa applications and said that when the agent had offered to write the personal statement for a student, he meant that it could “instruct students how to make a good PS [personal statement], but never write on behalf of them”.

Sussex University said, “We have not offered places on degree courses to international students in the way that you describe… We make no C, C, C offers whatsoever.

“It is possible, however, that during the Ucas clearing process offers may be made at slightly below the advertised entry criteria, but this is unlikely to drop by more than one or two grades.

“Any such offer would be the same for overseas and UK/EU students”

Sussex said that it did not enter clearing last year because of the cap on the number of UK/EU students it can accept and it had met its “limit”, but overseas students were offered places during this period because their numbers are not restricted.

Cardiff University said it was “unlikely” that any student would be offered a place to study with A-level grades C, C, C, but that the university “may vary its typical offer where there are mitigating circumstances or aptitude to study demonstrated by other means”.

It confirmed that in the 2011/12 academic year, 258 of its students applied via Golden Arrow, but said that agents “do not make admissions decisions”.

A spokesman for the University of Southampton said that international students were given the same offers as UK students. It said they would be investigating the allegations.

The University of East Anglia said that no student would be offered a to study maths with grades C, C, C .

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School Gate - Times Online - WBLG The essential guide for parents. What you need to know about education and what's being talked about at the school gate « Why too much homework doesn't work... | Main September 23, 2008 Applying for Cambridge: The colleges and subjects which give you the greatest chance of success There is less than a month to the deadline for applications to Oxford and Cambridge, but many sixth-formers are still agonising over their choice of college and even of subject. John O'Leary, editor of the Good University Guide, explains how to maximise your chances... "Competition is going to be stiff at either university – most successful applicants have at least three As at A level, or their equivalent – but it helps if there are only three candidates to the place, as there are in a number of subjects and colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. Today I will offer some pointers to demystify the admissions system at Cambridge before moving on to Oxford tomorrow. All the figures are available on the universities' websites, but some remain surprisingly little known. Do schools realise, for example, that one Cambridge college took more students than it had applicants last year? New Hall (soon to be Murray Edwards College) had only 111 initial applications but eventually made 145 offers of places. More than 100 of those who received offers came via the pool, which provides a second chance for promising candidates who either make open applications or do not get into their first choice of college. T The pool lowers the stakes for those who apply to the most selective colleges – nearly 3,000 applications were pooled in 2007 and 752 received offers of places. But the right choice of college still makes a difference. Only 44 of those who made New Hall their first preference actually received offers, but that was still more than one in three – a much more encouraging ratio than the one in five success rate at Pembroke. The other guide to college strengths – albeit a rough and ready one - is the success of their undergraduates in final examinations. At Cambridge, this comes in the form of the Tompkins Table, which was topped this year by Selwyn College. Although the small number of students taking finals each year can make for big swings in the table, it does reflect the standard of the intake. It is (marginally) easier to get into a college in the lower reaches of the table than one at the top. Competition for places also varies widely between subjects – from a success rate of more than half in classics in 2007, to less than one in eight for architecture. Of course, it is a bit late to switch to classics if you are taking science A levels, but the figures could still influence some decisions. More than a quarter of those who applied to read history received offers, for example, compared with less than one in five for social and political sciences. Naturally, there is more to choosing a college (let alone a degree) than the odds on winning a place. But the schools that have a strong track record in Oxbridge admissions all have a strategy for choices of college, building up relationships with tutors and trying to spread their applications to maximise their students' chances of success. Those who do not have such advantages would be wise to do their homework." Cambridge Colleges: Applications, offers and success Applications Offers Success Homerton 390 211 54 Newnham 338 168 50 New Hall 333 145 43.5 St Edmund's 163 68 42 Girton 502 185 37 Churchill 495 178 36 Hughes Hall 149 53 36 Lucy Cavendish 159 54 34 Peterhouse 283 93 33 Fitzwilliam 527 160 30 Christ's 505 149 29.5 Queen's 664 195 29 Robinson 463 134 29 St Catharine's 543 150 28 Sidney Sussex 464 126 27 Gonville & Caius 624 162 26 Selwyn 490 127 26 Trinity 898 231 26 Trinity Hall 463 121 26 Wolfson 165 43 26 Magdalene 465 116 25 Corpus Christi 385 92 24 Emmanuel 657 156 24 Jesus 687 167 24 St John's 854 188 22 Clare 723 151 21 Downing 657 137 21 King's 650 136 21 Pembroke 749 147 20 The Tompkins table 2008: 1. Selwyn (4) 2. Emmanuel (1) 3. Trinity (6) 4. Gonville and Caius (10) 5. Magdalene (13) 6. Churchill (15) 7. Jesus (9) 8. Christ's (2) 9. Corpus Christi (8) 10. Pembroke (7) 11. St Catharine's (5) 12. Downing (3) 13. Clare (17) 14. Sidney Sussex (12) 15. Trinity Hall (16) 16. Queens' (11) Last year's positions are in brackets. Read School Gate on: The reality of your first term at university The top 20 most popular places for students Learn to cook, on a student's budget. The soft A levels universities don't want you to take. The new universities: Ebbsfleet and Accrington anyone? Is it good or bad for universities to be named after big donors? Posted at 03:46 PM in students | Permalink TrackBack TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/297284/33748772 Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Applying for Cambridge: The colleges and subjects which give you the greatest chance of success: Comments As a former admissions tutor - THIS DOES NOT WORK. Colleges have relatively objective standards. If someone does not meet them, they will not gain admission one way or another. If an applicant is strong, a College will try very hard to either offer them a place or support them in the pool so that another college may take them. (This is to ignore the fact that if many applicants seek to play the numbers game then any perceived advantage will cease to exist and an applicant would have been better off applying to a college with a high number of applicants to places which, in the next year, will have fewer) As with other guides for Oxbridge entrance, this one seems to have no basis in experience of what actually occurs. Having read all the books on the market, NONE of them give an accurate portrayal of the decision-making process. As for the idea that schools have relationships with Colleges - this is at least twenty years out of date. The only schools which have an advantage are those which do not produce the bland pro forma references for applicants. Such references are entirely worthless. Posted by: John Scott | September 24, 2008 at 05:33 AM A note to all prospective applicants: This article isn't worth the server space it is hosted on. Due to the pooling system, any attempts to 'play the game' when choosing colleges won't work. The best advice? If you're good enough for Cambridge, apply to either a college that you really like, or a college with a good reputation in the pool. Posted by: SW | September 24, 2008 at 04:35 AM As a former college fellow, admissions tutor, undergraduate and postgraduate supervisor and lecturer in Cambridge, I can reassure anyone who wants to increase their chances of studying at Cambridge and being successful, to be counter-intuitive; do a first degree in another (non Oxbridge) university (aim to get a 2.1 or above) then apply for one of the many Masters or PhDs on offer in Cambridge. This route in is less competitive, will end up being much more relaxed, fulfilling and financially easier, and importantly will open so many more doors professionally. This extraordinary advice is not what most parents want to hear, but well-rounded, down-to-earth, self-motivating, proactive and focussed graduates who have had their career development from the likes of Cambridge are exactly what industry, business, finance and research sectors are demanding. Posted by: JS | September 24, 2008 at 01:46 AM I had a friend from New Hall who applied because "It's the easiest college to get in." She then spent the next 3 years wishing she had gone somewhere else. She also felt inferior to most of her friends, because they didn't use that trick to get into Cambridge. Another New Hall friend of mine applied there because she actually likes the place. She is a very happy and active member of the college. When I applied, I did all those stats for college, like the above article. My school teacher wanted to apply a certain college that I was not keen about, because he knows someone there. At the end, I didn't use these tricks. It's not just the 'getting-in Cambridge' part that is important; it's the 'three-years at Cambridge' part that is. So I went for the one I really liked and got in. It felt great to know that I got in because of my abilities, not what kind of tricks I used. Posted by: D | September 24, 2008 at 01:31 AM I tried gaming the system like this when I applied. I went for a minority subject at a college at the bottom of the Tompkins table that had only had three applications for three places in the subject the previous year. What happened? I got there on interview day to discover there was only one place on offer that year, and fourteen applicants for it... I wasn't the only one to have done the math and tried to game the system. Yes, I got the place. But I hated the course and ended up switching to something else after just two weeks - arguably I would have been much better off at a bigger, less cliquey college. I'd recommend you pick a subject you feel passionate about, that you've properly researched, at a college you feel most comfortable at. Posted by: LR | September 24, 2008 at 01:03 AM I completely agree with all of you. Ages ago I worked out the success rate by the application number in 05 and 06, when Homerton and Girton were seemed 'easier (more places than actual applicants)' to get in. I ignored those information cause I hate those colleges' locations, and applied the one I like. Then I saw recently that these two colleges suddenly seem to be the 'hardest (many applicants for one place)' to get in. To sum up, I believed those who do have the potential to be an oxbridge should just choose whichever they like. This article is quite futile and there is very little point to believe in what it says. TO THOSE WHO WANT TO APPLY OXBRIDGE: Just shows those interviewers that you are an interested person. BE YOURSELF. The real star would always shine through the crowds. Posted by: Kev | September 23, 2008 at 11:31 PM It's such a shame that, under the guise of "demystifying" applications, potential Cambridge students are bombarded with confusing so-called secrets which in the end can only serve to discourage potential applicants. It is clear from the figures from previous years that the reporter's idea that they can predict competition for a particular college or subject is shoddy at best - a student who's really done their homework will have noticed that there are huge variances and swings from year to year. That alone makes second-guessing nearly pointless, and from my experience working in Cambridge admissions, an increasing willingness of Admissions Tutors to use the Intercollegiate Pool deals with any remaining chance that a student could find a weakest link. The best candidates will get a place, and they will be distributed across colleges as necessary. I think this is probably evinced by the Tompkins table itself - look at the last year's positions given in brackets, and you will see the degree to which it has shuffled year-on-year, underlining the fact that there is no Thickies College, Cambridge. My advice to anyone wanting to apply then, would be to do so, and to ignore all this nonsense. Picking a course and a college should be down to passion and gut feeling. Go to an open day, find a place you like, and apply. There is nothing to gain by trying to cheat the system, and ultimately, you'll only be cheating yourself out of what you want the most. Posted by: T | September 23, 2008 at 10:17 PM Firstly, maybe you should state that New Hall is a college only for girls... And it's Queens' with the apostrophe after the 's'. An apostrophe before the 's' is Oxford's Queen's College. Posted by: Sarah | September 23, 2008 at 09:59 PM While the statistics in this article are (I think) true, the perspective lent is misleading. Simply because there are fewer applicants for a subject or college, doesn't necessarily make it "less competitive": the average standard of applicants can still be very high indeed, even if there are very few of them, as in Classics. And who really benefits from discovering that one subject is more or less competitive than the other? Moreover, as a Cambridge student myself, I should stress that choosing your college by what's least competitive is potentially foolish. Despite what you may have heard, not all colleges will suit everyone perfectly: there are many variances between colleges, including the Fellows' areas of expertise; you have to do your research to find out what (and who) suits you. And anyway, who wants to spend three years of their lives at a college they chose because it seemed easier to get into? Where's the integrity in deliberately not going for what you feel is the best? Posted by: S | September 23, 2008 at 05:36 PM Oh dear. Another person selling his take on the supposedly secret knowledge behind getting to Oxbridge. The reason why it more candidates get in to do history than social sciences may be that history is undersubscribed. Or it may be that the people applying to do history really want to do history and have got good scores at the right A levels. A bright student who is perfect for economics isnt magically going to improve her chances by applying to do history, if she has no interest in history and cant show a spark. Improve your chances? go to the open days yourself (not your mum), talk to the tutors, do the A levels they tell you to do and learn to love your subject. And dont waste any of your hard earned cash on any course that promises to sell you insider knowledge. Posted by: j | September 23, 2008 at 04:57 PM

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