UK universities discriminate against candidates

[DMB]

on the basis of the school they attended.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/student/article6036348.ece

In an e-mail sent in February, Lawrence Black, a senior history lecturer at Durham, told the boy he had been turned down “using a mathematical formula to recognise applicants who perform very well at GCSE despite attending a school where average performance is weak”.

IMO this shows up the fact that the universities don't look at candidates as individuals: they are categories. The A-level system is creaking and inefficient and GCSEs are even worse. The public schools will stop putting people through GCSEs if this sort of nonsense is the norm. The universities need more objective ways of assessing candidates.

[purple_kathryn]

I needed my GCSE's to get my job though so they're not solely for people to get into university.

[Matty]

weird and i always thought that Oxbridge candidates in particular were only ever selected on the basis of merit as opposed to the old boys network. There is no way the likes of Eton and Harrow students would ever get preference even for the Tim Nice But Dims of the world is there ......oh wait a minute :)

no real surprise is it?

agreed wrt to the exams though. there should me more options for trades and apprenticeships, most trades i nthe Uk are low on youngsters i believe, and so some measure that would both increase tech training in both worth and earning potential would benefit society as a whole and remove some of the incentives from Unis to "cheat"

[DMB]

weird and i always thought that Oxbridge candidates in particular were only ever selected on the basis of merit as opposed to the old boys network. There is no way the likes of Eton and Harrow students would ever get preference even for the Tim Nice But Dims of the world. ......oh wait a minute :)

no real surprise is it?

Back when I went to Oxford, they did. I don't think they've done that for ages.

[Albion]

Back when I was at school (1960s-70s) it was known that Oxbridge discriminated. We were told at the beginning of the sixth form not to bother to apply to either of them for any subject because nobody from our school ever got in. And the whole time I was at that school, nobody ever did get in - including a girl in my class who had a stack of O-levels, three good A-levels, and two S-levels, and was a member of the National Youth Orchestra and was turned down flat by Cambridge without even an interview after applying for their music course. In the meantime, the local direct-grant school got half a dozen girls into Oxbridge standardly every year, despite the school's O- and A-level results being no better than ours, and I was told by a friend in a different city that one of the Cambridge colleges reserved a place in a particular subject for a girl from her school every year and she intended to be the one to get that place in that year (which she did).

Used to make me want to spit nails when people claimed it was all down to merit.

[DMB]

I got into Oxford from a state school in the 1950s.

[Alex]

The universities need more objective ways of assessing candidates.

If will never happen now, but the Oxbridge universities could set their own examinations and/or make the scholarship system mandatory.

Objectivity - even if achievable - in the academic assessment of candidates wouldn't be compatible with the plans of social engineers.

[BioBeing]

The boy, who studied at St Paul’s school in London applied to an oversubscribed history and modern languages course at Durham.

...

The boy, who, unlike most candidates, applied after his A-levels, scored A grades in Latin, English, German and history.

What? He applied AFTER he got his grades to a course that was oversubscribed. What the fuck did he expect. Seems like the reason given by the Prof was probably wrong.

[DMB]

The universities need more objective ways of assessing candidates.

If will never happen now, but the Oxbridge universities could set their own examinations and/or make the scholarship system mandatory.

Objectivity - even if achievable - in the academic assessment of candidates wouldn't be compatible with the plans of social engineers.

Back before the ark when I went, both Oxford and Cambridge did set their own exams and there was no entry on A-levels.