Why is the Cambridge thread so much more popular than the Oxford thread?

because Cambridge focuses more on As UMS so gives more people hope whereas Oxford focuses more on GCSE which most on here already know so wont consider it if they dont have 100 GCSE A*'s.

Also Cambridge is more sciency than Oxford its Natural Science course is awesome, and STEM rules on tsr. so...tsr is just not representative of the wider world, also I think Cambridge is gaining a better reputation in the U.K as companies like ARM Holdings are coming out of Cambridge city, as well as other technology companies which is a more and more popular area.

I didn't say they had high number of applicants. You said Cambridge had more applicants than Oxford. They don't.

And on TSR Cambridge doesn't have 4 to 1 more connections either. (Number of Applicant thread versions). So the roughly equal number of "connections" doesn't explain the posting difference either.

Cambridge accepts probably about 70-85% of applicants for interviews. Maybe lots of people who are members of TSR applied to Cambridge for that reason and the fact that they're outstanding students hahaha!


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Where did I say Cambridge has more applicants?

Where did I say that was the only factor?

Actually is it Cambridge or Oxford that accepts 70-85% for interviews?
If I am wrong then thats embarrassing lool!


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Ok, I misread your applicants comment but my point still stands they have similar numbers of applicants and similar numbers of TSR connections. So those factors don't explain the difference in posting levels in the applicants threads..

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Cambridge interviews 80+% of applicants across all the courses. It's not a percentage how they decide how many interview, actually, but anyone who they think has 'realistic possibility of getting an offer' gets interview at Cambridge, and that's usually 80+% of applicant.
It varies a lot depending upon courses at Oxford, it seems. Some courses interview over 80% of applicants while other courses interview only around 30% or so. ......or at least that's what someone at Oxford told me while ago.

Yeah the Oxford interview rate varies a lot depending on whether or not you have an admissions test. Ones that do have quite low interview rates of around 30-50%, ones that don't have higher interview rates of up to about 80%, don't think any course except courses with a very small number of applicants will interview over 80%

I think first of all you need to realise that more posts =/= more people in it.

1 person posting 100 posts can make a thread longer than 49 people posting 2 each.

The second thing ever if there are more people in the Cambridge thread, doesn't mean there are more applicants. There are more Cambridge students and graduates on the site, and other people who have nothing to do with Cambridge can very well also go and comment because the the better visibility of the thread itself being pushed up more often than the Oxford one.

The third thing is just because they wanted to apply to Cambridge and post in the Cambridge, doesn't mean they will definitely eventually apply to Cambridge. Usually the already-more populated threads will attract more people because there are more things to read and respond to, which gives the Cambridge thread another advantage.

The fourth thing is the simple fact that there are more Cambridge students and graduates here. More connections equals to more people talking about Cambridge and asking people to apply to Cambridge or at least frequent the thread.

The fifth thing is that TSR is very tiled towards the QS ranking, where Cambridge has been topping Oxford. They don't care much about Times or the REF.

The sixth thing is the fact that TSR favours stem subjects and Cambridge is seen as the better university for it. Whether this is true doesn't matter.

There's no reason why TSR will have a population mimicking the general population. It doesn't based on political affiliation, religious affiliation, student ratio, age etc so we should this be any different? Oxbridge don't even have that many applicants to begin with, so why are those threads even popular?

Ah is that how it works at Oxford?
At cambridge 'test' is a part of 'interviewing' process, never separate things. It'd depend on college and course, but basically candidates have either two interviews or one interview + test.

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If you two really want to know why Cambridge has more posts, it's because you'll see none of this (almost) 5 posts in a row business in the Oxford thread

How do you do that scrolling thing - cool...

But what even is your point? Lots of short, chaty posts?

Like these in the Oxford thread...?

I used LICEcap to make a .gif recording of my screen and then uploaded it to an image host and put that in here
And my point was we don't have one person *cough* Jordan *cough* making 5 separate posts in a row instead of putting them all in a multiquote in a single post

Ah, yes @Jordan\ is special

Doesn't explain a 4:1 thread post ratio

Also, top poster in the current Cambridge thread has 216 posts. Top poster in the Oxford thread has more: 229

I showed in my earlier post that the number of TSR "connections" and, indeed, total applicants, are similar for Cambridge and Oxford.

What about people who want to apply to Oxford and don't eventually apply there. I'd imagine the numbers are similar.

Especially as the overall number of applicants are similar.

Feel free to show it's otherwise and also why it's relevant. It isn't.

If you mean tilted, then perhaps TSR is somehow pro-Cambridge (I'm not convinced it is but let's say that's true) it doesn't explain a 4:1 post difference.

Still doesn't explain a 4:1 post difference. And looking at a specific, very STEM, course - i.e. Maths - the number of maths applicants for Cambridge *is* slightly higher than Oxford but not by much, and certainly not 4:1.

Cambridge maths applicants: 1,400 pa
Students accepted per year: 240

Oxford maths applicants: approx 1,000 pa
Students accepted per year: 178

You have failed to identify a factor that adequately explains it.