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Getting into Oxbridge in the early days

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Reply 40

rkd

Craghyrax

You call those 'early days'? :eyeball:

Don't you mean Isaac Newton or Christopher Marlowe or something...

You call 400 years after Oxford's foundation "early days"? :p:

Reply 41

Craghyrax

hobnob

...actually it isn't even entirely certain whether Marlowe attended Cambridge, thanks to confusing "early days"-record keeping. :wink:

Wasn't that just because he was a spy who was barely there at all?

rkd

You call 400 years after Oxford's foundation "early days"? :p:

If you feel like spouting a few reknowned 13th century monks and scholars without wikipedia, be my guest!!! So far I'm stuck with Sir Hugo de Balsam, and he might only be a benefactor :frown:

Reply 42

Good bloke

Cantab

A Level grades from 30 years ago aren't exactly equivalent to those of today. Much fewer people got A grades.

And, in answer to the original question, god knows. I don't think there is anyone on this forum with a living personal knowledge of admissions at Oxbridge in the 'early' days, so the majority will have no idea.

I suspect there are several, actually, as long as "early days" does not mean when the universities were founded, of course.

It is worth bearing in mind that A levels at grade A weren't commonplace in those days. Now, 25% of all A levels are at grade A, and 10% of candidates get three or more A grades. Then, individual A grades were a notable success. Plenty of people got into top universities (including Oxbridge) with far lower grades than is necessary today. My offer for Warwick, for instance, was CD.

In any event, A levels were bypassed by Oxbridge entrance exams and EE offers were common once that had been passed.

Reply 43

hobnob

Craghyrax

Wasn't that just because he was a spy who was barely there at all?

Well, even the spy thing isn't actually all that well documented... It's one attempt to make sense of otherwise patchy records which may be referring to different people.
Erm, anyway, this is getting a bit off-topic. Sorry. :o:

Reply 44

Thicky

Also people were allowed to apply to both in the not too distant past, and so of course your chances were higher. And it was generally 'easier' in that there was less competition and societal issues really did play a bigger part in certain circumstances (read: some right numpties were allowed in to do the bare minimum of work because of daddy etc) Today there is greater competition (partly because more less good, relatively people apply) and there is I would say a greater number of outstanding candidates, relative to the time. It's too hard to say whether yesteryear's top candidates were better or worse than those of today.

Reply 45

Good bloke

Thicky

Also people were allowed to apply to both in the not too distant past,

Not in the 1970s.

Reply 46

Thicky

Good bloke

Not in the 1970s.

I take 'Early days' to be a bit broader than that, and wanted to make the point, though relative to Tony Blair et al you are right, probably - I don't know when the restriction came into being.

Reply 47

Good bloke

Thicky

I don't know when the restriction came into being.

For first entry in 1966, when they joined UCCA.

In 1968, UCCA had 110,000 applicants, compared to about 600,000 nowadays.

So the 25% of applicants that today achieve AAA is significantly more than the entirety of applicants to university in 1968. And people deny that grade inflation exists. :rolleyes:

Reply 48

Craghyrax

I take it this is a joke :dry:

hobnob

Ah, I see

Reply 49

hobnob

No, he read Philosophy with Toxicology at Athens (which was one of the few Greek university to offer such Mickey-Mouse courses back then).

Reply 50

DFranklin

Thicky

Also people were allowed to apply to both in the not too distant past, and so of course your chances were higher.Not really. Twice the competition as well.

Speaking as someone who applied 20 years ago (which isn't that long, I know), a few observations:

Don't read much into EE offers. There were very tough exams set by Oxford and Cambridge (around about STEP level, so significantly above AEA) that you had to pass before you got such an offer.

Certainly when I went to Cambridge, pretty much everyone had at least AAA at A-level. ANd if fact pretty much everyone I knew doing maths or physics had AAAA11.

The biggest difference I see now is that now the universities can't use their own exams, and the exams they have to use instead are so watered down as to be near-meaningless. When you think that something like 10 times as many people are getting AAA now compared to then, there's a lot more weeding out that has to be done at interview.

What's nasty about that is that it's competitive in a way that feels (to me) out of the student's control. Yes you can try to prepare for an interview, but there's a fair degree of luck involved in terms of what they ask, how you gel with the interviewers, nerves, stress. And you never really know what an interview's going to be like until you've had it.

I'm not sure it was any less (or more) competitive in our day, but the competitiveness rested a lot more in the A level exams (and S-level / College Entrance Exams as appropriate).

Reply 51

Mithra

DFranklin

The biggest difference I see now is that now the universities can't use their own exams, and the exams they have to use instead are so watered down as to be near-meaningless. When you think that something like 10 times as many people are getting AAA now compared to then, there's a lot more weeding out that has to be done at interview.

You should probably tell Oxford that :wink:

Reply 52

DFranklin

Mithra

You should probably tell Oxford that :wink:

Mea Culpa. [I don't really care what Oxford does anyhow. :p:

]

Reply 53

Thicky

DFranklin

Not really. Twice the competition as well.

Reply 54

DFranklin

Thicky

Sorry to be a total thickhead - is it nonsense to say that you have a greater chance of being accepted to uni if you are applying to two?

Or if you assume that similar numbers are applying to both then the average is the same re competition?Yes, I think it's clear that an awful lot of people would apply to both. At the end of the day, the number of available places won't change, the number of people who think they're Oxbridge material won't change (well, it might go up), so the chances of any particular person getting in won't change either.

Although your chance of being accepted doesn't have a directly proportionate relationship to the number of applicants anyhow. Most people are either definitely good enough, or definitely not good enough - no chance involved. It's only in the middle ground that luck really comes in.

Reply 55

ScholarsInk

Checkmate121

was it as hard ? like Tony Blair and other politicians (Barack obama at Harvard), was it just as hard to get in ?

That counts as the early days-- of Oxford and Cambridge?!

Reply 56

renaissancemensch

hobnob

...actually it isn't even entirely certain whether Marlowe attended Cambridge, thanks to confusing "early days"-record keeping. :wink:

Although of little relevance, I just feel like mentioning the fact that I happen to have lovingly stroked Marlowe's own copy of Ars Poetica at a certain Cambridge college. At the time, a clever man - with two doctorates, so he must be right - informed me that Marlowe was indeed a graduate of Cambridge. He also said some other things but I was too busy fondling Horace to listen...

Reply 57

hobnob

renaissancemensch

That would have been Corpus. :wink:

And yes, tradition has it that he went to Cambridge on a scholarship and did nothing too remarkable apart from apparently being conspicuously absent for a while and then spending more money than he previously did. But ultimately it's all down to a few college records and lists of students' expenses, in which he may easily have been confused with a contemporary who had a very similar name (and the fact that "Marlowe's" name is variously spelt as "Morley", "Marley" and God knows what else, doesn't really help matters).
I read an article about this a while ago and was quite surprised to learn how little evidence there actually is and how much of Marlowe's supposed biography is based on conjecture and retelling of anecdotes.
(Sorry, that was all a bit boring.)

Reply 58

Good bloke

renaissancemensch

I just feel like mentioning the fact that I happen to have lovingly stroked Marlowe's own copy of Ars Poetica at a certain Cambridge college. ..... I was too busy fondling Horace to listen...