Why are some Oxford offers higher than others?

Hi all

I saw on the Oxford website that the standard offer for Mathematics is A*A*A, that the standard offer for the sciences is A*AA and for arts/humanities it is AAA.

Why is this?

The offer is higher for Maths because after monitoring their intake after the introduction of the A* Oxford saw that the overwhelming majority of their Maths freshers had achieved an A* in Maths and Further Maths, as quite frankly they don't pose much of a challenge for anyone good enough to study at the top universities for Maths. As such it made sense just to increase the standard offer seeing as everyone was getting those grades anyway. By contrast, people doing mainly humanities subjects did not overwhelmingly get an A*, probably because of the more subjective nature of the marking and so they didn't raise the offer.

Not getting an A* in, say, French A level won't be that worrying for someone who wants to do French at uni - they could still do well at a top uni, but not getting an A* in Maths for someone wanting to do Maths at Cambridge/Oxford/Warwick/Imperial etc. is a lot more dodgy in my opinion.

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Not really because they wouldn't get in, in the first place!

In fact somone on TSR got an offer of not only an A* but STEP for Computing at Imperial!

Defined by college, contextual data, but also how much they want you until very recently, and they may still do Christs cambridge would offer 2 Es to the candidates they wanted the most.

At my school there was a guy who everyone thought was borderline, he got an offer, but really high and in due course he missed it. System working right there.

Oxford held off using the A* in offers for a few years after the new grade was introduced. The question you ask is an interesting one. The original proposal was to make the offer A*AA for all subjects - I don't know why this didn't happen.

I think it remains a lack of confidence on Oxford's part in teachers in arts subjects being able to accurately predict A* grades.

Oxford like to discriminate against people of a lower class

That's why

How would that affect it?

Of course the university can give offers to students not predicted the A*.

So do you mean that the reason was because it could put students off applying if they didn't have A* predictions?

An alternative hypothesis is there was a lack of confidence in the criteria for awarding the A* and/or the consistency of marking.

The Medical School at the collective Oxford colleges only asks for A*AA. Supposedly you can do the whole course with BBB knowledge levels and the right dedication.

Who says that..?

...Moreover graduate entry medics arrive with GCSE level sciences, degree level knowledge of the history of Sino-Soviet relations, an A level appreciation of Heathcliffe's character and an ability to play the flute....

Not on the Oxford GEM course they don't!

http://www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/study/medicine/accelerated/prospectus/how-to-apply/qualifying-degrees-for-the-graduate-entry-medical-course

Although I note that they do now say "in a few years we hope to be able to consider applications from graduates in a wider range of subjects" I'm a smidgen sceptical as to how much wider it'll go in reality. Or it'll be those arty degree types who also happen to have science Al evels/OU type qualifications.

Err that's exactly my point? Someone hoping to do Maths at those unis with just an A probably wouldn't be able to cope and the offers reflect this (i.e. need an A*).