Is the Oxbridge application system broken?

So many smart people don't get in each year. Don't the people at Oxbridge ever think about correcting their system. Why is this broken system still seen as legitimate?

So many smart people don't get in each year. Don't the people at Oxbridge ever think about correcting their system. Why is this broken system still seen as legitimate?

I’m terms of acceptance rates though, oxbridge seem to have higher acceptance rates (roughly 18%) than other easier to get into unis like Edinburgh (10%). I don’t understand this, especially since Edinburgh is more populated than oxbridge?

They only have x number of spaces, what do you expect them to do? There are lots of highly performing students who apply, at the end of the day they only take on as many as they can (which is already more than most universities anyway - they are very large universities with some very large cohorts for some courses).

If you are performing at a level which would make you a realistic Oxbridge applicant, but miss out, then inevitably you will do quite well coming out of e.g. LSE, Imperial, Warwick, UCL, Edinburgh, St Andrews etc, etc. The difference between Oxbridge and those universities (in the relevant courses) is very narrow as far as future prospects go.

Sour grapes isn't a good look.

So many smart people don't get in each year. Don't the people at Oxbridge ever think about correcting their system. Why is this broken system still seen as legitimate?

I’m terms of acceptance rates though, oxbridge seem to have higher acceptance rates (roughly 18%) than other easier to get into unis like Edinburgh (10%). I don’t understand this, especially since Edinburgh is more populated than oxbridge?

The universities take in so much money each year. Why can't they expand so that they can sustain a growing demand. They seem so insistent on not expanding that it feels like they don't want other people to have access to higher quality education.

So many smart people don't get in each year. Don't the people at Oxbridge ever think about correcting their system. Why is this broken system still seen as legitimate?

But unlike every other university they have entrance exams that are engineered to throw people at the deep end and discourage people making it seem like university is like that. It's going to be ridiculously hard and awful when the reality is that it is much more manageable than it seems.

They don't care about the application. That's the point. They care about how well you do in a test that has limited resources for preparation and is made for genetically enhanced people instead of those who are resilient.

In terms of market mechanisms it makes a lot of sense that due to a growing demand they would expand to take in more students. But no. Why would they do that. It's almost as if they don't want people to be successful or to have amazing lives and access to education. It's so evil. The people that come out of oxbridge have their lives all sorted out and amazing. That is quite a significant difference compared to all the other unis.

Do you not think that asking everyone to do a standardized test (everyone has exactly the same paper) is really quite a fair way of dealing with admissions?

Expansion implies growth. Overcrowding implies absence of growth when needed. Builiding massive new halls every year isn't a problem. Expansion has to be handled adequately. I get that sometimes it isn't and that can have huge problems but then that becomes a problem of management and not a problem of expansion.

So I build some new halls, and take on a few thousand extra students...

How do they fit in the lecture theaters? How do you timetable their supervisions/tutorials? When can they eat in the hall? Is there space for them in the library/gym?

Either they have a worse experience from the lack of available resources/facilities, or I have to expand everything to cope, which would be almost impossible in a mediaeval city.