fluteflute's bumper thread of Oxford admissions statistics

Looking at that, there does seem to be a top 6 colleges, that consistently rank in the top 6. Most other colleges fluctuate quite a bit, however these 6 are all ways around the same few spots.

Merton, Magdalen, St Johns, New, ChCh and Balliol

Although Balliol has fallen off quite drastically in recent years, and St Johns had a bad year last year.

Do you think they do have higher entry standards? Or work their undergrads harder maybe, more tutes etc.

Once more, some non-exciting stats: a summary of the Norrington table statistics over all years.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Asg7Ze9sc7PfdHdFZjg4dEExa0ZGeXdyRG5NRWdQMHc

Does anyone know if anyone has looked at the stats to see if there's been "grade inflation" (over the years, more Oxford students being given firsts and upper seconds)? If not, I might sometime... [although I suspect the results would be fairly unexciting, so I might not bother anytime soon!]

Looking at that, there does seem to be a top 6 colleges, that consistently rank in the top 6. Most other colleges fluctuate quite a bit, however these 6 are all ways around the same few spots.

Merton, Magdalen, St Johns, New, ChCh and Balliol

Although Balliol has fallen off quite drastically in recent years, and St Johns had a bad year last year.

Do you think they do have higher entry standards? Or work their undergrads harder maybe, more tutes etc.

Also, there is the correlation between college wealth and results to consider in explaining what causes some colleges to do well.

Of course, figures would be being skewed by relative prevalence of subjects within each college. It is well known that sciences get more firsts than arts.

Also, there is the correlation between college wealth and results to consider in explaining what causes some colleges to do well.

Five of them are among the six richest undergraduate colleges. (Balliol gets in at the expense of Queen's.) Proportion of science students will have some effect too.

It is less about the quality of the students than about attracting, but more importantly keeping, the best academics. With a fixed salary scale, the richer colleges are better able to give the non-cash perks e.g housing that keep the top academics.

You all knew this anyway, but the correlation is very clear (at least at the top and bottom).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_GB&hl=en_GB&key=0Asg7Ze9sc7PfdGFtb0pKbzA3Y3ViV3ZpTVB4VnVaVHc&output=html

Good job, have you used a 5 year average for the Norrington rank or last years rankings?

Extremely clear at the top and bottom. The same top 5 for endowments and Norrington ranking.

Averaged over 2006 to 2011

On a related note, do you think there is any way you can edit the opening post to include clearly labelled links to all of the data you have found? It would make it all a lot easier to find for everyone! Just a suggestion.

Once more, some non-exciting stats: a summary of the Norrington table statistics over all years.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Asg7Ze9sc7PfdHdFZjg4dEExa0ZGeXdyRG5NRWdQMHc

Does anyone know if anyone has looked at the stats to see if there's been "grade inflation" (over the years, more Oxford students being given firsts and upper seconds)? If not, I might sometime... [although I suspect the results would be fairly unexciting, so I might not bother anytime soon!]

Looking at that, there does seem to be a top 6 colleges, that consistently rank in the top 6. Most other colleges fluctuate quite a bit, however these 6 are all ways around the same few spots.

Merton, Magdalen, St Johns, New, ChCh and Balliol

Although Balliol has fallen off quite drastically in recent years, and St Johns had a bad year last year.

Do you think they do have higher entry standards? Or work their undergrads harder maybe, more tutes etc.

Have you considered that you may be murdered by the admissions office for all those FOIs when you arrive in October?

That's why I tend not make FOI requests to people who know me in a real life... (e.g. secondary school, current college, St John's College) But I hope they don't... or maybe they'll give me a job

P.S. Can you try looking at the Norrington spreadsheet again? (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Asg7Ze9sc7PfdHdFZjg4dEExa0ZGeXdyRG5NRWdQMHc)

It's working now, yes I'm still slightly worried by your use of "tend".

I'd guess that it's mainly due to some colleges having arts/science biases. Surely pooling stops some colleges having higher entry standards? Although I suppose it could be self-selecting a bit.

Mansfield is small, relatively poorly endowed, arts biased, and thus (?) generally bumps along towards the bottom of Norrington. However, it has 'rocketed' to 12th in the most recent table. Apparently all three History & English finalists got Firsts. I reckon fluteflute could have a field day analysing the smallest amount of grade variation necessary to propel a college up or down the table by the largest amount of places

The Norrington weighting towards Firsts (x5 rather than the arguably more logical x4) is among its most misleading quirks IMO, not least because many of us would in practice be best served by the college at which we would be least likely to obtain a 2.2, rather than most likely to get a First

This is generally why it is best to use a 5 or 6 year average of rankings as 1 freak year can cause large variation.

But 2011 was a normal year for us; the previous 10 or so were the freak ones