relative prestige of Oxford colleges

This post arose out of discussions in another thread, in which we were trying to ascertain whether individual colleges within Oxbridge were accorded varying levels of prestige in a meaningful way.

The purpose of this exercise is to determine if the concept of 'prestige' really has any validity as applied to individual colleges, rather than to the university as a whole.

1. The Academic Colleges - attracting a high percentage of the best qualified students and passing increasing numbers on to other colleges

2. The Recipient Colleges - tend to take many of those who were near misses at the first group in preference to applicants who have selected that college but are preceived as weaker.

3. The In Betweens - not highly competitive but their 'own' applicants usually rate as equivalent to the near misses from Group 1.

That doesn't necessarily figure. My own college takes a lot of people who have been pooled from other colleges, but is still very academic and gets the best results for women in the university.

I didn't realise that St Hilda's was academic, I've often heard people claiming the exact opposite.

I didn't realise that St Hilda's was academic, I've often heard people claiming the exact opposite.

Before application, I didn't know of very many of the Oxf. colleges, generally I don't think any of them are anywhere near as famous as Kings/Trinity at Cambridge.

I had heard of Christ Church as being a particularly wealthy and traditional.

New College too, as I was teaching people in Jap. about British education and it has fairly strong links with Eton.

Nuffield I am aware of, as I've studied the social sciences for some time. It's very well known within acdemic circles, and is considered an 'elite' college, very prestigious and very difficult to get into.

Also, I had heard of Univ. College, i.e. as the founding college and also Balliol.

The rest, well, I had heard the names, but I didn't actually know anything about them. I think this is probably the outside view.

Being particular, Eton has links with King's Cambridge (both founded by Henry VI (I think)), while New College has links with Winchester (both founded by William of Wykeham). Both schools used to have closed scholarships to these colleges, and New College still have a say on the governing body at Winchester. Not sure if this still the case at Eton though.

We used to have a close relationship with Cheltenham Ladies' College because both the school and the college were founded by Miss Beale, but this has pretty much died now. There are still Cheltenham Ladies' people around but they don't get special consideration in the admissions process anymore.

Being particular, Eton has links with King's Cambridge (both founded by Henry VI (I think)), while New College has links with Winchester (both founded by William of Wykeham). Both schools used to have closed scholarships to these colleges, and New College still have a say on the governing body at Winchester. Not sure if this still the case at Eton though.

Well I get two essays per week whereas most people doing my subject in other colleges get either 1 a week or 3 a fortnight. Our medics do sooooo much work compared to those in other colleges; we're talking 7 pieces of work a week, plus labs, lectures, and a day spent in a surgery each week. No other first yr pre-clinical students in the university do surgery work, apparently. They really do work us very, very hard here.

I didn't think St Hilda's did so well on the final classification tables; why would that be, if indeed I am not mistaken....

Ah you're absolutely right, hittin old age and beginnin to confuse the public schools!

Oh, and when the names of candidates were removed from finals papers about 10 years ago so that each was anonymous, women's marks shot up by 20%. Coincidence? Unlikely.

We used to have a close relationship with Cheltenham Ladies' College because both the school and the college were founded by Miss Beale, but this has pretty much died now. There are still Cheltenham Ladies' people around but they don't get special consideration in the admissions process anymore.

It always surprises me the number of threads started about the relative prestige of Oxbridge colleges.

Is it because today's students have grown up with league tables that they seem to have this obsession?