GCSEs

Is it correct, that the University will be comparing GCSEs of students to the school that they are attended?

Sort of. Both Oxford and Cambridge check the GCSE performance of your school, and take special note if most students there don't perform very well.

They normally put a red flag against your name if you were from a particularly disadvantaged school where you excelled regardlessly.....eg. Two students both with 6A*s and 3As....Student A is from a really bad school where the second highest GCSE score was 9Bs when they didn't have teachers, correct equipment etc. Student B was ranked tenth in her year even though lots of other students in her class did really well and took advantage of good resources etc. more potential in Student A, no?
Posted from TSR Mobile

Well that's extremely unfair considering that some students depend much less on how good their school is. Some students would get the same grades no matter what school they went to. What a bad and biased system.

This is why Cambridge have increasingly moved towards using UMS at AS level as these have been shown to be less dependent on which school you come from. They also correlate better with degree performance than GCSE. Unfortunately AS are being done away with.

What they have shown is that students who do very well at GCSE from a poor school are especially likely to do well. Conversely if you get poor (in Cambridge terms) GCSEs from a good school there is clearly a problem. If you have personal reasons the ECF tells them. If not it maybe that you have a poor work ethic or "got lucky" at AS/A2.

If somebody gets say 5A* from a selective school where the bright students generally get 9-10A* it tells you something. If very few students get 5A* let alone more, you cannot draw the same conclusion.

It was obvious to me when I did GCSEs that students at my school took them far more seriously and worked harder than friends at other schools who were aiming for "A-C" grades and were told an A meant the same as an A*. Many of the brightest had taken lots of GCSEs early and banked a B or an A where they would have achieved an A* with another year.

I still think that I would have got the same grades had I went to a worse school, because I never listened in lessons and taught myself most of the content and downloaded past papers on my own etc. Most of my lessons were a waste of time towards the exam period. And if I had gone to a worse school, that means I would have an advantage, which is unfair.

I would question how good your school is, if the lessons were a waste of time & they allowed you not to listen. If you get exceptional grades from any school you are not disadvantaged.

The issue is that about those who get marginally less good grades from a school where expectations are low, nobody listens, and teaching is more about crowd control and getting people to "C" grades. Where peer pressure is not competitive or is not to work hard.
Somebody who goes to a good school where most clever people get very high grades does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. If your policy of not listening led to lower grades you would have only yourself to blame (if your school was a good one).

When you have been on TSR for a while you realise everybody thinks the system is biased against them, state school pupils, independent school pupils, white, minority ethnic, international, home and so on. Many people think that if you don't get in with stellar grades it was prejudice.

I have come to believe what Cambridge say. That is they want the best; those who are capable of performing at the best level for the degree. They won't let you in or keep you out because you are white or black or rich or poor. If your education has been so poor that you cannot catch up they won't let you in. If you have breezed through an outstanding education but show little passion or aptitude for independent thought they won't let you in. It is at the margins where two applicants have similar qualifications and performance that they will sometimes choose to give the place to one who almost certainly would have achieved more given the advantages of a better education and so has the potential to do better.

Nothing is perfect and sometimes good pupils on all sides of the divide lose out at the margins. I suspect there are some tutors who at the fine levels of judgement go for the certainty of a better educated pupil with higher grades, or who have a real heart for giving the less advantaged pupil a chance. But overall I reckon its pretty fair. The evidence is in their research showing minimal difference in achievement according to school background.

http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/admissions/research/school_background.html