Pressure

what, so if you talk complete rubbish but manage to sound incredibly intelligent, you'll get a first? what's the sense in that?

I think there is an element of truth in what you are saying here but the point is rather ruined by the tone you put on it.

Marking is not entirely subjective, especially in the sciences. Within the arts people seem to have a pretty good rough idea of how well they will do in the exams (mid 2i, low first etc). In my own subject all the exams are double marked without examiners having reference to what the other examiner has given the paper. If there was subjectivity then the external examiners (who read the papers of disputed scripits, those scripts with more than 5(?) marks difference) would spend their life doing this. however normally the marks are within one or two of each other.

Writing one stupid thing can diminsh your mark but its not going to completely destroy your grade average.

In the arts if you do something stupid in an essay but the rest of it is ok you can stil get a good mark. And even if you don't its often one esssay within a large number. Equally in the sciences unless you make a fundamental error in the first line of working you are unlikely to do disasterously. Even if this is the case I understand that you can gain marks for proper methdology, even if your answer is incorrect.

As for differential resources, I don't see what the university can do about that, without taking everyone 'down' to the level of a PhD student supervising. The difference between the colleges at the bottom of the tables and those at the top is also only a handful of firsts, suggesting that it doesn't make a huge amount of difference.

what, so if you talk complete rubbish but manage to sound incredibly intelligent, you'll get a first? what's the sense in that?

The paper style can change considerably from year to year, which adds a lot of luck to what and how you've revised. Usually the people taught by the examiner do very well when the style does change slightly as they're expecting it.

I thought Australia had a relatively similar system for honours degrees, but had simple percentages for ordinary bachelors degrees?

This is fair enough, but not universal within Cambridge and not even typical within Cambridge.

One or two degrees (such as law) grant honours on a basis of your weighted average mark over the whole degree. At Sydney University Law School 50%+ is a pass, second class honours is 70%+ and first class honours is 75%+.

I guess Oxford is less generous with the marks in terms of percentages.

On the subject of grading, they seem to have a weird system for maths at Cam (I had a friend doing maths @Emma). The idea of a percentage is non existent, instead you have a huge paper (maybe 20Qs) , of which you can do as many questions as you want. Apparently 3 "good" questions scores a first, but 6 half-done questions is a third.

They'll usually be a few geniuses answering 5/6 questions perfectly and these will be competing for Senior Wrangler.

Maths also seems to be one of those subjects where ability counts a awful lot. You can work your cotton socks off, to quote a phrase , but essentially to get a first you have to be damn bright it seems

Really?! All finals papers in Oxford (IIRC) are double marked, and anything outside of a 5 mark difference is remarked by the original examiners, if there is still a discrepancy it's marked by a 3rd examiner, and if issues still exist the external examiner looks at it. Also borderline scrips are looked at again to see which side they should fall on.

Unless things have massively changed since my time, (and some of the same people are examining, so I doubt it has) this is way way off the mark. Yes, alphas are important, but you only need 75% on a question to get an alpha. You can make several small mistakes on a question and still get an alpha.

Fair enough. So what gets you a beta?

The Bachelor of Civil Law is a postgraduate (taught masters) degree at Oxford (and Cambridge, I think). The undergraduate degree in law is the BA in Jurisprudence.