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Unfair bias against private schools

Hi,
I went to a private school - not a very good one - because I won a scholarship and I needed to board for (serious) family (medical) reasons. I got all A* at GCSE and AAAAA at A-level last year. I applied to Cambridge, LSE, Durham, etc and got none!
The Cambridge admissions people were very nice. I was told, almost one year later when the admission tutor visited the hospital I work in, that I had done well at interview, but their quota for private schools was "over-filled". Can this be fair? My total family income is less than £35k p.a. and we struggle to keep me in private education. My folks haven't had a hol in 5 years, don't drink or smoke, and we have sold our car to reduce our weekly spend.
Please can we have some fair recognition that not all private school students are useless toffs. Why do we not have anonymous, needs-blind admissions?

I have applied again this year; here's hoping. :confused:

toni

Reply 1

fishpaste

Quotas are dumb I agree. What did you apply for?

Reply 2

ThornsnRoses

11

Toni Mag

Hi,
I went to a private school - not a very good one - because I won a scholarship and I needed to board for (serious) family (medical) reasons. I got all A* at GCSE and AAAAA at A-level last year. I applied to Cambridge, LSE, Durham, etc and got none!
The Cambridge admissions people were very nice. I was told, almost one year later when the admission tutor visited the hospital I work in, that I had done well at interview, but their quota for private schools was "over-filled". Can this be fair? My total family income is less than £35k p.a. and we struggle to keep me in private education. My folks haven't had a hol in 5 years, don't drink or smoke, and we have sold our car to reduce our weekly spend.
Please can we have some fair recognition that not all private school students are useless toffs. Why do we not have anonymous, needs-blind admissions?

I have applied again this year; here's hoping. :confused:

toni

are you *^$%in kidding me...thats just retarded. what did you apply for?

Reply 3

MadNatSci

12

Toni Mag

Hi,
I went to a private school - not a very good one - because I won a scholarship and I needed to board for (serious) family (medical) reasons. I got all A* at GCSE and AAAAA at A-level last year. I applied to Cambridge, LSE, Durham, etc and got none!
The Cambridge admissions people were very nice. I was told, almost one year later when the admission tutor visited the hospital I work in, that I had done well at interview, but their quota for private schools was "over-filled". Can this be fair? My total family income is less than £35k p.a. and we struggle to keep me in private education. My folks haven't had a hol in 5 years, don't drink or smoke, and we have sold our car to reduce our weekly spend.
Please can we have some fair recognition that not all private school students are useless toffs. Why do we not have anonymous, needs-blind admissions?

I have applied again this year; here's hoping. :confused:

toni

An admissions tutor told you there was a quota?!! I was always told there was nothing of the sort! Which college did you apply to? And which are you applying to this year?

That's terrible and I wish you much better luck this coming year.

Reply 4

d750

8

Toni Mag

Why do we not have anonymous, needs-blind admissions?

We do have a needs-blind admissions process. It's not anonymous of course, that would just make the selection process quite literally a lottery.

I'm surprised that anyone would claim there were private school quotas. If they did actually claim that, they were wrong.

Good luck next time round.

Reply 5

leda swanson

d750

We do have a needs-blind admissions process. It's not anonymous of course, that would just make the selection process quite literally a lottery.

I'm surprised that anyone would claim there were private school quotas. If they did actually claim that, they were wrong.

Good luck next time round.

a private school quota is not a bias against independent school students, because it means there is also a quota of people from the state sector. i would hate to be an admissions tutor

Reply 6

Pollo Loco

7

That's terrible, they have a quota!! It doesn't necessarily mean they have a state school quota. It could just mean that they only allow a certain number of private school students and the rest must be state school students. They should be taking the best people, regardless of their educational background. That is just not right. :mad:

Reply 7

Counterpoint

It almost makes some people feel like they didn't get into the University with their own hard-work, but were helped by a technicality... but before today I didn't know quotas existed.

Reply 8

fishpaste

To be honest guys, I'm not convinced quotas existed, I've heard it affirmed so many times that they don't.

Reply 9

MadNatSci

12

Me too. But I'm loath to suggest this person is lying...

Are you sure it was definitely the admissions tutor who said this to you?!

To the rest of you - as far as I have ever been aware the only quota at Cambridge is for medicine, and that's government-imposed. The more I think about it the more I find it hard to believe that an admissions tutor would ever use the word 'quota' in relation to anything else. It's a taboo word.

I really really want to know the name of the college, please!

Reply 10

fishpaste

MadNatSci

Me too. But I'm loathe to suggest this person is lying...

Yeah I'm not saying he was lying, maybe the admissions tutor was lying, maybe it wasn't an admisisons tutor, maybe he meant something else.

Reply 11

happysunshine

8

Well 7% of the schooled population go to private school, and at Durham they take up 30% (right?) and a similar percentage at other top universities. At Oxbridge it's 50:50?, and with and 7% privately educated they are taking up a massive 50% of the places. Clearly you were competing only against fellow private educated folk, meaning you'd have to be very good.

Reply 12

Counterpoint

Hmm, I like what you said happysunshine, lol good way to look at it.

Reply 13

shiny

12

MadNatSci

The more I think about it the more I find it hard to believe that an admissions tutor would ever use the word 'quota' in relation to anything else. It's a taboo word.

Yeah, but you can always find a crazy don who likes to go against the system :biggrin:

Reply 14

Suzy_vet

Toni Mag

Hi,
I went to a private school - not a very good one - because I won a scholarship and I needed to board for (serious) family (medical) reasons. I got all A* at GCSE and AAAAA at A-level last year. I applied to Cambridge, LSE, Durham, etc and got none!
The Cambridge admissions people were very nice. I was told, almost one year later when the admission tutor visited the hospital I work in, that I had done well at interview, but their quota for private schools was "over-filled". Can this be fair? My total family income is less than £35k p.a. and we struggle to keep me in private education. My folks haven't had a hol in 5 years, don't drink or smoke, and we have sold our car to reduce our weekly spend.
Please can we have some fair recognition that not all private school students are useless toffs. Why do we not have anonymous, needs-blind admissions?

I have applied again this year; here's hoping. :confused:

toni

That is a bumma, but to be honesst i doubt that was the reason you didnt get in, even if you were told that. Ask your school for the interview feedback report that they will have got sent, and see what that says.
If they had totally blind applications, then all the groomed people would get in and those from normal schools and, perhaps in your case, not particularly good private schools, wouldnt. It is important to take personal situations into account. unfortunatley, it sounds like yours wasnt totally.

Reply 15

BazTheMoney

I've never heard any don go on about quotas; as far as I'm aware it's just a rumour spread by students, private and state alike.

Reply 16

Brown Patrick Bateman

10

Genuinely if a don or admissions tutor, not some random, told you that you were good enough but they'd filled their "private school quota" (I am sure this doesn't exist) then that's a story for a national paper.

Reply 17

happysunshine

8

I don't see what the fuss is about, surely they have quotas? I mean if a university has too many private schoolers they'll get "told off"? Surely they don't always pick the best students, as if they did isn't it likely the private:state ratio would be higher?

Reply 18

ASNaC

happysunshine

I don't see what the fuss is about, surely they have quotas? I mean if a university has too many private schoolers they'll get "told off"? Surely they don't always pick the best students, as if they did isn't it likely the private:state ratio would be higher?

Not necessarily. Colleges which have reputations for accepting lots of independent school students normally take more than other colleges, but this is primarily because students at such schools are advised to apply for such colleges.

In my experience state schools students at Cambridge are neither stronger nor weaker than their public school counterparts.

Reply 19

Brown Patrick Bateman

10

happysunshine

I don't see what the fuss is about, surely they have quotas? I mean if a university has too many private schoolers they'll get "told off"? Surely they don't always pick the best students, as if they did isn't it likely the private:state ratio would be higher?

No. The private:state ratio for applications and acceptances is similar, with at most a ~10% variation at some colleges. Even if there were too many good private school applicants there would be an unofficial, implicit knowing from tutors to favour state schoolers a bit (or vice versa), but never to have a set-in-stone fixed quota where they can't accommodate a good applicant.

Whether it's to address an imbalance regarding private/state, class, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, and whether it's at a university or in the workplace, quotas really are not the solution. If certain groups are under-represented then target your advertising at them, make it clear that you're encouraging applicants from that background to apply, but don't make it so that you're fixing proportions so that a poorer, less able applicant from xx background is favoured over a better candidate from yy.

Unfair bias against private schools

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