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public school people at oxbridge!
I was just wondering what people feel about the whole thing about public school people either having it easier or not to get into oxbridge. The Laura Spence debate springs to mind about herself coming from a state school and supposedly being highlighted as being discriminated against because of her background. However last year there were a lot of complaints and an indication that possibly public school students were being positively discriminated against at Bristol because of there background. They supposedly didnt want to take so many independently educated students. So what do u think? Do they get it easier or are they now being discriminated?
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Unregistered
I was just wondering what people feel about the whole thing about public school people either having it easier or not to get into oxbridge. The Laura Spence debate springs to mind about herself coming from a state school and supposedly being highlighted as being discriminated against because of her background. However last year there were a lot of complaints and an indication that possibly public school students were being positively discriminated against at Bristol because of there background. They supposedly didnt want to take so many independently educated students. So what do u think? Do they get it easier or are they now being discriminated?
I don't think it's the easy ride into university that it once was - public schooling, that is. It makes perfect sense to discriminate against them - they are less well adapted to working independently and motivating themselves and are, consequently, poorer suited to university life (at the start, at least) than dedicated state-educated applicants of equivalent intelligence.
Ben
Ben.S.
I don't think it's the easy ride into university that it once was - public schooling, that is. It makes perfect sense to discriminate against them - they are less well adapted to working independently and motivating themselves and are, consequently, poorer suited to university life (at the start, at least) than dedicated state-educated applicants of equivalent intelligence.
Ben
Ben
Many public school pupils work very hard.
Ben.S.
Yes, I'm sure they do - but they never have to work quite as hard to get equal grades. I would have emboldened the word 'have', if I knew how - could someone tell me?
Ben
Ben
When you write your message, there is an emboldened B icon in the top left of the panel where you can choose colour etc. If you press that and then enter the word, it will be emboldened.
Alternatively you can put [B] [ /B] and put the word you want emboldened so it would be like this (without the gap)
Bold
[QUOTE="Huntroyde" Lord="Lord"]When you write your message, there is an emboldened B icon in the top left of the panel where you can choose colour etc. If you press that and then enter the word, it will be emboldened.
Alternatively you can put [ /B] and put the word you want emboldened so it would be like this (without the gap)
Bold
Thankyou
Ben
Alternatively you can put [ /B] and put the word you want emboldened so it would be like this (without the gap)
Bold
Thankyou
Ben
Ben.S.
er...this may take some time to perfect!
Ben
Ben
It is easier if you just highlight the bit you want bold and then select the bold icon towards the top of the 'Your reply' section when you are writing, just below the colour selector.
You can also do Italics
and underline
and embolden, italicise, underline, make bigger, change font and add colour
Lord Huntroyde
It is easier if you just highlight the bit you want bold and then select the bold icon towards the top of the 'Your reply' section when you are writing, just below the colour selector.
You can also do Italics
and underline
and embolden, italicise, underline, make bigger, change font and add colour
You can also do Italics
and underline
and embolden, italicise, underline, make bigger, change font and add colour
Great.
sas104
People from independent schools are perfectly capable of motivating themselves and of working on their own - WE ARE NOT SPOON-FED as some people seem to think.
I would say some people from independent schools are capable of self motivation. Others can get away with good grades because they are spoon fed.
Lucy
I would say some people from independent schools are capable of self motivation. Others can get away with good grades because they are spoon fed.
My sentiments exactly!!!
Very interesting topic.
I'm somewhat against private school education, simply because grades ought to be an indicator of intelligence and effort. It seems that if daddy's rich enough, they can get A grades without having to do as much work. My next door neighbour at Oxford went to Westminster School (2nd in the country, £19,000 tuition fees a year!), and said himself that if he'd had gone to state school he would have got CCC. He just came bottom in the whole uni for Chemistry prelims (1st yr exams).
I just feel that if ur good enough to be at Oxford, you should have no probs getting AAA from a state school. I don't understand why ppl still fork out up to £20,000 a year to get 3 A grades which they should be capable of getting at a crap school. If they're not capable of that then they shouldn't be at Oxford! Yeah I know at a gd private school you get opportunities like debating, rowing, swimming...but it still ain't worth the extra cash.
However, to contradict my argument, the people from Eton at Oxford tend to do bloody brilliantly. And in History mods (1st yr exams), 5 of the 6 boys from Radley got a 1st.
I'm somewhat against private school education, simply because grades ought to be an indicator of intelligence and effort. It seems that if daddy's rich enough, they can get A grades without having to do as much work. My next door neighbour at Oxford went to Westminster School (2nd in the country, £19,000 tuition fees a year!), and said himself that if he'd had gone to state school he would have got CCC. He just came bottom in the whole uni for Chemistry prelims (1st yr exams).
I just feel that if ur good enough to be at Oxford, you should have no probs getting AAA from a state school. I don't understand why ppl still fork out up to £20,000 a year to get 3 A grades which they should be capable of getting at a crap school. If they're not capable of that then they shouldn't be at Oxford! Yeah I know at a gd private school you get opportunities like debating, rowing, swimming...but it still ain't worth the extra cash.
However, to contradict my argument, the people from Eton at Oxford tend to do bloody brilliantly. And in History mods (1st yr exams), 5 of the 6 boys from Radley got a 1st.
Unregistered
And in History mods (1st yr exams), 5 of the 6 boys from Radley got a 1st.
Is Radley College really that famous?
iluvthesun
Is Radley College really that famous?
Not famous, but good. Ranked in the top 50 in the UK (out of 2250) for A Levels.
Unregistered
Not famous, but good. Ranked in the top 50 in the UK (out of 2250) for A Levels.
I've heard of radley, I think its up there with the marboroughs and stowes.
Can I just say one thing about the Laura Spence thing. She was rejected from Magdalen because she totally mucked up the interview. Everyone else who got an offer there that yeah got straight A's, the difference was they didn't start to cry during the interview. I'm sure there were plenty more people who did a decent interview and had the grades but were also rejected. Then because of all the media attention, she got to Harvard to do some basic science course, in the process rejecting offers from other UK med school to do medicine. She's now left Harvard and is thinking of coming back to the UK to do medicine??
I do however agree that if 2 people apply to the same college who are exactly the same in every respect, then the person from a state school should be positively discriminated. However in the real world this doesn't happen, and everybody should be judged on their merits. The reason why there's a high proportion of private school people at Oxbridge is that 1) They're more likely to apply 2) The'yre more likely to score the needed grades. 3) Private schools give more opportunities for extra-cirricular acitivies.
Should someone be discriminated against just because they've had those opportunities?
I do however agree that if 2 people apply to the same college who are exactly the same in every respect, then the person from a state school should be positively discriminated. However in the real world this doesn't happen, and everybody should be judged on their merits. The reason why there's a high proportion of private school people at Oxbridge is that 1) They're more likely to apply 2) The'yre more likely to score the needed grades. 3) Private schools give more opportunities for extra-cirricular acitivies.
Should someone be discriminated against just because they've had those opportunities?
i've posted this before, but it seems to go with this thread as well
i think it depends on which college you have an interview for. My spanish interviewer at sommerville did his best to put me at ease and the interview was very fair there was no way anyone could have prepared for it. He even asked me about how long my teachers had been teaching, whether i had acess to a native speaker and how long i had been learning the language. He also strongly made the point that he wouldn't directly compare someone that had been to spain every year and had been learning the language from 5 with someone like me that just started in the 9th year. This gave me confidence as we were being assesed as individuals and our backgrounds and schooling were being taken into account and not counted against us. My second interview was also very fair and for those 2 I don't think private school people had any particular advantage. However, there was a boy from Eton there and i would bet a fortune that he won a place.(incidently he was a pretentious knob and I heard him go on about how prince harry didn't deserve to go to a school like eton cos he wasn't 100% focused on his studies blah blah blah)
no matter how fair a system is i still think tradition counts at oxbridge and i'll bet the schools like Eton and Harrow have an extremely high sucess rate.
I also had a portuguese interview that wasn't college based cos it was a minority subject. I think this interview undid all the images I had about the fairness and friendlyness of the sommervile interviews. I was made to feel like a total egit.
As soon as i walked in i was asked have you read a certain obscure poem, when I said I hadn't he got in strop and said "none of the other candidates have either, it;s a national disgrace it was my favorite poem when I was young" The interviewer got really arsy with me becasue i didn't have "concrete" plans to attend a costly language course in portugal during the summer, bearing in mind the interview was in november i think this was a bit ott .I would have loved to turn round and say sorry I can't afford it cos your uni doesn't let me work in term time so even if by some miracle i did get in i need this summer to work and save some cash. At the end i asked if he could reccomend a good portuguese verb table cos i was struggling to find one where I live and his response was "you live near bournemouth loads of portuguese people live there why don't go go and ask one of them" well nearly 9 months down the line and funnily enough I still havn't met a portuguese person to ask about a decent verb table. I don't necessarily think a private schooling would have helped prepare me for this type of interview I think the interviewer had just had a personality bypass and was crap with dealing with people especially 17 year olds.
However, overall i loved my interview experience and i would apply the same if given the chanve. Overall, oxford came across as a university that was trying to widen access and make the whole process as fair to state school pupil as possible. There were quite a few people applying that had been on summer schools etc when i met one of them at another open day she had an offer. Remember loads of state school people get in each year and totally deserve their places (as do most of the private school students) It's just unfortunate that a few dragons still exist within the university (like in any workplace) that can undermine the overall good intentions of the uni.
i think it depends on which college you have an interview for. My spanish interviewer at sommerville did his best to put me at ease and the interview was very fair there was no way anyone could have prepared for it. He even asked me about how long my teachers had been teaching, whether i had acess to a native speaker and how long i had been learning the language. He also strongly made the point that he wouldn't directly compare someone that had been to spain every year and had been learning the language from 5 with someone like me that just started in the 9th year. This gave me confidence as we were being assesed as individuals and our backgrounds and schooling were being taken into account and not counted against us. My second interview was also very fair and for those 2 I don't think private school people had any particular advantage. However, there was a boy from Eton there and i would bet a fortune that he won a place.(incidently he was a pretentious knob and I heard him go on about how prince harry didn't deserve to go to a school like eton cos he wasn't 100% focused on his studies blah blah blah)
no matter how fair a system is i still think tradition counts at oxbridge and i'll bet the schools like Eton and Harrow have an extremely high sucess rate.
I also had a portuguese interview that wasn't college based cos it was a minority subject. I think this interview undid all the images I had about the fairness and friendlyness of the sommervile interviews. I was made to feel like a total egit.
As soon as i walked in i was asked have you read a certain obscure poem, when I said I hadn't he got in strop and said "none of the other candidates have either, it;s a national disgrace it was my favorite poem when I was young" The interviewer got really arsy with me becasue i didn't have "concrete" plans to attend a costly language course in portugal during the summer, bearing in mind the interview was in november i think this was a bit ott .I would have loved to turn round and say sorry I can't afford it cos your uni doesn't let me work in term time so even if by some miracle i did get in i need this summer to work and save some cash. At the end i asked if he could reccomend a good portuguese verb table cos i was struggling to find one where I live and his response was "you live near bournemouth loads of portuguese people live there why don't go go and ask one of them" well nearly 9 months down the line and funnily enough I still havn't met a portuguese person to ask about a decent verb table. I don't necessarily think a private schooling would have helped prepare me for this type of interview I think the interviewer had just had a personality bypass and was crap with dealing with people especially 17 year olds.
However, overall i loved my interview experience and i would apply the same if given the chanve. Overall, oxford came across as a university that was trying to widen access and make the whole process as fair to state school pupil as possible. There were quite a few people applying that had been on summer schools etc when i met one of them at another open day she had an offer. Remember loads of state school people get in each year and totally deserve their places (as do most of the private school students) It's just unfortunate that a few dragons still exist within the university (like in any workplace) that can undermine the overall good intentions of the uni.
emom100
i've posted this before, but it seems to go with this thread as well
i think it depends on which college you have an interview for. My spanish interviewer at sommerville did his best to put me at ease and the interview was very fair there was no way anyone could have prepared for it. He even asked me about how long my teachers had been teaching, whether i had acess to a native speaker and how long i had been learning the language. He also strongly made the point that he wouldn't directly compare someone that had been to spain every year and had been learning the language from 5 with someone like me that just started in the 9th year. This gave me confidence as we were being assesed as individuals and our backgrounds and schooling were being taken into account and not counted against us. My second interview was also very fair and for those 2 I don't think private school people had any particular advantage. However, there was a boy from Eton there and i would bet a fortune that he won a place.(incidently he was a pretentious knob and I heard him go on about how prince harry didn't deserve to go to a school like eton cos he wasn't 100% focused on his studies blah blah blah)
no matter how fair a system is i still think tradition counts at oxbridge and i'll bet the schools like Eton and Harrow have an extremely high sucess rate.
I also had a portuguese interview that wasn't college based cos it was a minority subject. I think this interview undid all the images I had about the fairness and friendlyness of the sommervile interviews. I was made to feel like a total egit.
As soon as i walked in i was asked have you read a certain obscure poem, when I said I hadn't he got in strop and said "none of the other candidates have either, it;s a national disgrace it was my favorite poem when I was young" The interviewer got really arsy with me becasue i didn't have "concrete" plans to attend a costly language course in portugal during the summer, bearing in mind the interview was in november i think this was a bit ott .I would have loved to turn round and say sorry I can't afford it cos your uni doesn't let me work in term time so even if by some miracle i did get in i need this summer to work and save some cash. At the end i asked if he could reccomend a good portuguese verb table cos i was struggling to find one where I live and his response was "you live near bournemouth loads of portuguese people live there why don't go go and ask one of them" well nearly 9 months down the line and funnily enough I still havn't met a portuguese person to ask about a decent verb table. I don't necessarily think a private schooling would have helped prepare me for this type of interview I think the interviewer had just had a personality bypass and was crap with dealing with people especially 17 year olds.
However, overall i loved my interview experience and i would apply the same if given the chanve. Overall, oxford came across as a university that was trying to widen access and make the whole process as fair to state school pupil as possible. There were quite a few people applying that had been on summer schools etc when i met one of them at another open day she had an offer. Remember loads of state school people get in each year and totally deserve their places (as do most of the private school students) It's just unfortunate that a few dragons still exist within the university (like in any workplace) that can undermine the overall good intentions of the uni.
i think it depends on which college you have an interview for. My spanish interviewer at sommerville did his best to put me at ease and the interview was very fair there was no way anyone could have prepared for it. He even asked me about how long my teachers had been teaching, whether i had acess to a native speaker and how long i had been learning the language. He also strongly made the point that he wouldn't directly compare someone that had been to spain every year and had been learning the language from 5 with someone like me that just started in the 9th year. This gave me confidence as we were being assesed as individuals and our backgrounds and schooling were being taken into account and not counted against us. My second interview was also very fair and for those 2 I don't think private school people had any particular advantage. However, there was a boy from Eton there and i would bet a fortune that he won a place.(incidently he was a pretentious knob and I heard him go on about how prince harry didn't deserve to go to a school like eton cos he wasn't 100% focused on his studies blah blah blah)
no matter how fair a system is i still think tradition counts at oxbridge and i'll bet the schools like Eton and Harrow have an extremely high sucess rate.
I also had a portuguese interview that wasn't college based cos it was a minority subject. I think this interview undid all the images I had about the fairness and friendlyness of the sommervile interviews. I was made to feel like a total egit.
As soon as i walked in i was asked have you read a certain obscure poem, when I said I hadn't he got in strop and said "none of the other candidates have either, it;s a national disgrace it was my favorite poem when I was young" The interviewer got really arsy with me becasue i didn't have "concrete" plans to attend a costly language course in portugal during the summer, bearing in mind the interview was in november i think this was a bit ott .I would have loved to turn round and say sorry I can't afford it cos your uni doesn't let me work in term time so even if by some miracle i did get in i need this summer to work and save some cash. At the end i asked if he could reccomend a good portuguese verb table cos i was struggling to find one where I live and his response was "you live near bournemouth loads of portuguese people live there why don't go go and ask one of them" well nearly 9 months down the line and funnily enough I still havn't met a portuguese person to ask about a decent verb table. I don't necessarily think a private schooling would have helped prepare me for this type of interview I think the interviewer had just had a personality bypass and was crap with dealing with people especially 17 year olds.
However, overall i loved my interview experience and i would apply the same if given the chanve. Overall, oxford came across as a university that was trying to widen access and make the whole process as fair to state school pupil as possible. There were quite a few people applying that had been on summer schools etc when i met one of them at another open day she had an offer. Remember loads of state school people get in each year and totally deserve their places (as do most of the private school students) It's just unfortunate that a few dragons still exist within the university (like in any workplace) that can undermine the overall good intentions of the uni.
Schools like eton and harrow have a very high success rate not really because of their traditions but the fact that they take very high achieving academic students. So therefore they are already achieving highly when they enter the school and the academic teaching would only serve to enforce and improve that which means they send many students to oxbridge.
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