I have two questions:
1) Is it fair to argue that not all students at Oxford or Cambridge or other high-ranking universities are naturally gifted and that rather they are just hard-working students?
The reason why I ask is that I was shocked to hear from many Oxbridge students that they were not part of the “Gifted and Talented” programme when at school or that they were not always in the top sets for subjects and that their success came more so due to putting hours of effort in. By contrast, many students who were naturally clever and branded as “Gifted and Talented” burnt out and so ended up getting less good grades and not getting into a top university. Also, the students who worked hard often had tutoring and spent hours on homework whereas academic ability came more naturally to the latter group but because they burnt out they were not motivated to try.
2) Considering this, do you think that criteria for top university admissions should be based on natural ability or effort? Meaning, if you have two people: one who is naturally very smart and could do better than the other if they put as much effort in but does not put the effort in so underperforms or the other person who is naturally less smart but puts more effort in and only performs better than the first person because the first person does not try as hard, who should be given preference?