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Why does Oxbridge lie?

Why do Oxbridge act like 20,000+ applications makes them competitive when the likes of UCL and even Manchester or Exeter get far more than 20,000? Or, why do they act like 20,000 applications make their admissions process arduous when they have less applicants?

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Original post by m_040106
Why do Oxbridge act like 20,000+ applications makes them competitive when the likes of UCL and even Manchester or Exeter get far more than 20,000? Or, why do they act like 20,000 applications make their admissions process arduous when they have less applicants?

Surely you understand that the number of applicants isnt completely related to how competitive a course or uni is, this is only one metric out of context.

Say for instance you are a straight A student and you can apply to two different unis;

Uni A has 1000 applicants with only 5% straight A applicants
Uni B has 100 applicants with every applicant Straight A

Which is more competitive?

Dont conflate popularity as sign of quality either though, if that was true 50 shades of grey would be one of the best written books of all time (which spoiler is not at all true..a friend told me).

Regardless why would you care, just pick your own path and dont worry about others.

Greg
(edited 3 weeks ago)
"Why do Oxbridge lie" is a good example of a question containing an unestablished premise. OP, you have not established any dishonest assertion by either university.

Anyway, if it's easy to get into Oxford or Cambridge, just grab yourself a place, light a cigar, and chill out.
Original post by m_040106
Why do Oxbridge act like 20,000+ applications makes them competitive when the likes of UCL and even Manchester or Exeter get far more than 20,000? Or, why do they act like 20,000 applications make their admissions process arduous when they have less applicants?


Maybe because UCL and Manchester are the 2 largest unis in the UK? (excluding OU). Ofc they get more applicants. And having more applicants doesn't make them more competitive, it's based on the acceptance rate. Did you fail your maths GCSE 🤣
"Or, why do they act like 20,000 applications make their admissions process arduous when they have less applicants?"

It is "fewer applicants" - not "less applicants".
UCL, Manchester, and Exeter will make significantly more offers than they expect to have to honour, because everyone applies to 5 universities and they don’t know whether they will be the top choice. They know that a proportion of people they offer to will instead decide to go to (for example) Warwick, Bristol or Edinburgh, and some will get an Oxbridge offer and go there instead.

Oxford and Cambridge have the luxury of knowing that almost everyone they offer to will accept so they do not over offer.

If university A has 100 applicants and makes 10 offers, and university B has 120 applicants and makes 60 offers, university A has a 10% success rate and university B has a 50% success rate. Therefore it is harder to get an offer from university A even though there are fewer applicants.
Exeter on average has a 90% offer rate. Make of that what you will.
Reply 7
Original post by xyz1234567
UCL, Manchester, and Exeter will make significantly more offers than they expect to have to honour, because everyone applies to 5 universities and they don’t know whether they will be the top choice. They know that a proportion of people they offer to will instead decide to go to (for example) Warwick, Bristol or Edinburgh, and some will get an Oxbridge offer and go there instead.
Oxford and Cambridge have the luxury of knowing that almost everyone they offer to will accept so they do not over offer.
If university A has 100 applicants and makes 10 offers, and university B has 120 applicants and makes 60 offers, university A has a 10% success rate and university B has a 50% success rate. Therefore it is harder to get an offer from university A even though there are fewer applicants.

Actually some people reject Oxbridge for Imperial or for US universities. Do Oxbridge not know this?
Reply 8
Original post by m_040106
Actually some people reject Oxbridge for Imperial or for US universities. Do Oxbridge not know this?

Why the fixation with oxbridge? Youve a reasonable number of threads about trying to get in during next year/gap year, but also about whether oxbridge care if people turn them down, ....

Some people do reject oxbridge for a variety of reasons and of course they know about it. But 5 min later its just another application statistic just like any other uni.
Reply 9
Original post by m_040106
Actually some people reject Oxbridge for Imperial or for US universities. Do Oxbridge not know this?

the only US uni that anyone (at least in STEM) would reject oxbridge for (unless they didnt like the oxbridge teaching method, in which case, they'd rather go imperial or something anyways - and those people exist) is MIT. every other uni is at best 0.5-1% better, and in many cases worse, has an order of magnitude more expenses and you have to spend a year longer there.
And MIT tend to have a quota of about 3-5ish british admissions per year (all courses), which means this is very, very insignificant. So much so that people missing their offer is probably the only factor they consider.
Reply 10
Original post by Harik0
the only US uni that anyone (at least in STEM) would reject oxbridge for (unless they didnt like the oxbridge teaching method, in which case, they'd rather go imperial or something anyways - and those people exist) is MIT. every other uni is at best 0.5-1% better, and in many cases worse, has an order of magnitude more expenses and you have to spend a year longer there.
And MIT tend to have a quota of about 3-5ish british admissions per year (all courses), which means this is very, very insignificant. So much so that people missing their offer is probably the only factor they consider.

Oxford notoriously allows so many people who miss their offers to keep them hence why there are a shocking number of Oxford students with grades like AAB or A*AB or A*A*B etc.
Reply 11
Original post by m_040106
Oxford notoriously allows so many people who miss their offers to keep them hence why there are a shocking number of Oxford students with grades like AAB or A*AB or A*A*B etc.

really? can you give me some stats on this? afaik it can't be more than 1 or 2 per intake, if that
The OP appears to have one or more bees in his or her bonnet, has variously claimed to have three A* and three Bs, and appears to have been pondering various schemes to cheat his or her way onto a law course at Oxford. See below -

https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7557986

OP, contrary to what you may have seen on the telly, being a massive fibber is not a desirable quality in a lawyer.
(edited 3 weeks ago)
Original post by m_040106
Actually some people reject Oxbridge for Imperial or for US universities. Do Oxbridge not know this?

Yes of course they do but the fraction is very small and so it doesn’t make any statistical difference.
Likewise some people miss their grades. And the majority of people who miss their grades do not get in, unless there are extenuating circumstances declared in advance of results day.

As Oxbridge makes a substantial loss on each UK undergraduate, a few people turning them down doesn’t really matter to them. Whereas over-offering is potentially a big problem (both because of the cost of teaching them and the fact that students are guaranteed accommodation). If a high fraction of people started turning them down, they’d have to consider making more offers to compensate but at the moment there is no reason for them to do so.

Conversely at graduate level where there is little funding around, the ratio of offers to places filled is completely different because lots of students may in theory prefer to go to Oxford but they aren’t going to turn down a fully funded place at Manchester in favour of an unfunded place at Oxford. (You can find all the statistics in the graduate admissions report if you care to see how it affects the way offers are made).
Original post by xyz1234567
UCL, Manchester, and Exeter will make significantly more offers than they expect to have to honour, because everyone applies to 5 universities and they don’t know whether they will be the top choice. They know that a proportion of people they offer to will instead decide to go to (for example) Warwick, Bristol or Edinburgh, and some will get an Oxbridge offer and go there instead.
Oxford and Cambridge have the luxury of knowing that almost everyone they offer to will accept so they do not over offer.
If university A has 100 applicants and makes 10 offers, and university B has 120 applicants and makes 60 offers, university A has a 10% success rate and university B has a 50% success rate. Therefore it is harder to get an offer from university A even though there are fewer applicants.

Cambridge do over-offer as 50% of Maths offers fail the STEP component.

Oxford also over-offer; some offers are rejected and others are missed.
Original post by greg tony
Surely you understand that the number of applicants isnt completely related to how competitive a course or uni is, this is only one metric out of context.
Say for instance you are a straight A student and you can apply to two different unis;
Uni A has 1000 applicants with only 5% straight A applicants
Uni B has 100 applicants with every applicant Straight A
Which is more competitive?
Dont conflate popularity as sign of quality either though, if that was true 50 shades of grey would be one of the best written books of all time (which spoiler is not at all true..a friend told me).
Regardless why would you care, just pick your own path and dont worry about others.
Greg

Yeah a 'friend' it's okay we all know you like 50 shades
Reply 16
Original post by m_040106
Why do Oxbridge act like 20,000+ applications makes them competitive when the likes of UCL and even Manchester or Exeter get far more than 20,000? Or, why do they act like 20,000 applications make their admissions process arduous when they have less applicants?

To answer the second part of your question (as people have already answered the first), their admissions process is more arduous because they invest a lot more time into each applicant. Dr Williams from Oxford is an admissions tutor, and estimated that each applicant to Oxford has an average of 20 person hours devoted to their application. Anecdotally, the only Oxford applicant I know personally had interviews at 3 different colleges.

Do Manchester interview law applicants? Do Exeter make their MFL students sit admissions tests? The admissions processes at Oxford and Cambridge are very holistic, hence a lot more arduous.
(edited 3 weeks ago)
Reply 17
Original post by Harik0
the only US uni that anyone (at least in STEM) would reject oxbridge for (unless they didnt like the oxbridge teaching method, in which case, they'd rather go imperial or something anyways - and those people exist) is MIT. every other uni is at best 0.5-1% better, and in many cases worse, has an order of magnitude more expenses and you have to spend a year longer there.
And MIT tend to have a quota of about 3-5ish british admissions per year (all courses), which means this is very, very insignificant. So much so that people missing their offer is probably the only factor they consider.


I rejected MIT to go to Oxford, not anyone.
Reply 18
I rejected MIT to go to Oxford, not anyone.

yep exactly. and i would do the same. my point was that MIT is the only scenario in which there is a decision to be made - other unis like caltech mean there isn't even a decision to be made - in the 99% of cases, oxford is the clear choice.
Reply 19
Original post by Harik0
yep exactly. and i would do the same. my point was that MIT is the only scenario in which there is a decision to be made - other unis like caltech mean there isn't even a decision to be made - in the 99% of cases, oxford is the clear choice.

That's a sweeping generalization. There might be all sorts of reasons - individual, academic, financial - for why someone might choose a US university over Oxford.

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