Anyone’s child considering university in England?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has come up before. Roughly speaking, in terms of prestige equivalencies:

Oxbridge <= HYPSM

Imperial = Columbia/Caltech

UCL/LSE = Penn/Duke/Northwestern/Chicago

KCL/Edinburgh/Durham = Cornell/Hopkins/Brown/Dartmouth/UCLA/Berkeley

St Andrews = Rice/WashU/Emory/UMich/Georgetown

Rest of the Russell Group = UVA/CMU/NYU/Tufts

As someone who lived in the Uk for four years with a spouse who taught A levels and supported the application process for the kids applying uni….. I can say with 100% certainty that this comparison is complete hogwash. I personally KNOW kids heading to KCL and only when pigs fly would they ever have had a chance at Cornell Berkeley Dartmouth UCLA. They were B+ students at best. I know kids going to Oxbridge and while they were incredibly hard workers they were by no means as impressive as some of the students I know at Princeton for example. And No One from the international school applied to St Andrew’s… Bath Warwick Edinborough and Durham but St. Andrews? It is a joke.

'

Perhaps this would be more accurate then.

HYPSM

Oxbridge = Columbia/Caltech

Imperial = Penn/Duke/Northwestern/Chicago

UCL/LSE = Cornell/Hopkins/Brown/Dartmouth/UCLA/Berkeley

KCL/Edinburgh/Durham = Rice/WashU/Emory/UMich/Georgetown

St Andrews = UVA/CMU/NYU/Tufts

Rest of the Russell Group = Other state flagships

[Anonymous]

But the opposite is also true. I am from Eastern Europe. A vast majority of Harvard kids would not be able to pass entrance exams at any of the schools. They simply do not have the level of knowledge required for entry (and study). If they studied for months, sure, but as they are right now - no way.

You need to understand that expectations from incoming freshmen are entirely different. Nobody cares about your sports or the non profit you started. Even your gold medal at a math Olympiad will not get you a place at an engineering school much less anywhere else. You think your fencing class presidents are so impressive, fine, but that doesn’t translate abroad as much as you think it does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But the opposite is also true. I am from Eastern Europe. A vast majority of Harvard kids would not be able to pass entrance exams at any of the schools. They simply do not have the level of knowledge required for entry (and study). If they studied for months, sure, but as they are right now - no way.

You need to understand that expectations from incoming freshmen are entirely different. Nobody cares about your sports or the non profit you started. Even your gold medal at a math Olympiad will not get you a place at an engineering school much less anywhere else. You think your fencing class presidents are so impressive, fine, but that doesn’t translate abroad as much as you think it does.

This is patently false, and sounds like European propaganda a la "Americans are dumb".

[Anonymous]

Kids from my country go to HYSPM all the time (and for free). Typically those are very good students (among the best) who would be able to pass an entrance exam here if they prepared. But this would require additional study. So, that type of Harvard student would be competitive. Sport recruits, legacies and assorted “hooked” students would struggle. A lot of rejected students would also be competitive but only if they put in additional effort.

These schools are highly selective… and also they don’t care who you are or how smart you (supposedly) are - just what you know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the opposite is also true. I am from Eastern Europe. A vast majority of Harvard kids would not be able to pass entrance exams at any of the schools. They simply do not have the level of knowledge required for entry (and study). If they studied for months, sure, but as they are right now - no way.

You need to understand that expectations from incoming freshmen are entirely different. Nobody cares about your sports or the non profit you started. Even your gold medal at a math Olympiad will not get you a place at an engineering school much less anywhere else. You think your fencing class presidents are so impressive, fine, but that doesn’t translate abroad as much as you think it does.

This is patently false, and sounds like European propaganda a la "Americans are dumb".

Well unfortunately the UK admissions folks all believe it. I studied Art History for A level in the UK (amongst others) and knew more about it than a friend in the US who was studying it as a major at a State University. I was astonished.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the opposite is also true. I am from Eastern Europe. A vast majority of Harvard kids would not be able to pass entrance exams at any of the schools. They simply do not have the level of knowledge required for entry (and study). If they studied for months, sure, but as they are right now - no way.

You need to understand that expectations from incoming freshmen are entirely different. Nobody cares about your sports or the non profit you started. Even your gold medal at a math Olympiad will not get you a place at an engineering school much less anywhere else. You think your fencing class presidents are so impressive, fine, but that doesn’t translate abroad as much as you think it does.

This is patently false, and sounds like European propaganda a la "Americans are dumb".

Well unfortunately the UK admissions folks all believe it. I studied Art History for A level in the UK (amongst others) and knew more about it than a friend in the US who was studying it as a major at a State University. I was astonished.

From upthread:

"As someone who lived in the Uk for four years with a spouse who taught A levels and supported the application process for the kids applying uni….. I can say with 100% certainty that this comparison is complete hogwash. I personally KNOW kids heading to KCL and only when pigs fly would they ever have had a chance at Cornell Berkeley Dartmouth UCLA. They were B+ students at best. I know kids going to Oxbridge and while they were incredibly hard workers they were by no means as impressive as some of the students I know at Princeton for example. And No One from the international school applied to St Andrew’s… Bath Warwick Edinborough and Durham but St. Andrews? It is a joke."

So, competing anecdotes. Across almost all criteria, elite American universities are harder to gain entry into than elite UK universities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the opposite is also true. I am from Eastern Europe. A vast majority of Harvard kids would not be able to pass entrance exams at any of the schools. They simply do not have the level of knowledge required for entry (and study). If they studied for months, sure, but as they are right now - no way.

You need to understand that expectations from incoming freshmen are entirely different. Nobody cares about your sports or the non profit you started. Even your gold medal at a math Olympiad will not get you a place at an engineering school much less anywhere else. You think your fencing class presidents are so impressive, fine, but that doesn’t translate abroad as much as you think it does.

This is patently false, and sounds like European propaganda a la "Americans are dumb".

Well unfortunately the UK admissions folks all believe it. I studied Art History for A level in the UK (amongst others) and knew more about it than a friend in the US who was studying it as a major at a State University. I was astonished.

From upthread:

"As someone who lived in the Uk for four years with a spouse who taught A levels and supported the application process for the kids applying uni….. I can say with 100% certainty that this comparison is complete hogwash. I personally KNOW kids heading to KCL and only when pigs fly would they ever have had a chance at Cornell Berkeley Dartmouth UCLA. They were B+ students at best. I know kids going to Oxbridge and while they were incredibly hard workers they were by no means as impressive as some of the students I know at Princeton for example. And No One from the international school applied to St Andrew’s… Bath Warwick Edinborough and Durham but St. Andrews? It is a joke."

So, competing anecdotes. Across almost all criteria, elite American universities are harder to gain entry into than elite UK universities.

No. Because in the UK you need approval from your school before applying. No one gets to apply to either Oxford or Cambridge without the express approval of their schools. They just cannot do it, so it is a self-selecting group, and the "acceptance rates" just are not comparable to US colleges. If you only have the top 1% of students applying and 54% of those are accepted, it is apples to oranges when in the US literally ANYONE can apply to an ivy and 3-7% are accepted. IT is a huge pool in comparison.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Would love to hear others’ experience of child going across the pond.

Personally, unless I had family or good friends over there I would not feel with my kids so far away from home, especially in Covid times

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the opposite is also true. I am from Eastern Europe. A vast majority of Harvard kids would not be able to pass entrance exams at any of the schools. They simply do not have the level of knowledge required for entry (and study). If they studied for months, sure, but as they are right now - no way.

You need to understand that expectations from incoming freshmen are entirely different. Nobody cares about your sports or the non profit you started. Even your gold medal at a math Olympiad will not get you a place at an engineering school much less anywhere else. You think your fencing class presidents are so impressive, fine, but that doesn’t translate abroad as much as you think it does.

This is patently false, and sounds like European propaganda a la "Americans are dumb".

Well unfortunately the UK admissions folks all believe it. I studied Art History for A level in the UK (amongst others) and knew more about it than a friend in the US who was studying it as a major at a State University. I was astonished.

That’s because PP - Art History was one of THREE (maybe four) classes that you took at A levels. Meanwhile your American friend took Calculus, Biology, foreign Language, English, Statistics, and at least one or two additional classes in their junior and senior year (the year equivalent of A levels). And OF COURSE you were an Art History pro during undergrad, that is what the UK system is built for - high specialization. Whereas the American system is built around Breadth of Knowledge. So awesome that you can name Greek columns, but you wouldn’t know a standard deviation if it hit you in the face.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But the opposite is also true. I am from Eastern Europe. A vast majority of Harvard kids would not be able to pass entrance exams at any of the schools. They simply do not have the level of knowledge required for entry (and study). If they studied for months, sure, but as they are right now - no way.

You need to understand that expectations from incoming freshmen are entirely different. Nobody cares about your sports or the non profit you started. Even your gold medal at a math Olympiad will not get you a place at an engineering school much less anywhere else. You think your fencing class presidents are so impressive, fine, but that doesn’t translate abroad as much as you think it does.

What?! Not true at all. Eastern European here who was admitted with the 3rd highest score at the local university and ended up at an Ivy. I was able to keep up with the hard sciences but the kids from the top prep schools were much better prepared. I couldn't stand a chance in computer science to the Asian kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the opposite is also true. I am from Eastern Europe. A vast majority of Harvard kids would not be able to pass entrance exams at any of the schools. They simply do not have the level of knowledge required for entry (and study). If they studied for months, sure, but as they are right now - no way.

You need to understand that expectations from incoming freshmen are entirely different. Nobody cares about your sports or the non profit you started. Even your gold medal at a math Olympiad will not get you a place at an engineering school much less anywhere else. You think your fencing class presidents are so impressive, fine, but that doesn’t translate abroad as much as you think it does.

This is patently false, and sounds like European propaganda a la "Americans are dumb".

Well unfortunately the UK admissions folks all believe it. I studied Art History for A level in the UK (amongst others) and knew more about it than a friend in the US who was studying it as a major at a State University. I was astonished.

ah yes, the prestigious Unspecified State University

[Anonymous]

Insufferably pretentious and misinformed Europeans in this thread. For all of its ailings, America's universities are pretty darn excellent. There's a reason why the best universities in the world are American, and why the tech-transfer system is the envy of the world. I know it's very popular rhetoric to bash on all things American (often for good reason!), but you'll only make a fool of yourself by claiming that Harvard students are less intelligent than students at some no-name European school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has come up before. Roughly speaking, in terms of prestige equivalencies:

Oxbridge <= HYPSM

Imperial = Columbia/Caltech

UCL/LSE = Penn/Duke/Northwestern/Chicago

KCL/Edinburgh/Durham = Cornell/Hopkins/Brown/Dartmouth/UCLA/Berkeley

St Andrews = Rice/WashU/Emory/UMich/Georgetown

Rest of the Russell Group = UVA/CMU/NYU/Tufts

As someone who lived in the Uk for four years with a spouse who taught A levels and supported the application process for the kids applying uni….. I can say with 100% certainty that this comparison is complete hogwash. I personally KNOW kids heading to KCL and only when pigs fly would they ever have had a chance at Cornell Berkeley Dartmouth UCLA. They were B+ students at best. I know kids going to Oxbridge and while they were incredibly hard workers they were by no means as impressive as some of the students I know at Princeton for example. And No One from the international school applied to St Andrew’s… Bath Warwick Edinborough and Durham but St. Andrews? It is a joke.

'

Perhaps this would be more accurate then.

HYPSM

Oxbridge = Columbia/Caltech

Imperial = Penn/Duke/Northwestern/Chicago

UCL/LSE = Cornell/Hopkins/Brown/Dartmouth/UCLA/Berkeley

KCL/Edinburgh/Durham = Rice/WashU/Emory/UMich/Georgetown

St Andrews = UVA/CMU/NYU/Tufts

Rest of the Russell Group = Other state flagships

Sounds about right.

[Anonymous]

I would say that most Ivies, Stanford, and MIT would come out top in a hypothetical cross-admit battle with Oxbridge. DS went to Columbia for undergrad and his international friends say that Oxbridge is seen as slightly less prestigious because they are "easier to get into" as opposed to the ivies. They also admit more students per class because of the college system. In general, it's much harder to get accepted as an international student at ivies than at Oxbridge, because applications are not nearly as "holistic". With an undergraduate population of around 12k, they are about the size of Cornell/Penn.

[Anonymous]

DS also did a Columbia-Oxford exchange at Pembroke, and was not nearly as impressed by the academic rigor and caliber of students. The history, architecture, and traditions are still pretty impressive, though. The US remains to this day, the global leader in higher education and elite US institutions like the ivy league schools are still seen as more desirable and competitive abroad.