American students at University of Edinburgh

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Actually the poster talking about prep schools in the UK has a point. Most of Oxbridge is filled with public school (UK public - as in private) kids something like 75% average.

The truth is these schools produce better A level grades because they are vastly better schools and they only take the brightest kids.

You might want to look up the stats. It's closer to 55-60% are from state schools at Oxbridge. But I think this also includes grammars. So it's a little murky. Other leading universities including Durham (long known for being popular among private school kids), Edinburgh (ditto), Bristol (ditto) etc are usually at least 60% from state schools and higher.

Oxbridge and the Ivies are are also similar in that they tend to take a high percentage of students from the same set of public and private schools but it's a what came first, the chicken or egg, situation. The state intake at Oxbridge will be heavily weighted towards the same handful of leading state schools across the UK. Ditto for the US.

Wrong. The uk universities do not have quotas in the way US schools do. They do not have affirmative action they literally only care about the grade and interview of the candidate. Yes, most of those top chosen candidates come from elite schools. An Oxbridge kid going from a poor town and a state school happens, but only when that kid is extraordinary.

What was "wrong" with what I posted? We both agreed Oxbridge doesn't play the quota games the Ivies do. I pointed out that the bulk of state entries at the leading British universities will come from the same handful of high performing state schools in the UK. Did you disagree with it? Nonetheless, it remains that the majority of intake at Oxbridge is from state schools. Just like the majority at the Ivies are from public schools (and dominated by the same handful of high performing public schools in affluent suburbs across America).

[Anonymous]

The Rich Tim, nice but dim comment was certainly true about St Andrews in my day - 20 years ago but I think it’s more competitive now. Having said that, on naviance, the kids getting in have pretty low SAT scores (even though acceptance is not based on SAT scores. The average seemed to be 1230-1300. As Brits applying from the US, the historical perception described above and the SAT stats does make St. Andrews appear low hanging.