HYP and Oxbridge: Are students taught differently?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Cambridge is the only school that MIT allows the transfers of letter grades from. My friends that did the exchange absolutely loved Cambridge and some went back for post-graduate studies. My roommate still lives there and is married and a British citizen now.

Cambridge is an easier admit for Americans.

Not for STEM.

Also, Cambridge still requires 5 5s on APs.

But these all AP and test score requirements are pretty low for the UK. A low floor, indeed. My kid's high school didn't offer APs, which is pretty typical for privates now, and about a third of the class sits for APs anyway to maybe get credit or placement - in a "can't hurt" kind of way - and most end up with 5-9 5s. (The whole AP thing is a bit of a racket, right? It's only in back half of senior year that you know if any of these scores are useful or not.)

Yes, definitely for STEM; if you take into account how HYPS does account for major (without admitting it), STEM at Cambridge (though a very difficult admit, to be sure) is a far easier admit than a STEM kid at Stanford…

Look at it this way: 1/13 Computer Science applicants at Cambridge are admitted (8%). What do you think the admissions rate is for CS at HYPSM? Is it even 2%? Natural sciences? Please. 1/4 applicants at Cambridge are admitted.

What’s worse is that the curriculum at Cambridge is set in stone. An American CS whiz will learn nothing the entire first year, taking the equivalent of remedial courses (for them). The philosophy is everyone in the same boat from the start and all will be good eventually. It is a very European — and non- American — attitude.

There are no restrictions in the US on who can apply to Harvard. There are plenty of restrictions in the UK on who can apply to Ox or Cambs. The school has to give permission and its normally a very small handful of candidates each year. So its a self selecting group already of highly qualified students. Your numbers are meaningless when you don't have this information.

+1. Oxbridge is too self (and system) selecting to be compared by numbers to the US system. Anyone who says otherwise doesnt know what the are talking about. And, yes, I'm in a position to personally compare the Harvard and Oxford application system and success rate

Nobody is saying it is a straight comparison. But if you don’t think Harvard is a far easier admit, the extent of your strangely-professed Harvard “affiliation,” on an anonymous message board no less, is that you have been to Harvard Square.

As for the “self-selecting” argument, top UK students are far more likely to apply to Oxbridge than a top student in America is to apply to HYPS as an SCEA not even close. Why? SCEA schools are so hard to get in, a top student is better off applying ED to, say, Dartmouth. Almost every top UK student applies to either Oxford or Cambridge as one of their 5 UCAS choices.

In other words, Harvard is, by definition, more self-selecting than is Oxford.

[b


I have been to Harvard Square. Walked daily through it for three years. Did reasonably well with Rhodes and Marshall competitions but made only regionals.. .applied direct to Oxford. Did not get in. Got into Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UCLA and Michigan law schools. Went to Harvard Law. DD is at Oxford now. Oxford is a tougher admit than HYP (unless URM or first generation) and I can explain why starstically but only if someone is really listening. Happy to answer any serious questions.

I believe we're talking about undergrad, not law school. Where did you complete your bachelor's degree and what programme at Oxford did you apply to?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How do US Students get into Oxbridge science programs?

The website says they expect 5 AP scores, focuses on or near the major, including Calculus BC and Physics C (both parts) scores. It's rare to take all of these and extremely rare to take them all in junior year, and also take more related APs like Bio and Chem and CS.

Do US high school students take a gap year and apply to Oxbridge after senior year?

They get a conditional offer and once they pass the APs their senior year the offer is available for them accept.

[Anonymous]

Our dc has been accepted at both an HYPMS and an Oxbridge at this moment (trying not to doxx). We've visited both campuses and the main differences pointed out to us in the UK were:

1) Focused curriculum. You have to really want to study the course you applied for, and changing majors is difficult (but not impossible) so long as they are generally related subjects.

2) Tutorial system, with regular interaction with a professor to keep you on track.

3) Shorter terms, with kids in college for 8-weeks, the last 4 of which are basically preparing for the final/papers, etc.

[Anonymous]

I have degrees from Harvard and Oxford (undergrad and masters, respectively).

The systems are different enough that the admissions comparisons make little sense. Oxbridge care very little about anything other than academics, and even for academics, they are looking at a narrower set of qualifications than HYP would. This is because you are admitted directly to a degree; if you are doing physics, they don't really care what your foreign language results were. You are competing with British students who are usually only doing 3-4 A levels, specialized to the degree they plan on applying to. So, someone who is quite talented in the humanities or math/science can get into Oxbridge even if they aren't doing particularly well in the other subjects, and even if they don't have much going on in terms of extracurriculars.

By contrast, HYP are looking for excellence across the board, even though individual US high school courses (even APs & similar) are usually not equivalent in depth to a British A-level. They also care about extracurriculars and evidence of leadership, etc.

Different profiles of students will therefore find one or the other an "easier" process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Really you should compare the last two years at HYP to Oxbridge. The high school systems are also different.

True, in America the liberal arts curriculum is done in the first two years of college, while in Britain and Europe you generally take care of that in high school.

This is the party line in Europe, but there really isn't any comparison between the basics you master in order to spit out 6 bullet points on your GCSEs in Year 11, and a course taught at Harvard by someone doing active research in the field.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Really you should compare the last two years at HYP to Oxbridge. The high school systems are also different.

True, in America the liberal arts curriculum is done in the first two years of college, while in Britain and Europe you generally take care of that in high school.

This is the party line in Europe, but there really isn't any comparison between the basics you master in order to spit out 6 bullet points on your GCSEs in Year 11, and a course taught at Harvard by someone doing active research in the field.

Someone doing active research in the field is not a big asset, and likely a demerit, to a basic broad intro course. Especially when that person has up to 900(!) students in one lecture

The real difference is just that British colleges just don't care about the liberal arts as a whole for each student. They care about it for the school overall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cambridge is the only school that MIT allows the transfers of letter grades from. My friends that did the exchange absolutely loved Cambridge and some went back for post-graduate studies. My roommate still lives there and is married and a British citizen now.

Cambridge is an easier admit for Americans.

Not for STEM.

Also, Cambridge still requires 5 5s on APs.

But these all AP and test score requirements are pretty low for the UK. A low floor, indeed. My kid's high school didn't offer APs, which is pretty typical for privates now, and about a third of the class sits for APs anyway to maybe get credit or placement - in a "can't hurt" kind of way - and most end up with 5-9 5s. (The whole AP thing is a bit of a racket, right? It's only in back half of senior year that you know if any of these scores are useful or not.)

Yes, definitely for STEM; if you take into account how HYPS does account for major (without admitting it), STEM at Cambridge (though a very difficult admit, to be sure) is a far easier admit than a STEM kid at Stanford…

Look at it this way: 1/13 Computer Science applicants at Cambridge are admitted (8%). What do you think the admissions rate is for CS at HYPSM? Is it even 2%? Natural sciences? Please. 1/4 applicants at Cambridge are admitted.

What’s worse is that the curriculum at Cambridge is set in stone. An American CS whiz will learn nothing the entire first year, taking the equivalent of remedial courses (for them). The philosophy is everyone in the same boat from the start and all will be good eventually. It is a very European — and non- American — attitude.

There are no restrictions in the US on who can apply to Harvard. There are plenty of restrictions in the UK on who can apply to Ox or Cambs. The school has to give permission and its normally a very small handful of candidates each year. So its a self selecting group already of highly qualified students. Your numbers are meaningless when you don't have this information.

+1. Oxbridge is too self (and system) selecting to be compared by numbers to the US system. Anyone who says otherwise doesnt know what the are talking about. And, yes, I'm in a position to personally compare the Harvard and Oxford application system and success rate

Nobody is saying it is a straight comparison. But if you don’t think Harvard is a far easier admit, the extent of your strangely-professed Harvard “affiliation,” on an anonymous message board no less, is that you have been to Harvard Square.

As for the “self-selecting” argument, top UK students are far more likely to apply to Oxbridge than a top student in America is to apply to HYPS as an SCEA not even close. Why? SCEA schools are so hard to get in, a top student is better off applying ED to, say, Dartmouth. Almost every top UK student applies to either Oxford or Cambridge as one of their 5 UCAS choices.

In other words, Harvard is, by definition, more self-selecting than is Oxford.

[b


I have been to Harvard Square. Walked daily through it for three years. Did reasonably well with Rhodes and Marshall competitions but made only regionals.. .applied direct to Oxford. Did not get in. Got into Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UCLA and Michigan law schools. Went to Harvard Law. DD is at Oxford now. Oxford is a tougher admit than HYP (unless URM or first generation) and I can explain why starstically but only if someone is really listening. Happy to answer any serious questions.

I believe we're talking about undergrad, not law school. Where did you complete your bachelor's degree and what programme at Oxford did you apply to?

But DC went through the undergrad application process, which I was involved in, although towards the end I hired a coach to review the essays. As for self, I was in a slac that doesn't send many students to Rhodes or Marshall so was grossly unprepared for regionals. Unlike Harvard, my slac did no coaching for the Rhodes. I said I wanted to get into the PPE programme which is embarrassing since it exists only for undergrad not grad. I had a strong history record though and was no 1 in slac, etc. Interesting process but I clearly didn't know what I was doing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our dc has been accepted at both an HYPMS and an Oxbridge at this moment (trying not to doxx). We've visited both campuses and the main differences pointed out to us in the UK were:

1) Focused curriculum. You have to really want to study the course you applied for, and changing majors is difficult (but not impossible) so long as they are generally related subjects.

2) Tutorial system, with regular interaction with a professor to keep you on track.

3) Shorter terms, with kids in college for 8-weeks, the last 4 of which are basically preparing for the final/papers, etc.

My kid is at Oxford. I've found the facebook "Oxford University - parents group" to be helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do US Students get into Oxbridge science programs?

The website says they expect 5 AP scores, focuses on or near the major, including Calculus BC and Physics C (both parts) scores. It's rare to take all of these and extremely rare to take them all in junior year, and also take more related APs like Bio and Chem and CS.

Do US high school students take a gap year and apply to Oxbridge after senior year?

They get a conditional offer and once they pass the APs their senior year the offer is available for them accept.

This (and this is one of the reasons why the Oxbridge application is so difficult for Americans). Our DC's acceptance to a graduate program was also conditional. One of the conditions was achieving a certain GPA at their college during Covid. I don't remember the other condition. And Oxford means it. You don't meet the conditions you are out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Williams employs the Oxford tutorial system. Swarthmore Honors Seminars also similar.

But not for all four years in one subject.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cambridge is the only school that MIT allows the transfers of letter grades from. My friends that did the exchange absolutely loved Cambridge and some went back for post-graduate studies. My roommate still lives there and is married and a British citizen now.

Cambridge is an easier admit for Americans.

Not for STEM.

Also, Cambridge still requires 5 5s on APs.

But these all AP and test score requirements are pretty low for the UK. A low floor, indeed. My kid's high school didn't offer APs, which is pretty typical for privates now, and about a third of the class sits for APs anyway to maybe get credit or placement - in a "can't hurt" kind of way - and most end up with 5-9 5s. (The whole AP thing is a bit of a racket, right? It's only in back half of senior year that you know if any of these scores are useful or not.)

Yes, definitely for STEM; if you take into account how HYPS does account for major (without admitting it), STEM at Cambridge (though a very difficult admit, to be sure) is a far easier admit than a STEM kid at Stanford…

Look at it this way: 1/13 Computer Science applicants at Cambridge are admitted (8%). What do you think the admissions rate is for CS at HYPSM? Is it even 2%? Natural sciences? Please. 1/4 applicants at Cambridge are admitted.

What’s worse is that the curriculum at Cambridge is set in stone. An American CS whiz will learn nothing the entire first year, taking the equivalent of remedial courses (for them). The philosophy is everyone in the same boat from the start and all will be good eventually. It is a very European — and non- American — attitude.

There are no restrictions in the US on who can apply to Harvard. There are plenty of restrictions in the UK on who can apply to Ox or Cambs. The school has to give permission and its normally a very small handful of candidates each year. So its a self selecting group already of highly qualified students. Your numbers are meaningless when you don't have this information.

+1. This!

There's more restrictions about applying to Oxbridge, limiting the size of the applicant pool. For example, you can't apply to Cambridge and Oxford in the same year. Have to pick ONE. Contrast that to Americans who want to apply to all the ivies + several others just because. Oxbridge admissions are much more of a meritocracy than the holistic American system. You have to meet minimum standards for the A-levels to even be considered, and the fact that you're all-star field hockey player isn't going to give you an edge. There are hard cutoffs that don't exist in the American admissions system, and admissions are conditional on maintaining a high GPA and A-level performance. You simply can't compare the admission rates between the schools and conclude that one is harder or easier to get into than the other.

THIS!. This Quora expert nails it, but you have to READ it to understand. This Oxford grad's analysis is spot on EXCEPT he fails to factor in that Americans get in at a rate than the British, etc. - the figure is given at 7.2% to 8% for Americans. So HALF of the 16 percent he citesl.. But please read, especially point 2 to understand. Yes, this is dated by about 2 1/2 years but his points are valid:


Is it harder to get into Oxford or Cambridge than Ivy League schools?

It’s… different. I’ve spent a lot of time crunching the numbers in other Quora answers, so I’ll just do the summary version here:

Statistically, an applicant’s odds of getting into Oxford or Cambridge are somewhere around 16%. That is higher than even the least selective Ivies (Cornell - around 10.6% ), and a long way off the most selective one (Harvard - around 4.5%).

However those numbers alone are deceiving. You can only apply to either Oxford or Cambridge, so your competition drops by half. By contrast, you could theoretically apply to all eight Ivies. So your odds of not getting into Oxbridge are static at around 84%. The odds of not getting into any Ivy if you applied to all eight are around (0.927 ^ 8) = 54.5%* (mathematically speaking - I know it doesn’t work like that in real life). Comparing those figures, Oxbridge looks a lot harder.

The other reason to take the Oxbridge number with a pinch of salt is that there is a lot of self-selection. In the UK you can apply to a maximum of five universities. So only serious Oxbridge candidates apply to Oxbridge. In the US it is unlimited, so a lot of people will “have a go” and apply to Ivy Schools even though they have no realistic chance. That is a big factor behind the really low yields at Ivy League schools.

But the really key point is that the nature of the applications are very different. Oxbridge applications are absolutely all-in on academic achievement with brutal entrance exams. Ivy League schools tend to go for ‘holistic’ assessment. Every year there are a few head-scratchers who get into Harvard because they are seen as leaders of the future despite having very mediocre academic stats.
In Britain every so often the press goes nuts when a Brit gets into Harvard after being rejected by Oxford / Cambridge. But this shouldn’t surprise anyone. They are very different applications, and you shouldn’t expect that a person who excels at one would necessarily excel at the other.

* The average admission rate across the entire Ivy League (weighted by numbers of admissions) is 7.328%. Penn and Cornell obviously drag the average up because they are bigger schools. Yes, I am sorry to say that I did take the time to work that out on a spreadsheet. Source: 2023 Ivy League admissions results are in!

+1. This. Taking the Oxbridge entrance exams is a big barrier. Meanwhile anyone who wants to apply to a selective American school simply needs to take the SATs or ACT and click.

This. Plus the interviews. They are nothing like what American students think they are going to be like. There are entire books written on how to ace those interviews (in your proposed area of study). You can't fly by the seat of your pants. You actually have to know the field, the authors, the big books, the current research.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have degrees from Harvard and Oxford (undergrad and masters, respectively).

The systems are different enough that the admissions comparisons make little sense. Oxbridge care very little about anything other than academics, and even for academics, they are looking at a narrower set of qualifications than HYP would. This is because you are admitted directly to a degree; if you are doing physics, they don't really care what your foreign language results were. You are competing with British students who are usually only doing 3-4 A levels, specialized to the degree they plan on applying to. So, someone who is quite talented in the humanities or math/science can get into Oxbridge even if they aren't doing particularly well in the other subjects, and even if they don't have much going on in terms of extracurriculars.

By contrast, HYP are looking for excellence across the board, even though individual US high school courses (even APs & similar) are usually not equivalent in depth to a British A-level. They also care about extracurriculars and evidence of leadership, etc.

Different profiles of students will therefore find one or the other an "easier" process.

HYP is also looing for URM and first-generation. Not an issue overseas

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do US Students get into Oxbridge science programs?

The website says they expect 5 AP scores, focuses on or near the major, including Calculus BC and Physics C (both parts) scores. It's rare to take all of these and extremely rare to take them all in junior year, and also take more related APs like Bio and Chem and CS.

Do US high school students take a gap year and apply to Oxbridge after senior year?

They get a conditional offer and once they pass the APs their senior year the offer is available for them accept.

This (and this is one of the reasons why the Oxbridge application is so difficult for Americans). Our DC's acceptance to a graduate program was also conditional. One of the conditions was achieving a certain GPA at their college during Covid. I don't remember the other condition. And Oxford means it. You don't meet the conditions you are out.

+1. There are many posts out there about conditional versus unconditional offers. IMHE the only unconditional offers were to Rhodes. My DC did not meet one of the conditions for grad work but his university went to bat for him and got Oxford to change its mind but it was a harrowing 8 weeks while we waited. https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=4485696.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cambridge is the only school that MIT allows the transfers of letter grades from. My friends that did the exchange absolutely loved Cambridge and some went back for post-graduate studies. My roommate still lives there and is married and a British citizen now.

Cambridge is an easier admit for Americans.

Not for STEM.

Also, Cambridge still requires 5 5s on APs.

But these all AP and test score requirements are pretty low for the UK. A low floor, indeed. My kid's high school didn't offer APs, which is pretty typical for privates now, and about a third of the class sits for APs anyway to maybe get credit or placement - in a "can't hurt" kind of way - and most end up with 5-9 5s. (The whole AP thing is a bit of a racket, right? It's only in back half of senior year that you know if any of these scores are useful or not.)

Yes, definitely for STEM; if you take into account how HYPS does account for major (without admitting it), STEM at Cambridge (though a very difficult admit, to be sure) is a far easier admit than a STEM kid at Stanford…

Look at it this way: 1/13 Computer Science applicants at Cambridge are admitted (8%). What do you think the admissions rate is for CS at HYPSM? Is it even 2%? Natural sciences? Please. 1/4 applicants at Cambridge are admitted.

What’s worse is that the curriculum at Cambridge is set in stone. An American CS whiz will learn nothing the entire first year, taking the equivalent of remedial courses (for them). The philosophy is everyone in the same boat from the start and all will be good eventually. It is a very European — and non- American — attitude.

There are no restrictions in the US on who can apply to Harvard. There are plenty of restrictions in the UK on who can apply to Ox or Cambs. The school has to give permission and its normally a very small handful of candidates each year. So it’s a self selecting group already of highly qualified students. Your numbers are meaningless when you don't have this information.

There are no school restrictions, anywhere, on Oxbridge apps, other than an applicant meeting the minimum requirements. And the percentage of UK kids with the requisite A-levels is very high. Anyhow, love to see a cite about these mysterious “gatekeeper” restrictions you are referring to instead of this gobbledygook.

Anyhow, 1/3 of Oxbridge apps aren’t even from the UK. To say the least, it is far easier for a UK kid to get into Oxbridge (or even a Chinese, Indian, or American kid) than it is for any of those groups to get into Harvard. By such an order of magnitude in terms of raw numbers (4-20x easier, in fact), than even a 2-3x adjustment in your favor gets you nowhere where. It is not even close.

But go ahead, believe Oxbridge is as selective as HYPS. Or even Emory. The admissions stats are there to see, at Oxford and Cambridge, for every course of study. Numbers are stubborn things.

\


it is a shame you wasted so much time on an ill informed post. If you don't have the backing of your school admin in the UK you cannot, literally cannot apply to ox or cambs.

You are clearly a total moron

+1. Please read 21:42 to better understand the system

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our dc has been accepted at both an HYPMS and an Oxbridge at this moment (trying not to doxx). We've visited both campuses and the main differences pointed out to us in the UK were:

1) Focused curriculum. You have to really want to study the course you applied for, and changing majors is difficult (but not impossible) so long as they are generally related subjects.

2) Tutorial system, with regular interaction with a professor to keep you on track.

3) Shorter terms, with kids in college for 8-weeks, the last 4 of which are basically preparing for the final/papers, etc.

My kid is at Oxford. I've found the facebook "Oxford University - parents group" to be helpful.

What has been insightful to me about the posts on this Facebook page is the number of UK kids (not usually American!) who have difficulty adjusting to Oxford. Once the excitement of moving in is over you start seeing a lot of parents asking about problems with depression (it's very very sad there during Jan and Feb - same weather every day - always overcast), adjustment issues, problems with old dorms (currently there is a discussion about lack or or too much steam heat) and rusticating, which means the kid knows they aren't cutting it and want to take time off. The term "rusticating" came from "being sent to the countryside", i.e., being sent home. The child might decide to rusticate. Or the school can suggest rusticating: "Rustication is a term used at Oxford, Cambridge and Durham Universities to mean being suspended or expelled temporarily, or, in more recent times, to leave temporarily for welfare or health reasons." My DC says rusticating usually takes place just before exams.