Reply to So if it can all be faked, how should college admissions work?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "So if it can all be faked, how should college admissions work?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I really don't get the Oxbridge booster on this thread. I lived in the UK for years and the idea that Oxbridge is any more meritorious is laughable.

[/quote]

I'm one of the PPs talking about Oxbridge - there are definitely several of us - and I'm not a booster, I'm just a British person and a Cambridge graduate who has experienced that system. The reason it seems more meritorious to me is that in the UK, if you get excellent GCSE results and then excellent A level results (or predicted results), and can explain yourself coherently in an interview, you stand a fair chance of getting in. It's still really competitive and there are still more applications from excellent students than spots, but it feels achievable if you are academically excellent. Here, from what I am reading - and we are several years away from this process for my children so I don't know everything about it at all - no student, however academically excellent they are, could feel like getting into a top school is "achievable". Without the legacy/sports etc things, getting in feels like a huge longshot even for the most academically capable students. [/quote]

another European person with young kids  and I agree with this. This board makes it sound like even the most academically capable students with all kinds of extracurriculars (a requirements that itself is absurd and clearly detracts from the academic focus)  need “hooks” to get into Harvard etc (is Oxbridge equivalents). I don’t know if this is true, but if it is, then yes, it’s an inferior system.[/quote]

You can call it inferior, but it is simply the product of a numbers game.  Harvard is going to admit about 5% of applicants but I would suspect that at least another 5% or 10% are essentially equally as qualified in standardized tests and academic performance.  The hook is the tie breaker.  [/quote]

but they are not equally qualified - that’s an illusion because they score the same on tests that require little studying. but only a very small fraction of students admitted to Harvard would be able to pass an properly constructed entrance exam in, say, math. add a few kore subjects and it will be clear who is in fact academically qualified to study a certain subject. this is what Oxbridge method mostly successfully determines. our, not so much.[/quote]

Equally qualified by the criteria of GPA and SAT.  You can say the Oxbridge interview adds another dimension, but the other dimension it may be adding is susceptible to influence by the independent school system dominated by the wealthy and influential.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics