(no subject)

[ewx]

It's so rare that the media talk anything but nonsense about Oxbridge admissions that it seems worth flagging it when they break the habit. Certainly my recollection is that those of my classmates who didn't get into Oxford or Cambridge weren't considered somehow inferior or to have failed; we all knew perfectly well that there was a large element of chance involved.

Comments

[wendym.livejournal.com]

I've got an idea that, statitstically anyway, it was a fair bit harder to get into Nottingham to do history than it was to get into Cambridge.

If people lose this obsession with Oxbridge being the be all and end all of universites, then maybe they'll lose some of the other illusions about it, like the discrimination against state school students. And then maybe more state schoolers, will be a bit less scared about the prospect of applying for it.

And if Laura Spence was such a working class hero, how come she got a column in the Mail?

Sorry, rant...

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Don't get me started about Laura Spence! Her initial application was misguided at best. She applied to read medicine at Oxford, which isn't exactly reknowned for its undergraduate medical teaching, rather than to a university with a decent medical school (like Edinburgh, to pick another ancient university). Having been rebuffed, she then went to Harvard to read biochemistry rather than medicine, which suggests that she didn't have the necessary level of dedication to the subject in the first place.

[as a rather ranty aside, I'm most irritated by the fuss made over her A levels. The suggestion in the press seemed to be that five A's at A level should guarantee you a place at Oxbridge. My A level results were marginally better than hers, but they still weren't quite good enough for the conditional offer I had to read maths and computer science at Cambridge in 1991. In retrospect, this was for the best; I'm not certain that I would have thrived at Cambridge in the same way that I did at Warwick, especially given that I'd applied to read maths and computer science rather than just straight computer science. In particular, I don't think that I would have carried on with postgraduate work and got my doctorate.]

I completely agree with you on the Oxbridge obsession. In short, Oxbridge is fine for some subjects, but for many subjects there are superior departments at other universities.

[wendym.livejournal.com]

Yup. It is however, very, very pretty. Well Cambridge is, anyway :-) Never underestimate that joy.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree (I lived there for a couple of years, which is why I know ewx and other CUSFS denizens). The downside of being pretty is the tourists, which is something Cambridge shares with Edinburgh (where I did my MSc) and Bath (where I live now). It all evens out in the end.

What I remember most fondly about Cambridge are the large number of good pubs...

[damerell.livejournal.com]

I very nearly went to Warwick... I wonder how things would have been. I'd probably be completely different.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Possibly not as different as you'd think. I could still see you getting sucked into the SF society, rocksoc and possibly the film society in fairly short order. Goth scene was a bit poor in Cov while I was there, but started to pick up later. Geek scene was very much in evidence.

Put it this way: socially, Cambridge and the extended CUSFS family felt like a home-from-home to me, so I think it fair to assume that there's enough commonality that you would have turned out much the same at Warwick.