Oxford Loses Top 3 University Ranking in the UK

Class isn't tied to money as much as the US.

For example, I grew up poor (as in eligible for free school meals in the 90s poor) however I was one of the posher kids in the school. Class is fucking hard to explain definitively.

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that Oxbridge has historically admitted a lot of kids from quite a small group of high cost private schools. The fact they’re adjusting their intake to somewhat reduce that is something to be celebrated.

Unless you’re a very wealthy person with kids at an expensive private school in southern England hoping that they’ll get admitted to Oxbridge, of course.

UK middle class also includes university lecturers, teachers, various health professionals, graphic designers and so on, most of whom make less than 100k USD/year and some not much more than 50k.

Very unlikely, most financial aid is not available to international students.

I don't think its possible to have a full student loan from the UK and study abroad the whole time. (you can do a year abroad though)

Much like most other leftist rhethotic, this belief is not based on any real logic. Basically, the entire process went like this:

1. Corporations want more immigration to suppress middle class wages and workers' rights

2. They run propaganda campaigns targeted at the left and their virtues ("the poor immigrants are suffering and need our help! only racist nazis disagree!")

3. Said leftists, desperate to virtue signal and avoid being seen as racist or xenophobic, immediately move to support the cause unconditionally

4. They see the world as purely black and white, good vs evil, so when they ask themselves "do billionaires want immigration?" the thought process goes "billionaires=bad and immigration=good, therefore billionaires hate immigration"

It’s a distraction and divide et impera to prevent that immigrant and lower class local workers join forces.

Some kind of employment ping pong. At the end it‘s always cheap labor

Do you think Trump got into Wharton on his academic prowess? Legacy admits and donor kids take spots from both middle and lower classes.

> And no one is saying immigrants are taking the spots.

Sure they are. https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/08/27/trump-administration-pro...

It sounds like you think admissions should be based on how hard people think they worked relative to others.

In France, our elite scientific schools recruit students based on anonymous nationwide tests. It turns out most of the recruits come from privileged backgrounds, and I've heard this is more the case today than it was several decades ago.

I'd love to see more diversity in these schools, but I prefer to maintain our educational excellence rather than dilute it artificially with worse students. I'm all for paying tutors to poorer but promising student, but they should be admitted against the same criteria as anyone else.

If you are world-class talent (someone who gets to Oxford), you should be capable of similar results as kids from independent schools. Like Joe Seddon did (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Seddon - growing up with a single parent mom, working as a therapist in NHS).

It isn't fair to ask ones to have 4A* and others to have just 3As.

Only 1 in 2600 gets 4 A.

And 1 in 83 gets 3 As.

Making it 31

Before you continue, there are governments in the UK that have created formulas to mathematically measure your level of "struggle"...these happen to, in a massive coincidence, benefit areas that vote for them.

The same logic is also being applied within universities to boost grades as managers at universities have quotas to hit from government. This leads to odd situations where a subject like Scottish Law at Edinburgh has no quota for students without appropriate social credit because it is a subject which, unlike other courses at that university, gets largely Scottish students applying so it has to be used to fill quotas. And these students have to be carried to the end of their course because they are there to fulfill a quota.

Sounds like a great idea but, as with everything like this, the assumption is that a university administrator or bureaucrat can accurately measure your struggle...they can't, I am sure the wisdom of this approach will dim when you are being operated on by someone who filled a quota at medical school.

Shall we ask the parents of the victims of the school shootings?

BTW why is a god given right not mentioned in the bible?

Clearly this PPE student has some talent for politics to be elected president of one of the more prestigious societies, so it seems right for him to have been given a place.

In the UK, there's 1.5 million kids playing footbal. 1:83 ~18000 kids play in any professional club. 1:2600 ~580 kids get to play in Premier League, EFL Championship in a season

What is Oxford doing is letting kids who play in absolutely any club, if they go to state school, or only those who got to Premier League, if they go to independent school.

Again, it's discrimination so bad it should be illegal.

My understanding (based on a discussion with one Natural Sciences admissions tutor at one Cambridge college nearly 20 years ago, so strictly speaking this may not be true in general, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't common) is that during the admissions process, including interviews, applicants are scored so they can be stack-ranked, and the top N given offers. Then, for the students that are accepted, and get the required exam results, the college also records their marks at each stage of their degree. To verify the admissions process is fair, these marks are compared with the original interview ranking, expecting that interview performance is (on average) correlated with later degree performance.

I don't know if they go further and build models to suggest the correct offer to give different students based on interview performance, educational background, and other factors, but it seems at least plausible that one could try that kind of thing, and have the data to prove that it was working.

Anyway my guess is that of the population of people who would do well if they got in, but don't, the majority are those whose background makes them believe it's "not for the likes of me", and so never apply, rather than people who went to private schools, applied, and didn't get a place.

(also a Cambridge alumni from a state school, FWIW),

Dumbed down it was not, in my experience. Dumbing down would be a way to up the score on these rankings, though.

Which isn't true, and never was. I get why we do that with kids in Reception and Year 1. With young adults, like University students, the fact of inequality of potentials of individuals, is just a fact anyone has to live with.

I am clever, but I am a fat, average looking guy. So that's what I have to live with. David Beckham is not so smart, but he is sporty and looks great. He uses his innate talents, and I use mines. Nobody is discriminated by being different.

The system has been built by those with means. And those with means more often than not are clever, hard-working people. That's how you get successful in the first place. And when you are born with great talents, you will go up too. That was the point of aristocrats being replaced by bourgeois, and now people in tech growing no matter where they are from.

I went to a relatively poor state school. I did very well regardless but on average the results were not that good. I remember sitting in my history GCSE class and a teacher chasing a student around various classrooms on multiple occasions. I remember not having a permanent teacher for Year 10 English. I remember my GCSE Spanish teacher bribing everyone with chocolate when OFSTED came around because this was the third time doing the same lesson and he wanted us to look stronger than we were.

While I agree with this as a conclusion, I believe you cannot really go there without acknowledging that this has been a deteriorating situation ever since most of the UK abolished the grammar schools.

"Comprehensive" education has done nothing except result in the oppression of the very people it claims to be liberating.

Assumed, they really are 4 A* material.

If not, what might happen is, that Oxford might get worse in ratings. Is Oxford getting worse in ratings?

> It isn't dumbing down or taking worse students, it's easing out the rich types

But those rich types already have 4 A*, or they are close to it. Their kids have spent 10 years boarding, learning 10 hours a day, including Saturdays. And then, they are discriminated, because of hate towards the rich.

I guess, what will happen, is that some other universities will pick them up. Kids, who are used to work extremely hard. Kids, who know how to learn. Kids, whose parents and grandparents knew how to apply themselves and who instilled all this in them too.

And Oxford will be dethroned. Cream always rises to the top.