12 ms·

I am a Durham graduate, still somewhat involved with the university via some voluntary roles, and a bit of a 'booster' in the sense that I'll sing its praises t

by rm445 1y ago

I am a Durham graduate, still somewhat involved with the university via some voluntary roles, and a bit of a 'booster' in the sense that I'll sing its praises to anyone. I also have a postgrad degree from Cambridge and did a little teaching while there. So, I'm quite familiar, and while I'm happy to see Durham get some love, this is bunk. There is a gulf in undergraduate teaching between Oxbridge and the pack. The supervision system guarantees all Oxbridge students weekly, small-group tutorials, organised and paid for by the colleges, which retain much more academic involvement than other collegiate universities like Durham and York (whose colleges are mainly residences with pastoral care and sports teams). If you go to Oxbridge as an undergrad, you'll be pushed hard and closely supported. The second gulf is of course the selection effect of every bright child in the UK having Oxford or Cambridge as their first university pick. No-one from an older generation would advise any teenager to do otherwise. (Incidentally, I'm acutely aware that Durham first, then Cambridge is lower social status than vice versa. Because I didn't get in at 17). Everyone knows about this, and we could debate how reputations change, but I suspect my point above about the supervisions system for undergraduate teaching is less well-known. I could also mention the gulf in wealth between universities (which pays for those supervisions, book grants etc), in age (Oxbridge actively lobbied against new universities in England for hundreds of years), which has a consequence for historic buildings, famous names and prizes, and so on. It all creates an almost unbreakable flywheel of reputational lead for Oxbridge that would take generations to overturn.

madaxe_again 1y ago
I don’t know what college you were in or what you read, but in castle, we had weekly tutorials in physics. Grand total of four of us in the group.
- ninalanyon 1y ago
  Same at Exeter Uni. in the 1970s when I studied Applied Physics there and my wife studied Law and also had a similar tutorial arrangement. I don't know what they do now though.
exe34 1y ago
> The supervision system guarantees all Oxbridge students weekly, small-group tutorials, We had that in Physics at Manchester in the 2000s. 4 students. I'm guessing they got the idea from Oxbridge, but I don't think it's been a USP for a very long time.
- ics 1y ago
  Unique Selling Point?
  - mrcarrot 1y ago
    yes
- spacedcowboy 1y ago
  Same, at Imperial in 80’s
- quietbritishjim 1y ago
  That sounds like a similar idea but I doubt it's to the same extent. When I was at Cambridge in the early noughties, supervisions for maths and computer science (and physics I believe but I didn't go to any of those) were 2 students in 4 1-hour sessions per week (1 per 24 hour lecture course). [Edit: hmm, actually maybe it was just 2 per week.] In maths, if there were an odd number of students then one would get 1 to 1 supervisions, but I'm sure that depends on the college. For computer science, I was put in a 3 person supervision when they had an odd number (and I wasn't happy about it at the time!) I later did teaching at UCL and Imperial and the difference was huge. When they get to it, I would advise my children to go Oxford or Cambridge in a heartbeat. (For reference, my parents were too poor to even consider university.)
  - exe34 1y ago
    cue the Harvard graduates tell us they had 5 teachers for 1 student in their tutorials. A large part of uni is about learning to learn on your own and learning in groups - if everything is spoonfed, it might not be the best training.
fsckboy 1y ago
I think high school students preparing to go to university are most interested in rankings not least because for graduate schools specific areas of research are more important. and I agree with much of the parent post, and would add that "oxbridge" and/or "high ranking schools in subject areas" provide many of the professors to "lesser" schools or programs, so you can get a fine education from anywhere. however, the special extra sauce for me was not small classes/personal attention, but rather rooms full of the smartest possible peers to do problem sets with, and these are found at the highest ranked schools, see first paragraph above, they attract the best incoming freshman.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  > high school students preparing to go to university are most interested in rankings Wouldn't league tables like Norrington and Tompkins be more important for them? I remember during my Britishphilia phase in HS and imagined doing a CS Tripos at one and then a BCL at he other before I removed the emotion and realized the services and network was inferior to a good UC like Cal or UCLA or a B10 like Mich, I was concentrating more on the College itself, not the Uni as a whole. Like being at Harris Manchester College, Oxford wouldn't open the same doors that Balliol College, Oxford would, and it was Oxbridge, Imperial, UCL, LSE, or bust. At the undergrad level, Oxbridge is college driven and not all colleges are equal even if everyone is in the same faculty. It's not like Yale or Harvard where you are randomly assigned a house, and the overwhelming majority of education services are provided by departments.
  - lo_zamoyski 1y ago
    Anglophilia
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      You are correct (the best kind of correct). I don't like using "Anglo" because it also implies the Anglophone world, so I'm hesitant to use "Anglophilia" because it is also often used to lump Australia, Canada, and even the US to a certain extent as well.
skippyboxedhero 1y ago
The time of every bright child having Oxbridge as first university pick ended quite a few years ago. Not accurate that parents are saying this either, the change has largely come from parents who are often people doing hiring and have seen the change over the past few years. The very top aren't applying there any more at all, you don't need to: Stanford, Harvard, MIT, all better. Oxford, in particular, has made their bed. They have made a willful choice to be worse. I am not sure why anyone wouldn't take them at their word.
- maest 1y ago
  > Stanford, Harvard, MIT Those are not in the UK? Anyway, you are making some bold statements and have zero substance backing them up. Please refrain from spreading nonsense.
- pyuser583 1y ago
  Plenty of ambitious Americans dream of the London School of Economics.
- growse 1y ago
  > The very top aren't applying there any more at all, you don't need to: Stanford, Harvard, MIT, all better. The only people applying to those from the UK are the wealthy. If by "very top" you mean "richest", then maybe. But I'm not sure we care about that?
  - ralph84 1y ago
    The network value of knowing a rich person far exceeds the network value of knowing a smart person.
    - odyssey7 1y ago
      How are we valuing the network? There are doors that many wealthy people would not be able to open and vice-versa. On the other hand, someone both smart and wealthy... Sam Altman comes to mind, as well as a number of other figures of historic importance.
OhMeadhbh 1y ago
There's a section in Yes, Prime Minister where Humphrey Appleby makes some comment about preserving England's great universities. Then pauses a beat and adds "both of them." (referring, of course, to Cambridge and Oxford.) It's obvious there are other very good universities in the UK and I don't doubt the LSE has programs that surpass the others. But I spent a couple months on a research project at LSE (and even delivered a few lectures) but most people hearing I was a guest lecturer there were like "meh. whatever." (Oddly, the guy I knew from Cambridge was "oh! they have some very good programs there.") So... yes... despite consistently ranking high on surveys, Durham and LSE are not "sexy" in the way Cambridge and Oxford are.
- OJFord 1y ago
  Sure they'll never have quite the same cachet, but it's the same anywhere - UCLA/Stanford/Yale are extremely respected but nevertheless not Harvard or MIT. No doubt someone more familiar would say not all IITs are equal, but Bombay, Bengaluru & friends lead the pack. &c.
  - musicale 1y ago
    Probably Berkeley (not UCLA) is the top-tier UC. Yale is part of the Ivy League and was founded ~65 years after Harvard. Also ranking #1-#2 for producing US presidents, Harvard-Yale is probably a somewhat better US university analog to Oxford-Cambridge. Stanford is well-regarded and may be a solid competitor to Harvard in a number of ways (#1 in Turing awards, #2 in VC-backed startups behind Berkeley, etc.) but it was founded 250 years later (considered a long time in the US) and has a smaller endowment (4th place, behind Harvard, UT, and Yale.) It has also only produced one US President: Herbert Hoover. MIT is a top tier school though more focused on technology (it's in the name). MIT has a business school (Sloan), but a Harvard/Yale/Stanford will include a business school, law school, med school (etc.) and a range of well-regarded programs in humanities and social sciences in addition to science and engineering.
    - OJFord 1y ago
      I may have an overly STEM-centric view, but I don't think Yale has anything like the reputation of MIT internationally. I'm only really aware of it from Americans (in Hollywood, newsletters, etc.) being impressed by lawyers' and MBAs' credentials. Anyway, I don't think the specifics really matter, point is it's not unusual to have a bunch of extremely good universities and then a handful or fewer that are for whatever reason the first-to-mind 'best' ones.
gmac 1y ago
100%. I went to Oxbridge as an undergrad. Now I’m an associate professor at a middling UK university. Comparing the prior ability of the students that attend, the expectations placed on them, and above all the support and feedback provided to get them there — it’s just an entirely different thing. If only every uni had the resources Oxbridge do, the country would be in a very different place.
TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
These are rankings by "national student survey", which is - how can I put this politely? - possibly not the most rigorous way to measure merit. Oxford has long had a reputation for being a dual university - a raw academic track for smart people, and a political/establishment track for people with money, connections, ambition, and the kind of entitled self-assurance that comes from easy privilege. "Political" doesn't just mean politics, although the notorious PPE degree often means exactly that. It also means media/journalism, and law. There's some overlap between the talent intake and the connections intake, especially in the humanities. (Science is a little more rigorous.) Generally if you're on the political track Oxford opens doors no other university will. Cambridge is a good second choice, and St Andrews has a minor presence in Scotland. But realistically the rest - Durham, York, Bristol - don't really count. The difference is that tutors don't just teach, they talent scout. A good word and an introduction from a tutor - quite likely to be face to face at a social event - opens doors and plugs you straight into the network.
- onetimeusename 1y ago
  Something I am curious about is Cambridge's reputation today for sciences. A lot of pretty famous British mathematicians have done the Tripos part III there. Is that still considered meaningful? I am asking because many US mathematics departments have shed or reduced their master's programs in favor of just focusing on the PhD for postgrads. For historical reasons I am curious how the Tripos part III there has fared.
  - MagnumOpus 1y ago
    Cambridge's reputation for sciences is the best in the country, way ahead of Oxford outside a few niches. The tripos part III Masters programme is selective and demanding - and most students are doing it while applying/angling for PhD programmes so from what I hear the pace is high.
- atoav 1y ago
  As someone who works and teaches in academia, it is surprising how relative student happiness is. Our university for example, has within its own field (arts) one of the best collection of workshops of all mayor european universities. Yet students complain and feel there is not enough — that is, until they went to an exchange after which they tend to sing high praises about how good we have it here. Another problem is that students are very often totally uninformed about their own institutions, despite their institutions informing them. During my time here I have seen multiple instances of students demanding a thing that already existed for years, was mentioned in the beginners brochure, could be found on the official website with a simple google search and so on. So as much as I dislike saying it as a former student, but the mayority of students opinion is not necessarily a reflection of the institution itself, more of the mood within the student body. And this may or may not correlate with the value of the education received there.
arethuza 1y ago
"the selection effect of every bright child in the UK having Oxford or Cambridge as their first university pick" When my son and I visited St. Andrews a few years back we were informally told that they really only select people who make that university their first pick - and given that St. Andrews doesn't seem to have any problems attracting students then I would question whether everyone puts Oxbridge first. I certainly knew people when I was applying to university (40+ years ago) who were very bright but who didn't even think about applying to Oxbridge because of the perceived snobbery. I've also met quite a lot of rather unimpressive Oxbridge graduates in my career - so I wouldn't automatically assume that they get the brightest and the best.
- beojan 1y ago
  How do they know they're your first pick? Unless things have changed, you don't provide a ranking until the universities have made their offers.
  - arethuza 1y ago
    From what I can recall (it was a few years back) they said you should write that in your personal statement.

by rm445 1y ago

madaxe_again 1y ago

I don’t know what college you were in or what you read, but in castle, we had weekly tutorials in physics. Grand total of four of us in the group.

ninalanyon 1y ago
Same at Exeter Uni. in the 1970s when I studied Applied Physics there and my wife studied Law and also had a similar tutorial arrangement. I don't know what they do now though.

exe34 1y ago

> The supervision system guarantees all Oxbridge students weekly, small-group tutorials, We had that in Physics at Manchester in the 2000s. 4 students. I'm guessing they got the idea from Oxbridge, but I don't think it's been a USP for a very long time.

ics 1y ago
Unique Selling Point?
- mrcarrot 1y ago
  yes
spacedcowboy 1y ago
Same, at Imperial in 80’s
quietbritishjim 1y ago
That sounds like a similar idea but I doubt it's to the same extent. When I was at Cambridge in the early noughties, supervisions for maths and computer science (and physics I believe but I didn't go to any of those) were 2 students in 4 1-hour sessions per week (1 per 24 hour lecture course). [Edit: hmm, actually maybe it was just 2 per week.] In maths, if there were an odd number of students then one would get 1 to 1 supervisions, but I'm sure that depends on the college. For computer science, I was put in a 3 person supervision when they had an odd number (and I wasn't happy about it at the time!) I later did teaching at UCL and Imperial and the difference was huge. When they get to it, I would advise my children to go Oxford or Cambridge in a heartbeat. (For reference, my parents were too poor to even consider university.)
- exe34 1y ago
  cue the Harvard graduates tell us they had 5 teachers for 1 student in their tutorials. A large part of uni is about learning to learn on your own and learning in groups - if everything is spoonfed, it might not be the best training.

fsckboy 1y ago

I think high school students preparing to go to university are most interested in rankings not least because for graduate schools specific areas of research are more important. and I agree with much of the parent post, and would add that "oxbridge" and/or "high ranking schools in subject areas" provide many of the professors to "lesser" schools or programs, so you can get a fine education from anywhere. however, the special extra sauce for me was not small classes/personal attention, but rather rooms full of the smartest possible peers to do problem sets with, and these are found at the highest ranked schools, see first paragraph above, they attract the best incoming freshman.

alephnerd 1y ago
> high school students preparing to go to university are most interested in rankings Wouldn't league tables like Norrington and Tompkins be more important for them? I remember during my Britishphilia phase in HS and imagined doing a CS Tripos at one and then a BCL at he other before I removed the emotion and realized the services and network was inferior to a good UC like Cal or UCLA or a B10 like Mich, I was concentrating more on the College itself, not the Uni as a whole. Like being at Harris Manchester College, Oxford wouldn't open the same doors that Balliol College, Oxford would, and it was Oxbridge, Imperial, UCL, LSE, or bust. At the undergrad level, Oxbridge is college driven and not all colleges are equal even if everyone is in the same faculty. It's not like Yale or Harvard where you are randomly assigned a house, and the overwhelming majority of education services are provided by departments.
- lo_zamoyski 1y ago
  Anglophilia
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    You are correct (the best kind of correct). I don't like using "Anglo" because it also implies the Anglophone world, so I'm hesitant to use "Anglophilia" because it is also often used to lump Australia, Canada, and even the US to a certain extent as well.

skippyboxedhero 1y ago

The time of every bright child having Oxbridge as first university pick ended quite a few years ago. Not accurate that parents are saying this either, the change has largely come from parents who are often people doing hiring and have seen the change over the past few years. The very top aren't applying there any more at all, you don't need to: Stanford, Harvard, MIT, all better. Oxford, in particular, has made their bed. They have made a willful choice to be worse. I am not sure why anyone wouldn't take them at their word.

maest 1y ago
> Stanford, Harvard, MIT Those are not in the UK? Anyway, you are making some bold statements and have zero substance backing them up. Please refrain from spreading nonsense.
pyuser583 1y ago
Plenty of ambitious Americans dream of the London School of Economics.
growse 1y ago
> The very top aren't applying there any more at all, you don't need to: Stanford, Harvard, MIT, all better. The only people applying to those from the UK are the wealthy. If by "very top" you mean "richest", then maybe. But I'm not sure we care about that?
- ralph84 1y ago
  The network value of knowing a rich person far exceeds the network value of knowing a smart person.
  - odyssey7 1y ago
    How are we valuing the network? There are doors that many wealthy people would not be able to open and vice-versa. On the other hand, someone both smart and wealthy... Sam Altman comes to mind, as well as a number of other figures of historic importance.

OhMeadhbh 1y ago

There's a section in Yes, Prime Minister where Humphrey Appleby makes some comment about preserving England's great universities. Then pauses a beat and adds "both of them." (referring, of course, to Cambridge and Oxford.) It's obvious there are other very good universities in the UK and I don't doubt the LSE has programs that surpass the others. But I spent a couple months on a research project at LSE (and even delivered a few lectures) but most people hearing I was a guest lecturer there were like "meh. whatever." (Oddly, the guy I knew from Cambridge was "oh! they have some very good programs there.") So... yes... despite consistently ranking high on surveys, Durham and LSE are not "sexy" in the way Cambridge and Oxford are.

OJFord 1y ago
Sure they'll never have quite the same cachet, but it's the same anywhere - UCLA/Stanford/Yale are extremely respected but nevertheless not Harvard or MIT. No doubt someone more familiar would say not all IITs are equal, but Bombay, Bengaluru & friends lead the pack. &c.
- musicale 1y ago
  Probably Berkeley (not UCLA) is the top-tier UC. Yale is part of the Ivy League and was founded ~65 years after Harvard. Also ranking #1-#2 for producing US presidents, Harvard-Yale is probably a somewhat better US university analog to Oxford-Cambridge. Stanford is well-regarded and may be a solid competitor to Harvard in a number of ways (#1 in Turing awards, #2 in VC-backed startups behind Berkeley, etc.) but it was founded 250 years later (considered a long time in the US) and has a smaller endowment (4th place, behind Harvard, UT, and Yale.) It has also only produced one US President: Herbert Hoover. MIT is a top tier school though more focused on technology (it's in the name). MIT has a business school (Sloan), but a Harvard/Yale/Stanford will include a business school, law school, med school (etc.) and a range of well-regarded programs in humanities and social sciences in addition to science and engineering.
  - OJFord 1y ago
    I may have an overly STEM-centric view, but I don't think Yale has anything like the reputation of MIT internationally. I'm only really aware of it from Americans (in Hollywood, newsletters, etc.) being impressed by lawyers' and MBAs' credentials. Anyway, I don't think the specifics really matter, point is it's not unusual to have a bunch of extremely good universities and then a handful or fewer that are for whatever reason the first-to-mind 'best' ones.

gmac 1y ago

100%. I went to Oxbridge as an undergrad. Now I’m an associate professor at a middling UK university. Comparing the prior ability of the students that attend, the expectations placed on them, and above all the support and feedback provided to get them there — it’s just an entirely different thing. If only every uni had the resources Oxbridge do, the country would be in a very different place.

TheOtherHobbes 1y ago

These are rankings by "national student survey", which is - how can I put this politely? - possibly not the most rigorous way to measure merit. Oxford has long had a reputation for being a dual university - a raw academic track for smart people, and a political/establishment track for people with money, connections, ambition, and the kind of entitled self-assurance that comes from easy privilege. "Political" doesn't just mean politics, although the notorious PPE degree often means exactly that. It also means media/journalism, and law. There's some overlap between the talent intake and the connections intake, especially in the humanities. (Science is a little more rigorous.) Generally if you're on the political track Oxford opens doors no other university will. Cambridge is a good second choice, and St Andrews has a minor presence in Scotland. But realistically the rest - Durham, York, Bristol - don't really count. The difference is that tutors don't just teach, they talent scout. A good word and an introduction from a tutor - quite likely to be face to face at a social event - opens doors and plugs you straight into the network.

onetimeusename 1y ago
Something I am curious about is Cambridge's reputation today for sciences. A lot of pretty famous British mathematicians have done the Tripos part III there. Is that still considered meaningful? I am asking because many US mathematics departments have shed or reduced their master's programs in favor of just focusing on the PhD for postgrads. For historical reasons I am curious how the Tripos part III there has fared.
- MagnumOpus 1y ago
  Cambridge's reputation for sciences is the best in the country, way ahead of Oxford outside a few niches. The tripos part III Masters programme is selective and demanding - and most students are doing it while applying/angling for PhD programmes so from what I hear the pace is high.
atoav 1y ago
As someone who works and teaches in academia, it is surprising how relative student happiness is. Our university for example, has within its own field (arts) one of the best collection of workshops of all mayor european universities. Yet students complain and feel there is not enough — that is, until they went to an exchange after which they tend to sing high praises about how good we have it here. Another problem is that students are very often totally uninformed about their own institutions, despite their institutions informing them. During my time here I have seen multiple instances of students demanding a thing that already existed for years, was mentioned in the beginners brochure, could be found on the official website with a simple google search and so on. So as much as I dislike saying it as a former student, but the mayority of students opinion is not necessarily a reflection of the institution itself, more of the mood within the student body. And this may or may not correlate with the value of the education received there.

arethuza 1y ago

"the selection effect of every bright child in the UK having Oxford or Cambridge as their first university pick" When my son and I visited St. Andrews a few years back we were informally told that they really only select people who make that university their first pick - and given that St. Andrews doesn't seem to have any problems attracting students then I would question whether everyone puts Oxbridge first. I certainly knew people when I was applying to university (40+ years ago) who were very bright but who didn't even think about applying to Oxbridge because of the perceived snobbery. I've also met quite a lot of rather unimpressive Oxbridge graduates in my career - so I wouldn't automatically assume that they get the brightest and the best.

beojan 1y ago
How do they know they're your first pick? Unless things have changed, you don't provide a ranking until the universities have made their offers.
- arethuza 1y ago
  From what I can recall (it was a few years back) they said you should write that in your personal statement.