[rm445]

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.

[TheOtherHobbes]

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.

[atoav]

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.

[onetimeusename]

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.

[gmac]

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.

[skippyboxedhero]

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.

[growse]

> 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?

[rando001111]

You're talking like Oxford is some school for shitdogs now.

I went to an unranked school here in Canada for electrical engineering and graduated this year. I did a couple co-ops, won a couple engineering competitions and had my EIT job lined up for me after graduation. Started work a week after classes ended.

Rankings are not the end-all be-all for uni.

[maest]

> 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.

[checker659]

> The very top aren't applying there any more at all

Do you have a source to back this claim?

[lazyasciiart]

Let’s pretend what you say is true in the slightest. What does it have to do with the ranking of universities in England? You are arguing that the best undergrad students in England are now at Durham?

[OhMeadhbh]

Is this the same across all classes? (legit asking, not trying to make a snarky comment.) I grew up in the states so the UK class system is a little weird to me and I don't quite get it. But if you told me Cambridge and Oxford are still very popular amongst upper-middle and upper class types, but everyone else just goes to where they can get the best education and be in close proximity to the most impactful researchers, I would completely believe it. But what the heck do I know... I went to grad school at Liverpool.

[sealeck]

> They have made a willful choice to be worse.

Do you mean that they've accepted more state school students? Because you'd expect to take quite a good number of them if you're selecting the "best"!!

[pyuser583]

Plenty of ambitious Americans dream of the London School of Economics.

[StopDisinfo910]

I would (and did) take Oxford in front of any American university. You can stay in a sane country for one and you don’t have to deal with the US absurd elective system. Also Oxford is like ten times less expensive.

Frankly speaking, the only advantage of US universities is how much fund they have for postgraduates.

[madaxe_again]

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]

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.

[arethuza]

"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]

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.

[fsckboy]

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]

> 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.

[OhMeadhbh]

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.

[MagnumOpus]

I know - I went to Oxford instead of LSE for my masters degree exactly because the reputation of the latter is not there outside a narrow subset of finance/econ professionals in the UK. Even though the LSE programme was older and more established and cheaper.

The same is true in the US as well: The University of Chicago and University of Pennsylvania are probably world beating for economics and finance research respectively -- but I would still recommend people to go to Harvard/Stanford for an economics-focused undergrad or finance MSc or MBA if they have the choice, due to the name recognition and the network...

[OJFord]

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.

[exe34]

> 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.

[quietbritishjim]

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.)

[2dvisio]

I used to teach tutorials at Keble college (Oxford). Not sure how they were run in Manchester.

Tutorials in Oxford are impressive for me for many reasons: 1. Those teaching were generally of a higher level beyond Ph.D., post docs or professors, all paid, all assessed against an NPS from students, and the performance of the students in exams 2. Tutors are generally teaching more adjacent topics (creating connections), students are challenged to think beyond the assignments (which are generally tough), 3. Tutorials are calibrated and personalised to students and made sure all students are challenged at the right level, I had tutorials where I had to teach 1:2 because the students were excellent and needed a higher level of complexity.

[blibble]

2 is the norm for supervisions/tutorials

and having 4 people is very different from 2

[spacedcowboy]

Same, at Imperial in 80’s

[ics]

Unique Selling Point?