London Times: Ivy League Targets Britain's Top Students

Parents Forum
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<p>Ivy</a> League targets Britain's top students - Times Online</p>

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<p>I guess S2's roomie is one of those 17 mentioned in the article. Great accent and a nice kid.</p>

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<p>The ivy league has been recruiting in the UK for a long long time - what's new is that other colleges have now joined them - eg. Wake Forest, as cited in that article.</p>

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<p>..."generous bursaries", "Admissions tutors", "school-leavers"... aren't the British cute? No wonder we want them here.</p>

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<p>Post #4: I thought the same. School-leavers is my favorite.
:)</p>

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<p>Seventeen? That's not exactly what I'd call a shocking brain drain. Sounds like the the UK universities will do just fine. And if not, well, international recruitment of "school-leavers" is a two-way street. There must be hundreds of smart American kids who grew up in homes where the parents were always watching Masterpiece Theater and movies like Chariots of Fire and would love to go to college at Oxbridge. I'm sure the schools could manage to scrape together a few "generous bursaries" of their own and skim some of the cream off of the American crop.</p>

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<p>^^Not really, coureur. Oxbridge is (are) not set up for the financial aid stream that Ivies are.</p>

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<p>^ but epiph, they have built their development departments in recent years, do have scholarship money (just look at the oxford catalog sometime) and could do it if they decide to do so. Like so many things in higher ed, cost is less a problem than the will, especially when it comes to small numbers of kids (like free rides to kids of families making under 60K. How much did Harvard budget for this 3 years ago?)</p>

<p>The bigger problem with a US kid heading to Oxbridge is fitting them in - different secondary school approach; different higher ed approach and so forth. UK higher ed does not have the flexibility US higher ed does.</p>

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<p>
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..."generous bursaries", "Admissions tutors", "school-leavers"... aren't the British cute? No wonder we want them here.

[/QUOTE]

These are all standard terms in the UK though. Anyone in their last year of (high)school is a "school leaver". The term "school" is not used for any education after the age of 18. When Americans say they are "still in school" and they're over this age, British people assume they're in some kind of special education or remedial class. </p>

<p>The person who looks after the bursaries in a UK university, and basically any money issues, is the Busar.</p>

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<p>I know. I'm not suggesting that they set up a big Ivy-style financial aid initiative for all their students. I'm suggesting they set up some moderate program targeted at bringing in the high-end foreigners - sort of like Rhodes scholarships for undergrads. They could make up for the 17 kids who went to Yale, etc. by starting a stream of smart Americans going in the opposite direction.</p>

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<p>^^^ That could cause political problems over here though. Oxbridge are tax payer-funded universities - people would not be impressed if their taxes went towards subsidising education for non-UK or non-EU citizens. </p>

<p>I do agree that something has to be done, however. US alumni of St Edmund's Hall have just established a new full scholarship for a US student to study at Oxford for their undergrad degree, which is a step in the right direction I think. If anything is going to be done, it will have to be done at the College level with private funding, rather than the central University level.</p>

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<p>student here -- I'm applying to Brasenose College at Oxford, and I know a few of the other colleges do have cobbled-together scholarships for maybe 1 foreigner -- the trouble is, few Americans manage to get in because we don't have that thirteenth year of H.S. under our belts, and AP courses aren't as in-depth as A-levels taken in Britain. I'm lucky enough that if I get in, my parents are able to comfortably pay the tuition and room/board (we do not qualify for ANY financial aid even in America as we're over the 300k mark I think)</p>

<p>Plus, Oxbridge basically says they want scores of 5 on AT LEAST 2 AP's, scores of 700 on all three parts of the SAT and on THREE subject tests and this is BEFORE applying, a.k.a. by the end of junior year. I'm lucky to have surpassed these requirements, but even some of America's best and brightest haven't got this yet.</p>

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<p>i'd love to go to oxbridge and have been able to get those requirements^^ but i'm kind of freaked out by the narrowness of the curriculm/picking a definite major right away so I don't think I'll apply =(</p>

<p>andddd this just makes me want to go to the ivies on my list more haha
love those accents =P</p>

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<p>pinkpineapple, I don't think it is BEFORE applying. Even for internationals, you can enter the predicted grades and if you get a conditional acceptance, you just have to achieve them and that's it.</p>

<p>But if you have everything required already, then it'd be much easier for you because it wont be conditional, it will basically be final.. So you won't have to worry..</p>