Oxbridge

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Why do US students insist that US universities > Oxbridge?</p>

<p>I see so many of you guys saying things like "Oxbridge are probably 20th or 30th at best", or:
Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Berkeley, etc. etc. Cambridge, Oxford.</p>

<p>Seriously, get real and look at the rankings.. Cambridge's last three QS ranings? 2nd, 1st, 1st. Oxford's current THES ranking? 2nd.</p>

<p>Most Nobel prizes? Cambridge.</p>

<p>Best teaching ratios? Oxbridge.</p>

<p>I'm not saying Oxbridge > US, just that outside of this US 'bubble', the rest of the world is pretty set on:</p>

<p>1) Cambridge/Oxford/Harvard/MIT
2) Yale/Stanford/Princeton
3) UCBerkeley, UCL, Imperial etc.
4) et al</p>

<p>The ignorance is quite evident in how people include UCL in lists of top 5-10 world universities just because they've spotted them one year in a ranking. In the UK alone, UCL < Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, LSE (although nothing else)</p>

<p>Thoughts? I don't mean to sound aggressive, I'm just quite annoyed at how closed-minded some people are on here.</p>

2

<p>Sorry old chap, Oxbridge just doesn’t give up enough international seats to get excited about. 10% to the entire Non EU Sector? I think its more of a what’s relevant to me situation.</p>

3

<p>Not this again…</p>

4

<p>so @ any US students who are actually beyond high school education, where are you going to rank Oxbridge?</p>

5

<p>“so @ any US students who are actually beyond high school education, where are you going to rank Oxbridge?”</p>

<p>Probably with the Ivies, Stanford, UChicago, Berkeley, etc… It’s hard to rank Oxbridge, since it’s a blending of Berkeley and the Ivies.</p>

6

<p>Agree with TSRPolymath… Oxford and Cambridge are the definition of excellence. They are just not jumping up and down about it.</p>

7

<p>@onemoreparent</p>

<p>Firstly, thanks - nice to hear that for once.</p>

<p>Second, how do I quote people? I’m used to being able to multiquote a bunch of posts by clicking on a button next to them, but I can’t see the option on this forum.</p>

8

<p>@IvyPear in what way is Oxbridge a blending of Berkeley and the Ivies?</p>

9

<p>

</p>

<p>In North Carolina (very likely across the South), Oxbridge commands at least as much respect, probably more, than the Ivy League. Many of the most renown English and history professors in area universities received either an undergraduate or graduate degree from Oxford or Cambridge. Oliver Smithies, a Nobel Laureate pathology professor at UNC, is an Oxford graduate. We’re far enough removed from the Northeast that the aura of the Ivies isn’t as great here, but we’re on the east coast and there are two NC airports that have direct flights to London, so England doesn’t seem all that far.</p>

<p>I’m certainly not putting down the Ivies. However, CC has a heavy contingent of Ivy-obsessed posters, so you are probably getting a skewed view here of what American students think about Ivy vs. Oxbridge.</p>

10

<p>As an applicant, I’m not excited about Oxbridge because of four reasons - </p>

<p>1) <10% seats for internationals. Plus they don’t accept all high school curriculum (eg - my system)
2) Fixed course/stream
3) Purely academic admission process (not saying this is bad, but this is just my view)
4) Lack of generous financial aid</p>

11

<p>I admit I am not as educated about English schools as I would like to be, but I wouldn’t hesitate to rank them as equal to the upper Ivies/top LACs. The things that discourage me as an American student about these schools are the low percentage of students from different backgrounds and the way that you are evaluated not based on how you fared in your own educational environment, but in comparison to the application pool in the whole. </p>

<p>For example at some schools a full AP/IB curriculum is unavailable; Ivies will still take this student if they were fantastic, but Oxbridge will not. Additionally, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m under the impression that Oxbridge is more centered around the humanities, rather than sciences or applied sciences/engineering.</p>

<p>I would say that they are on the same tier as Princeton/Yale/Williams/Amherst, but slightly lower internationally than Harvard or MIT.</p>

12

<p>“you are evaluated not based on how you fared in your own educational environment, but in comparison to the application pool in the whole.”</p>

<p>This is not true. They adjust according to how your peers performed, they add ‘flags’ to your application if you come from an underachieving school / poor area, they give tonnes of additional forms regarding class sizes, continuity in teaching, topics covered etc. and make more of an effort regarding student backgrounds than any universities in the UK for sure. The reason it’s not as diverse is due to the UK schools system, not the universities.</p>

<p>The reason they might not take <em>US</em> students with an insufficient education is that you guys are objectively already behind in your studies of the subjects you cover. I’m not bashing you guys, it’s simply true that our A-levels allow us in many cases to skip year 1 of US colleges.</p>

<p>“Additionally, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m under the impression that Oxbridge is more centered around the humanities, rather than sciences or applied sciences/engineering.”</p>

<p>I’m interested in where you got this notion of Oxbridge being humanities based from, as it is completely untrue!</p>

<p>Cambridge’s undergraduate maths program - most rigorous in the world, which is not disputed.</p>

<p>Cambridge’s Nobel prize count - highest in the world.</p>

<p>The sciences programs (particularly Engineering, Natural Sciences) are the biggest in terms of numbers - humanities programs have a far smaller quota.</p>

<p>The reason they may perform higher than expected in the humanities is that they have the 1:1 tutorial system, which arguably has a higher value added in the humanities.</p>

<p>Oxbridge rank #1 and #2 in modern languages rankings, for example, because you can’t really beat hours and hours of 1:1 debates, 3:1 group discussions with a native speaker etc.</p>

<p>Back to Sciences - who hasn’t heard of Isaac Newton, Alan Turing, Stephen Hawking, Rutherford, Darwin etc.</p>

13

<p>I believe I got the idea about humanities from my school’s summer exchange program with Oxford. The only courses that one can sign up for are History, Sociology, and English, not STEM subjects.</p>

<p>Thank you for the information; I wish I had known it earlier because I now regret not applying to some schools across the pond. I think that one of the reasons that many of the brightest American students do not consider these schools is the belief that the greatest economic opportunities are in the United States and that an American school will be better received by an employer. I cannot estimate how true this is as I do not have a degree from Oxbridge, but I speak merely of perception.</p>

14

<p>Yep, there’s definitely no money to be made in London/Zurich/Frankfurt/Geneva :p</p>

<p>When you say “school” I’m unsure about whether you mean 18+ university or an actual school school.</p>

<p>If it’s the former, it’s probably just down to your university!

  • Undergraduate students studying Biochemistry, Engineering Science, History and Physics & Philosophy can apply to study abroad at Princeton</p>

<ul>
<li>and Cambridge have an exchange program with MIT (Engineering, obviously :p)</li>
</ul>

<p>It’s possibly also due to their not being much transfer between them. The quota for US students is quite low at Oxbridge.
Just as Harvard only has around 10% internationals, Cambridge probably admits more than that but not many from the US. This means that there aren’t many US students studying at Oxbridge and vice-versa, thus we have generally only heard of HYPSM (the average grammar school student will only have heard of Harvard/Yale/MIT to be honest) and you guys have limited knowledge of our unis.</p>

<p>In Europe obviously Oxbridge is more well recognised as when it comes down to Harvard vs. Oxbridge, both of them are foreign institutions and there’s much less bias.</p>

<p>What can I say, were Harvard and Yale not modelled after Cambridge and Oxford? :p</p>

15

<p>@TSRPolymath

I’d be very interested to hear your source for that statement. From what I’ve heard from several mathematicians(including and especially my father), Math 55 at Harvard and Honors Analysis at Chicago are the most rigorous freshman courses in the world for undergrads, and those same colleges, along with MIT and Caltech, have the most rigorous undergraduate math courses in general.</p>

<p>

Exactly! In both those fields, Universities like MIT, Stanford, UChicago, Berkeley, Harvard and Yale would probably fare better than Oxbridge (which is not bad at all, to say the least).</p>

<p>

UChicago and Columbia have 3 and 5 fewer respectively, despite being smaller (fewer academic staff) and considerably younger (especially in UChicago’s case, which according to wikipedia, counts half as many academic staff, and had not even hit it’s teens when the first prizes were administered). Berkeley and MIT beat out Oxford as well, and Harvard would be well on the heels of Camrbidge, had it adopted a more liberal counting methodology (although the same could be said for Oxford, to a lesser degree however).</p>

<p>

Which obviously bolt their doors when they hear a Harvard grad coming round the corner. If international outlook is what you want, you couldn’t do better than HYPSM+Oxbridge. If you want to stay in america however, the Ivies and Ivy levels would probably serve you ever to slightly better than Oxbridge.</p>

<p>

I genuinely find that surprising. I certainly expected Stanford to be on that list (ahead of Yale). But that’s nitpicking…</p>

<p>

Not a European here, but I don’t find that obvious at all!</p>

<p>

Quite simply true indeed… Those MITians are simply a year “dumber” than their Oxford counterparts. I can’t wait to hear how the University of Kampala should have a 6 year curriculum by your logic.</p>

<p>But to address the main premise of discussion, other than the obviously skewed CC contingent, I have found few samples that would put Oxbridge behind HYPSM. In India, MITs STEM prestige carries it ahead, and in Chile, UChicago’s “history”, but in general, Oxbridge are considered second to none as academic powerhouses. Whether that stems from their ability to educate undergraduates, is still unclear to me (not making an assertion here).</p>

16

<p>I don’t really have much to contribute to this, but I’ve never really heard anything to suggest that Oxbridge is a “lesser” school than HYPSM. There’s obviously going to be a lot of bias towards the schools of one’s own country, but I’ve always heard Oxbridge conveyed in very high esteem. There is a very heavy bias towards the Ivies here, but there are a lot of Ivy League alums here, and a majority American population. The skewing towards the Ivies on CC is only natural. </p>

<p>Viewing this thread objectively though, the OP seems to have a very heavy bias towards Oxbridge though. Statements like “most rigorous math curriculum” and “highest nobel laureate count” aren’t strictly true. I don’t know that there truly can be a “most rigorous” math curriculum. The top US schools have very rigorous mathematics as well. One can’t necessarily say that the US schools have a “more” rigorous math curriculum, but they certainly aren’t less rigorous. </p>

<p>As far as the Nobel Laureate count goes, I second what jak321 said above. When the ages of the universities are taken into consideration, Uni’s like UChicago are quite ahead. Oxbridge has a much longer history, but only a few more Nobel Laurates. That counts for a lot.</p>

17

<p>@comfortablecurt
Well, in fairness, age reaches a saturation point, since none of the universities in discussion are younger than the nobel prize itself (UChicago, however, comes close), but general alumni comparisons would be rather unfair to most younger US universities. Also, Oxford doesn’t even have more Nobel laureates (associated with it, or currently on faculty) but w/e.</p>

<p>I’d like to make an addendum to the questions I pose to the OP in post #15 </p>

<p>

In fact, what is the student to faculty ratio at Oxbridge? A faculty-student ratio of less than 6 (as many elite US universities have) may not be a good thing, or at the very least, would be fairly inconsequential…</p>

<p>

I’ve not heard anyone at CC say that. Ever. And maybe you do have the odd extremist, but you have red herrings abound in the realm of the internet. You have people saying the same thing about all of HYPSM.</p>

<p>

Because for almost everything you want, you could find some university in the US, that would be better than Oxbridge. Oxbridge are great, and would go toe-to-toe with all but Harvard/MIT IMO, but you see my point, it’s stupid (2 Apples vs a basket full of Oranges) to compare two (albeit great) universities to a thousand.</p>

<p>

As academic institutions, right behind Harvard and MIT, and next to Yale, Princeton, UChicago and Stanford (a hair above Berkeley, Columbia, Williams/Amherst et al). But I really don’t know how well they do in terms of educating undergrads. Can anyone chime in?</p>