<p>Where does Cambridge rank as compared to the Ivies, especially when it comes to the History/Foreign Affairs/Langauges sort of field?</p>
<p>Also, is Cambridge looking for the ridiculous ECs like it seems like the Ivies are? (ie. discovering a drug for curing cancer, saving an african country, raising a million dollars for aids)</p>
<p>Looking online, I've fallen in love with Cambridge, but its hard to find comparisons to the US schools, or even much information for US students applying to Cambridge.</p>
<p>My grades and scores are all pretty good, but I don't have the crazy ECs. What kind of student is Cambridge looking for?</p>
<p>It's pretty difficult to compare Cambridge and the Ivies since there are so many differences amongst them but I'm pretty sure that Cambridge is up there. Also, Uk universities do not look at your EC's at all. Admission is based only on your scores, interview, and personal statement. Hope that helps.</p>
<p>If you go by St. John University's twisted ranking system (as posted about in previous threads), the world's "best" universities (LAC's not included) are (in order):</p>
<p>1) Harvard
2) Stanford
3) Cambridge
4) UC-Berkeley
5) MIT
6) Caltech
7) Princeton
8) Oxford
9) Columbia
10) UChicago
11) Yale
12) Cornell
13) UCSD
14) Tokyo University
15) UPenn</p>
<p>St. Johns ranks by quality of education [# of Nobel Prize winners], quality of faculty [awards and "highly cited researchers"], research output [in terms of Nature and Science publications], and size of institution [academic performance compared to the size of university]. In my opininon, these things mean very little to the quality of education at the colleges. However, it may have something to do with prestige, which you are obviously interested in if you want to see how it "ranks." Good luck with your decision.</p>
<p>also, what are the differences between US schools like Harvard and Cambridge. From what I understand, its much more one on one with an expert in the field and there arent majors and minors, but i'm really vague about the whole thing.</p>
<p>"Lesser five" is a term used by some people to describe Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, UPenn, and Brown (refers to non-HYP Ivies). From what I know about British schools, the students choose what they want to study earlier, so they take a smaller range of classes.</p>
<p>Cambridge is right up there with HYP in terms of academics and international reputation. The undergrad experiences for US and UK universities are very different.</p>
<p>could you expand on how the Undergrad experience is different.
also, you said its up there with HPY academically, is it as difficult to get into Cambridge as into HPY as well?</p>
<p>by the way, nebzter, just to clarify what i meant, i didn't mean rank as in prestige (which i'm not so concerned about) but rank as in the quality of education, and also how selective it is.</p>
<p>Cambridge is not as selective as HYPSM. It accepts about 25% of applicants. Of course, HYPSM also accept around 25% of applicants in ED/EA. Depends on when you apply, I suppose.</p>
<p>Cambridge accepts more because it has a much larger incoming class, and in Britain students have a better idea of who will accept them and who won't because it is so heavily grade-based. HYP could probably replicate their freshman class twice over and not have a drop in quality. For Americans, it is probably more difficult than HYP to get in. Admission rates for Americans is low, and on top of that nobody is going to bother being interviewed by Cambridge who isn't serious, so the application body from here is extremely self-selective.</p>
<p>We have a family friend who will graduate from Cambridge (gonville & caius college) in computer science in June. Computer science, among other programs there, is a three year program. It appears that all course work is in one's major area--no "gen ed" requirements. Students study with their "supervisors" (prof in their subject area), in a small group or one on one setting, and attend lectures as they choose to, or not. Students apply to particular colleges within Cambridge, and different college apparently have different attributes they prefer in applicants.</p>
<p>Cambridge is every bit as difficult to get in as HYP. In 2003 only 13% of international students were admitted. The number gets even lower for special programs/tripos like Medicine. One thing to keep in mind about universities in the U.K. is that you should be prepared to foot the entire bill. Financial aid for international students is very limited, and merit scholarships are very, very difficult to get (but not impossible). As greenbean mentioned, ECs play a limited role in the selection process. GPA is, according to Oxford, also a lesser (but still very important) factor due to grade inflation/deflation/weighted/unweighted/etc. I'm not sure how Cambridge views it. Are you an IB student? That might work in your favor.</p>
<p>
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Cambridge is not as selective as HYPSM. It accepts about 25% of applicants
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</p>
<p>Well this is because it's very expensive to interview all the applicants so students can only apply to Cambridge OR Oxford, not both. If everyone was allowed to apply to both, they all would (because Ox and Cam pretty similar really.) and the acceptance rate would be much lower. Plus it's all based on grades. British universities in general don't care about ECs, race, social background or any of the other "hooks" that get people into the ivies. So people without the grades just don't apply. I don't really think they are looking for the same type of students as US colleges. I see people on this board applying to high ranked colleges because they have some kind of "hook" even though they might have lower academic stats in general. Oxbridge would just bin this type of application because without the grades, they don't care.</p>
<p>You have to apply for a specific course, you can't change and there are no minors. So you must be SURE about what you want to study.</p>
<p>The interviews are a big part of the the admissions process for Oxbridge. A friend of mine who lives in England applied(and was given a conditional offer to Cambridge) was asked to describe various elements of a physical system when interviewed by a physics tutor and he also sat a similar interview with a chemistry tutor. I myself would have applied to Cambridge but it would have been far too annoying/costly to fly to England just for an interview.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But there are so many who apply with 1600 SATs and number one class rank. Do they base the rest on awards?
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</p>
<p>UK students don't do SATs and schools don't rank. A-levels are more like APs and the average grade is a C. So it's not that common to meet someone who gets AAAA (it's rare to take more than four subjects.). I'm not sure how many US applicants they get but probably not that many. In general I'm sure APs are very important.</p>
<p>As Nitric63 said, the interview is a very important part of the application process. They may also ask you to send sample of written work to them, and you may have to sit an entrance test in some subjects. </p>
<p>Oxford holds interviews in New York and Vancouver, but I don't know if Cambridge have any interview dates in North America. They do in Asia.</p>