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Me too. Agree completely. I had to battle to get allowed to take the entrance exams -- my school didn't want to pay for an invigilator, so I sat them in the dep
by azalemeth 5y ago
Me too. Agree completely. I had to battle to get allowed to take the entrance exams -- my school didn't want to pay for an invigilator, so I sat them in the deputy head of the sixth form's office. I got in. It changed my life. I also realised that, on a course like physics, most of the students came from quiet, nerdy backgrounds like me. It was often history / english / classics / PPE etc where the "great public schools" made their presence found. Oxford is a big place with ~30k students -- people can find others 'like them' if they're so inclined, and the cliques are to some extent self-perpetuating.
- fallingknife 5y agoThat's interesting, because Harvard has less students than that in a country with 5x the population. So, in terms of enrollment number / population, oxford is more like the whole ivy league rolled into one school.
- azalemeth 5y agoSorry -- I got it wrong. That "~30k" includes undergraduates and postgraduate students; it should also have been "~24k". The actual numbers are Undergraduates: 12k; Postgraduates: ~12k. Also, bear in mind that it is a very international university: International students make up 43% of Oxford students; 64% of all graduate students are from outside the UK, as are 20% of all undergraduates. So, think of the pool as being a lot larger.
- TchoBeer 5y agoI think Harvard has students on the order of 20,000