@NotVerySmart, that’s very insightful. I agree with your overall assessment, especially given the OP’s reasons for pursuing PPU in the first place. I had previously suggested transfer to a US school with better recruiting as a more realistic alternative.
just a small quibble, @NotVerySmart: the PS is not likely to be a significant variable in setting the conditions. Also, higher offers are sometimes given to a student applying for a joint schools subject, where one of the schools really wants the student and the other is less enthusiastic.
On the other hand, anecdotally I have heard that Oxford makes it harder to get the offer, but is more invested in you making the offer, whereas Cambridge will take more chances on a ‘marginal’ (marginal in Oxbridge terms!) candidate and give them tough conditions. Not saying those are policies, or anything more than chatter on the street though.
@collegemom3717 -I’m going to respectfully disagree. Within the very streamlined UCAS system, the personal statement is the one opportunity a student will have to convey a genuine passion for a subject. It’s generally used to talk about some experience or activity related to the course one is applying for-a PPE applicant might write about volunteering for a political campaign, for instance-and explain why a student wants to pursue that subject in university.
As such, the personal statement is half the non-grade part of a UK application (with interviews, at the schools that have them, forming the other half). I’m not suggesting it’s equally weighted with the interview, but Oxbridge has enough qualified applicants that they can take the personal statement into account as a way of sifting their applicant class. If a personal statement is particularly weak, a student will need to make up for it in other ways-which, in the bare-bones UCAS system, means the interview (a necessity in any case at Oxford) and his/her grades.
I can’t speak to the truth or falsehood of the idea that Oxford and Cambridge have different tendencies with regards to offers, but it certainly seems plausible.
@NotVerySmart They should treat me as stronger than a normal applicant since I have finished my exams… Not weaker!
also PPE has a higher acceptance rate than say E&M. Finally my APs are perfectly suited to PPE. What is a better alternative.
Finally, I think I can cancel the score on collegeboard, deleting all evidence of it. The only problem is that my high school still has the score report. Is there a way to cancel it with my high school.
@Crispin226 -A few points
- I would expect Oxford to treat a university student differently from current seniors for the same reason many top universities are more difficult to transfer into than to be accepted to as a high school senior: you had a chance to apply there and didn't, or you were rejected. The university has no reason to treat you as a stronger applicant than the average-many of the students applying there have also managed to meet the university's standards, and are applying a year earlier in their academic careers than you.
- PPE is very difficult to get into partly because of the acceptance rate, but also because it's a self-selecting program. You need to be not just in the top (insert acceptance rate)% of high school students, but also in the top (acceptance rate)% of the students whose admissions counselors thought they were 1) good enough to get into Oxford and 2) good enough to get into PPE. Your profile seems fine, but don't expect acceptance.
- From the CollegeBoard website:
“If you choose to cancel your scores after leaving the test center, your written request must be received no later than 11:59 p.m. ET on the Wednesday after the test date.”
The ship may have sailed on that option, but your immediate concern with deleting evidence will serve you well on Wall Street.
I am going to be brutally honest: you don’t have a great chance of getting into Oxford. Neither do most students applying there. Your chances, as an applicant for PPE, are maybe 10%. 15% at most. Top colleges are like that. If you want a job on Wall Street, your safest bet is to focus on doing well at your current college and getting into a competitive graduate school.
@NotVerySmart, I completely agree with you for other universities, but not for Oxbridge, and especially not for Oxford.
The “bare-bones” UCAS system is not really relevant for Oxbridge, which for a start are not 50% PS & 50% interview.
The PS is important for getting to interview, but at interview the tutors can see the student’s passion in person, as well as assess the depth and breadth of their understanding of the subject, test their aptitude for the subject and also their suitability for the tutorial format.
But in addition to the PS (and the Rec, which matters about the same as the PS), most Oxford courses require aptitude tests and/or graded written school work to be submitted (afaik, only biochem, biomed sciences and chem don’t require either written work or a test). The aptitude tests in particular are critical for making it to interview, and are (anecdotally anyway) a key factor when choosing between candidates that are closely matched after interview.
So, if there is uncertainty about a candidate after interview the PS really won’t be a significant factor in setting the conditions: the tutors have much better material to work with than an essay that has most often been heavily edited and polished.
Again, I’m not saying the PS doesn’t matter: it matters a lot at all unis. But it is not a key factor in setting conditions for Oxford applicants.
I have to thank the OP, regardless of his motivations. I am learning a lot about Oxbridge admissions due to this thread!
On many of the CC threads about deleting AP scores a long time after you took it, they say you can do that. Does anyone have any more details?
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2rCMHZaJdxcSVNTWVBHRTFjbDg
UNRELATED EDUCATIONAL OPPORUNITY FOR THE SOCIALISTS BASHING ME ABOUT WALL STREET:
Guys stop trashing my motivations to make a lot of money. I am a good liar too, I understand how to feed left leaning academics the ■■■■■■■■ they require. Some of the commentators above have severe anti-market bias.
I do not plan to defraud anyone or ask the government for a bailout on Wall Street. I plan to serve the following functions:
- Providing liquidity to individuals who want to buy and sell stocks. If there were not high speed traders buying and selling billions of shares per second with computers, then if the average Joe wanted to buy a stock, it might take him several days to find someone willing to sell the stock, by which time the price would have probably changed dramatically.
- Providing money for businesses to engage in new ventures, by buying the stock at the market price when the company issues new shares
-Allocating capital for new ventures. When a company issues stock, they sell it at the market price to raise money for new ventures. Cetirus paribus, the higher the stock price, the more money the company gets to raise for its new ventures. Thus it is critically important to make sure good businesses have high stock prices, and bad businesses have low stock prices, so it it easy for good businesses to raise capital, and difficult for bad businesses to raise capital. Traders provide this information to the market by adjusting the price of a stock via buying and selling.
-Traders also look for bad patterns in the market, sometimes they are caused by human psychology, sometimes they are caused by a computer glitch. Traders profit by recognizing the bad patterns and making sure the price of the stock reflects the true value of the businesses. They try to reduce the harmful effects of human psychology and faulty trading algorithms on businesses’s ability to raise capital.
-Making stocks a profitable investment vehicle for millions of Americans with millions of retirement accounts, with an average return of about 5% adjusted for inflation.
Of course, there are ways that Wall Street destroys value, such as taking billions of dollars from the tax payer in bailouts, using their lobbyists to write thousands of pages of regulations that small banks do not have the lawyers or accountants to deal with etc.
I strongly also believe that the financial crisis was caused mainly by moral hazard. The government bailed out Continental Illinois in 1984, and thus the term “too big to fail” was born. They then bailed out Long Term Capital Management in 1998, and also Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were also guaranteed to be bailed out since they were government corporations.
Investors then realized that these big banks had the full backing of the U.S. Treasury, and they thought that Lehman Stock was as safe as a U.S. bond, but with a much higher return. Thus, investors poured massive amounts of capital into banks that were too big to fail, and these banks, encouraged by a long history of past bailouts, took much greater risks. The financial crisis started when Lehman ended up not being bailed out, defying past precedent.
So long story short, there are many ways that Wall Street traders amass wealth by providing liquidity to the market, allocating capital to good businesses, and bringing information to the market about which businesses are good, which is reflected in the share price. There also ways ways that traders get rich from cronyism, bailouts, lobbying etc etc. But that is corporatism, not capitalism. And I plan to be a capitalist.
This thread has very high entertainment value.
So can anyone tell me definitively about deleting AP scores on the collegeboard?
Um, I’m no candidate for Oxford, but I’d be willing to guess that the College Board could tell you definitively.
I bet someone at Oxford knows.
@renaissancedad, why would people at Oxford would have no reason to know how to delete College Board scores?
It was tongue-in-cheek. I find it a bit surreal that someone is blatantly asking for how to delete old College Board scores in the first place.
I suggested earlier in this thread that the OP should just retake the BC exam to make this a moot point.
@collegemom3717 -Fair enough. I have yet to go through the process, and I discounted Oxford some time ago, so my recall of the specifics of the application process could be better.
@Crispin226 -The CollegeBoard page I quoted was, it seems, for the SAT. I looked it up and it seems you can delete AP scores. My bad there. I don’t know what your college counselor will think of it, but you’re more familiar with the details than me, so that’s something you can judge for yourself.
I think you’re in a fairly unique situation for an Oxford applicant, and not necessarily in a good way, but there’s not much information out there for me to judge. If you want to go to Oxford, you may as well apply and see what comes of it. Be aware that if you make it past the initial screening process, as ~80% of applicants do, you may need to fly to Oxford for an interview. If you think the chances of getting in justify that cost, do so. I’m going to leave it at that.
No it’s 45% interview 15% accept for PPE
Oxford does Skype interviews, and it does not seem to prejudice the outcome (though of course it is much more fun to do them in situ!). % of applicants interviewed varies wildly by subject, but typically they interview 3x as many people as they have places.
lol, @renaissancedad, I should have gotten that.
OP, I don’t know what college you are thinking of applying to, but I suspect that you would be very happy at Christ Church.
@Crispin226 -I hadn’t checked the percentages for PPE, but that’s better than one would expect based off the course’s reputation.
@NotVerySmart, to people used to looking at HYPSM-type admissions rates, 15% looks high, but remember the constraints:
=> I think (from your other posts) that you know that you can only apply to Oxford OR Cambridge (as another poster said, imagine what the application rates would look like if you could only apply to one of HYPSM, for example)
=>you can only apply to 5 unis total (again, imagine the drop in applications if the US had that system) so applicants are much more careful about applying to programs at which they have a reasonable shot
=> the application parameters are much more definite: you must have specific marks.
On top of that, the majority of applicants are British, and their schools are heavily involved in the application (including giving predicted grades), so there is a lot of adult pressure (direct and indirect) to steer students towards programs to which they are likely to be accepted (not least b/c for the competitive programs, the schools want to get / keep a rep for sending strong candidates, so that the top unis will look kindly on the students from their school…)
Also, the 15% is overall- it’s lower for international applicants…
@collegemom3717 -I know the UK works a bit differently (I detailed some of this on the first page of the thread, I think), but 15% still seems high for PPE. With the overall acceptance rate for Oxford at 18%, and PPE’s reputation as a cutthroat program, I expected something closer to 10%.
Although the applicant pool may also be tougher than for other 15% programs.