UK vs US for undergrad

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21

With respect, this is very simplistic. Critical thinking skills may or may not be innate to some people, but different systems can certainly go a long way in teaching students how to approach a variety of subjects critically - or not. I’m not going to disparage any education systems by name, but there is no doubt some are better than others at this. Whether the US or UK system is better in general (vs at particular universities) on this is another topic.

You obviously realize all the schools you have mentioned in this thread are reaches for even highly achieving students, and I trust you have some more comfortable admit options you are considering too.

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22

Ah, I did, for a thousand times I believe (already decided on the eight papers I would take) - the issue is what I can’t see behind the neatly prepared curiculum of PPE - on paper, both Yale and Oxford students take Micro and Macro Economics, for instance, but the length and depth of these courses probably differs in both institutions. I’m skeptical that Oxford’s depth cannot be achivied at Yale or other Ivies, with additional breadth.

I’m not sure that places like Princeton and Harvard are skeptical of their students’ intellectual skills, as they’re among the best in the Anglosphere - even in our school, except for Oxbridge, getting into Ivies is significantly harder than any UK uni (Kings and UCL are called “easy” schools over here). Perhaps, unlike the UK system, they allow their students to be on their own journey and not expect them to follow the same path. What I mean is I don’t think students at HYPSM will be barred if they want to be intellectually challenged.

23

There are 2 reasons for this (not just your school, anyone). First, applicants are limited to 5 universities on UCAS and only one of Oxford or Cambridge, whereas students can apply to an unlimited number of US universities, meaning that competition in the US is more intense for a given school (and way more intense for say t30). Second, other than Oxbridge, UK universities tend to be quite formulaic in who they accept, vs US colleges which even way down the rankings use holistic admissions, care about the demographic composition and origin of the class, etc. so it is generally easier for academically achieving students to get into higher tier UK universities than US ones.

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24

I think you’re making an assumption that people can only be intellectually challenged at HYPSM. My kid got a Master’s from Oxbridge. She attended a liberal arts college in Maine. She wasn’t “barred” and in fact, one of her cohort (from undergrad) in that Master’s program was (completely coincidentally) on the same course. The program was extremely difficult to get into and others in the course were from Turkey, Mexico, Germany, and Argentina, to name a few.

Intellectualism can be found everywhere. Even in your own country.

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25

Don’t forget that the population of the US is about five times as large as that of the UK, so domestic application volume is much larger. Also note that Oxford and Cambridge are each about twice as large as a typical Ivy League university.

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26

With all due respect, this is not only an oversimplification but also inaccurate. I don’t understand how you’re connecting the application limit to UK universities with the difficulty of getting into an Ivy League school vs a top UK university, since we’re discussing the latter. The fact that one can apply to up to five universities doesn’t indicate whether it’s easier to get into UCL or Brown. Even if there were no such limit, gaining admission to Princeton would still be harder than getting into King’s.

Edited by moderator to comply with the forum rules

27

I believe there’s been a misunderstanding. My skepticism lies in the idea that Ivy League schools are less capable of fostering critical thinking skills than Oxbridge. This conversation should go beyond a simplistic “UK vs. US” comparison, as both institutions (and their students) differ significantly from the average. Additionally, when discussing elite institutions like these, we must consider that nearly half of their students come from prep or private schools (such as Phillips Exeter, Eton, etc.), which could be a contributing factor to their success. Therefore, we’re not debating whether critical thinking is innate, but rather that it’s cultivated early on in secondary schools as well.

Many thanks, but I obviously do, and as I mentioned earlier, I went through an education system far more challenging than in the UK or US, placing in the top 0.1% of students in my country. Safe to say, based on my current and previous academic success, I believe I’ll be placed at a good university.

28

I’m not sure you understood my point.

I think Princeton and Harvard and many other US colleges are skeptical that they cannot help their students improve their intellectual skills between the time they enter and the time they leave.

Indeed, but they may also expect you are going to be more prepared for certain challenges as a junior or senior than you were as an incoming first year.

As an aside, there is a lot going on behind that observation. [Edit: consider this an elaboration on prior posts with similar content.]

One factor is simply numbers. The US has a much bigger higher education system than the UK. And if you do some math, Oxbridge make up a larger percentage of the relevant UK undergraduate population than all the Ivies combined do of the US system. In fact you need approximately 20 or so private colleges (the Ivies, some of what we call Ivy+, and a maybe a few of the most selective Liberal Arts Colleges) to approximate the Oxbridge percentage.

Another factor is that these colleges practice what is usually called holistic review, in which academics is only one component along with (generally speaking) activities (not least of the sort that are valued student activities at these colleges), and various personal/fit factors. Holistic review is actually tied to the Liberal Arts and Sciences tradition, because the idea is that your education does not just happen in classrooms, libraries, and laboratories. It also happens in your dorm rooms, and dining halls, and during activities, and in the bus rides to activities, and so on. And they want students who will both value those interactions, and contribute meaningfully to them.

One of the consequences of holistic review is to increase uncertainty, because many of these factors are hard or indeed impossible to reliably measure. Indeed, these colleges are not actually trying to get all of one sort of student, they want to mix together different types of students, and whether or not they admit you in particular may depend on what other similar sorts of people apply in that given cycle.

And that uncertainty invites more applications, as many people cannot rule themselves in, but also cannot rule themselves out. And then some people who probably really should rule themselves out apply too.

So they end up with very low acceptance rates. And if you could filter out the unrealistic applications, they would be a bit higher, but still pretty low. And those people with realistic applications simply do not know if that college, that year, will decide they want that applicant in their mix.

29

Of course not, to the contrary, I’m challenging the perception that a particular system is better than another, or at least between elite institutions from either the UK or the US. I gave HYPSM as an example since they came first to mind when we were talking about challenging programs in the US, and questioning whether UCL or Kings would be better at fostering critical thinking skills than top US colleges.

30

You really don’t see a link between the number of applications allowed and how hard it is to get in to colleges? 23000 people applied to undergraduate study at Oxford last year for 3721 offers (approx 3300 enrolled). 54000 applied to Harvard for 1970 admitted places (1450 enrolled). If there was a limit to 5 applications in the US and only one was allowed to be an ivy, do you think the same amount of people would have applied to Harvard?
11111 people applied to UCL, of which 3135 were offered places. One assumes some of those applicants were backups to Oxford. Backups to the ivies - schools anywhere from northwestern to NYU and the top UCs - routinely get anywhere between 50000 and 1000000 applications.

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31

If your education system is far more “challenging” than the US or UK it’s curious that you want to downgrade to one of those. Do hope you come back and update us with where you end up.

32

Just to continue the numbers part of this.

So wanting to go to Princeton is the US equivalent of not just wanting to go Oxford, but actually something like a specific constituent college within Oxford. And some people pull that off, but many people have to accept an offer from a different college at Oxford, which is the equivalent of not getting into Princeton but then going to one of the other highly selective US colleges you might have applied to.

When you are then looking at King’s, which is around the 20th most selective UK university per the Guardian’s calculation of Average Entry Tariff, the US equivalent would be–well, I’m not sure, actually, because I have not done the math. But you would have to include many, many more of the most selective universities and colleges in the US until you got to that same percentage.

So yes, it is a lot harder to get into Princeton than King’ss. It is also a lot harder to pick your college at Oxford then to get into King’s. And the equivalent of getting into King’s in the US is going to be equivalent to getting into a US university or college that is in fact very good, but not remotely as selective as Princeton, or indeed any Ivy, or indeed any of what are known as “T20s”, and so on.

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33

I think what can confuse some people not very familiar with the details of the US system is they are not aware of how difficult it is to meaningfully rank the basic qualifications of US applicants.

Like, even completely holding aside activities and personal/fit factors, just our academics alone is a complete mess. We have no standardized curriculums, no standardized grading systems, no standardized grading norms . . . it is chaos by the standards of the UK A-Level system.

So highly selective US colleges have to try to turn all that into comparable internal academic ratings, and how they do that is generally proprietary (meaning not disclosed to the public).

OK, so now you are applying to these US colleges. What sort of internal academic ranking will they give you?

You don’t know. Nor do you know how they will rate many others.

In this sort of context, more applications generally is going to SOMEWHAT increase selectivity. Not one for one, necessarily, because some of those applications may not really be competitive even on their face. But most new facially competitive applications implicitly reduce your own odds, because there is usually some possibility that application could end up rated higher than your internally, possibly academically, and certainly when you factor in activities and personal/fit factors.

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34

Are we just looking at this as a numbers game? With 23,000 applicants to Oxford, it means tens of thousands of students believe they have a chance and are aware of their limited choices. If UCAS removed the limit of applying to five schools, it would only artificially lower Oxford’s acceptance rate, but it wouldn’t make it harder for a particular student to get in. Students who apply to Oxford just because they have nothing to lose are not affected by this limit. On the other hand, lifting the rule for applying to Oxbridge would increase the difficulty of getting into either school, as the number of highly qualified students would grow exponentially.

Similarly, if the US had a rule like “apply to only one Ivy League school at a time,” it would only artificially increase the acceptance rate and potentially lower the difficulty of getting into “lesser” Ivies to some extent. However, all Ivies would still be harder to get into than any London university.

35

I’m referring to the formal education system at the primary and secondary levels. As a matter of fact, we are far more challenged compared to students in the US and the UK, which is evident when comparing standardized tests like the ACT and SAT.

Edited by moderator to comply with ToS/Forum Rules

36

I’m trying to remind myself OP is just a school kid, albeit one who is so absolutely convinced they are right to the extent I’m not even sure why this thread exists as a question. I’m done here.

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41

Closing thread as we have moved away from the original question and are now debating which is also against ToS

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42

I was just about to close, and add that the OP is not displaying openness to new ideas and is posting stereotypes that serve only to spark debate.

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