The University of Oxford has been encouraged to make a major change to its admissions process that could massively affect future students.
Academics have called for the institution and Cambridge University to scrap interviews and pick their applicants from a top-performing students lottery instead.
Two sociology professors have argued that the historic universities’ “stranglehold on elite recruitment” needs to be broken
Prof Aaron Reeves and Prof Sam Friedman, sociologists at the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics, suggest the alternations in a book called Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite.
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“We therefore recommend removing the application process to Oxbridge entirely for academically able students,” they said.
A lottery-style admissions system was then suggested with the academic pair arguing that “it is time for change”.
Oxford and Cambridge would choose students from the top five per cent of pupils across the country based on their A-level results at random in such a system.
The pair informed that this type of system had also been introduced in Texas in 1997 which guarantees that those who graduate in the top 10 per cent of their high school class gain automatic admission to state-funded universities.
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As many as 31 per cent of students at Oxford were privately educated in 2023 compared to 28 per cent at Cambridge reports The Telegraph.
Oxford’s entrance exams and interviews, which were moved online during the pandemic and will remain so until 2028, comprise around 70 per cent of the admissions process.
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