> refers to the well off professional classes or merchant traders.

Class isn't tied to money as much as the US.

For example, I grew up poor (as in eligible for free school meals in the 90s poor) however I was one of the posher kids in the school. Class is fucking hard to explain definitively.

I think usage in the UK can vary a lot. And different people may mean anything from the haute bourgeoisie to something much broader including a majority of the population. Another thing is that obviously class in the UK is a social distinction and includes a lot more than just income or wealth brackets.

Who still can't afford US universities, as UK professionals are (excepting the very top executives, public servants, finance and legal professionals, of whom there are relatively few) paid a lot less than the US equivalent.

UK middle class also includes university lecturers, teachers, various health professionals, graphic designers and so on, most of whom make less than 100k USD/year and some not much more than 50k.

I think I read that US middle class are people who only have to work one job

The beauty of the term middle class is that it can be whatever the writer wants it to be, including leaving it up the reader’s imagination.

In America, we have a classless society and everyone claims to be middle class.

I’m not sure Paul Graham’s use of “middle class” matches the colloquial one here in the UK. The students who are not getting in to Oxbridge because of their background are broadly privately educated.

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that Oxbridge has historically admitted a lot of kids from quite a small group of high cost private schools. The fact they’re adjusting their intake to somewhat reduce that is something to be celebrated.

Unless you’re a very wealthy person with kids at an expensive private school in southern England hoping that they’ll get admitted to Oxbridge, of course.

> I would suspect that the majority of UK middle class students would be eligible for some form of financial aid at US schools

Very unlikely, most financial aid is not available to international students.

But the difference between UK student debt (basically a regressive time limited tax) and the US version of student debt (actual loan that will fuck you up) is key here.

I don't think its possible to have a full student loan from the UK and study abroad the whole time. (you can do a year abroad though)

Merit-based, in a lot of cases certainly. But need-based, you’re there to subsidize the university and not the other way around.

Very few schools give international students any aid.

> You cannot compare the achievements of a student at an independent school to those of a student at a state school based on grades. State school and independent school are a fundamentally different educational experience.

While I agree with this as a conclusion, I believe you cannot really go there without acknowledging that this has been a deteriorating situation ever since most of the UK abolished the grammar schools.

"Comprehensive" education has done nothing except result in the oppression of the very people it claims to be liberating.

Paul is talking his book, he wants it to change to increase the probability that his kids get in. Of course what we get to hear are the "reasons", and this conflict of interest goes unmentioned.

In addition, the colleges have a lot of data about the people they interview and how well they do during the degree programme.

My understanding (based on a discussion with one Natural Sciences admissions tutor at one Cambridge college nearly 20 years ago, so strictly speaking this may not be true in general, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't common) is that during the admissions process, including interviews, applicants are scored so they can be stack-ranked, and the top N given offers. Then, for the students that are accepted, and get the required exam results, the college also records their marks at each stage of their degree. To verify the admissions process is fair, these marks are compared with the original interview ranking, expecting that interview performance is (on average) correlated with later degree performance.

I don't know if they go further and build models to suggest the correct offer to give different students based on interview performance, educational background, and other factors, but it seems at least plausible that one could try that kind of thing, and have the data to prove that it was working.

Anyway my guess is that of the population of people who would do well if they got in, but don't, the majority are those whose background makes them believe it's "not for the likes of me", and so never apply, rather than people who went to private schools, applied, and didn't get a place.

(also a Cambridge alumni from a state school, FWIW),

On student evaluations, I wouldn't be surprised of Oxbridge do badly as so many pf the dons were at or near the top of their year at the university, weren't employed for their teaching abilities, and seemed unable to comprehend they were not teaching cohorts entirely full of clones of themselves.

Dumbed down it was not, in my experience. Dumbing down would be a way to up the score on these rankings, though.

And is this new generation doing paticularly well in solving our problems or advancing the nation over the previous one? I can't see much examples, I do remember going through some of the science projects shown in undergrad showcase but none of them were tackling key bottlenecks or doing something novel.

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Why the process is not fixed from that part? Redesign in a way that private schools will not get any benefit from the process itself.

Went to private school and gotta say I went into the whole thing entirely blind - zero priming or coaching, just a begrudging allowing me to escape the prison camp for a night to go for my interview.

But does Oxford want the best student or some that had to work harder but ultimately aren't as good?

In France, our elite scientific schools recruit students based on anonymous nationwide tests. It turns out most of the recruits come from privileged backgrounds, and I've heard this is more the case today than it was several decades ago.

I'd love to see more diversity in these schools, but I prefer to maintain our educational excellence rather than dilute it artificially with worse students. I'm all for paying tutors to poorer but promising student, but they should be admitted against the same criteria as anyone else.

It's always the same argument.

If you are world-class talent (someone who gets to Oxford), you should be capable of similar results as kids from independent schools. Like Joe Seddon did (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Seddon - growing up with a single parent mom, working as a therapist in NHS).

It isn't fair to ask ones to have 4A* and others to have just 3As.

Only 1 in 2600 gets 4 A.

And 1 in 83 gets 3 As.

Making it 31 easier for people from state school is discrimination so bad, it should be illegal.

How would you measure this?

Before you continue, there are governments in the UK that have created formulas to mathematically measure your level of "struggle"...these happen to, in a massive coincidence, benefit areas that vote for them.

The same logic is also being applied within universities to boost grades as managers at universities have quotas to hit from government. This leads to odd situations where a subject like Scottish Law at Edinburgh has no quota for students without appropriate social credit because it is a subject which, unlike other courses at that university, gets largely Scottish students applying so it has to be used to fill quotas. And these students have to be carried to the end of their course because they are there to fulfill a quota.

Sounds like a great idea but, as with everything like this, the assumption is that a university administrator or bureaucrat can accurately measure your struggle...they can't, I am sure the wisdom of this approach will dim when you are being operated on by someone who filled a quota at medical school.

Maybe. Unfortunately it's very hard to measure that. Moreover, how hard you have to work doesn't necessarily correlate to how good you are. The reality is elite schools are supposed to filter for "the best and brightest" not "the hardest workers".

We're not talking about individual cases, we're talking about statistical averages.

The context is explicitly statistical, so yes, of course - but your point is valuable to keep in mind to avoid subconsciously painting individuals with the same brush as the big picture.

>Maybe a kid managing to struggle through a shitty school has to work harder

It sounds like you think admissions should be based on how hard people think they worked relative to others.

It might come over as appalling, given the whole culture has shifted towards: "Nobody is dumber! Every child deserves a medal."

Which isn't true, and never was. I get why we do that with kids in Reception and Year 1. With young adults, like University students, the fact of inequality of potentials of individuals, is just a fact anyone has to live with.

I am clever, but I am a fat, average looking guy. So that's what I have to live with. David Beckham is not so smart, but he is sporty and looks great. He uses his innate talents, and I use mines. Nobody is discriminated by being different.

The system has been built by those with means. And those with means more often than not are clever, hard-working people. That's how you get successful in the first place. And when you are born with great talents, you will go up too. That was the point of aristocrats being replaced by bourgeois, and now people in tech growing no matter where they are from.

When you compare 1:83 vs 1:2600, it is so big difference, it deserves bold statements.

In the UK, there's 1.5 million kids playing footbal. 1:83 ~18000 kids play in any professional club. 1:2600 ~580 kids get to play in Premier League, EFL Championship in a season

What is Oxford doing is letting kids who play in absolutely any club, if they go to state school, or only those who got to Premier League, if they go to independent school.

Again, it's discrimination so bad it should be illegal.

> if they think you're really smart, have great potential, and then you'll be of the caliber to get 4 A* no question if you had rich parents

Assumed, they really are 4 A* material.

If not, what might happen is, that Oxford might get worse in ratings. Is Oxford getting worse in ratings?

> It isn't dumbing down or taking worse students, it's easing out the rich types

But those rich types already have 4 A*, or they are close to it. Their kids have spent 10 years boarding, learning 10 hours a day, including Saturdays. And then, they are discriminated, because of hate towards the rich.

I guess, what will happen, is that some other universities will pick them up. Kids, who are used to work extremely hard. Kids, who know how to learn. Kids, whose parents and grandparents knew how to apply themselves and who instilled all this in them too.

And Oxford will be dethroned. Cream always rises to the top.

Alternatively, the gap between the classes for access to educational resources has significantly declined in the past twenty years (due to stuff being posted online).

It would be wonderful if we could, just once, have a conversation about something happening outside the US without bringing in US culture war talking points.

Sometimes colleges make deliberately easy offers for students they like, or they later accept students who did not meet the criteria that were set (if you set offers such that fewer students pass than you have places for, it is much easier to control class sizes – look at the chaos with Covid grade inflation). So I think it’s wrong to assume that the offer made to someone being high is a particularly strong signal for how clever they are.

Clearly this PPE student has some talent for politics to be elected president of one of the more prestigious societies, so it seems right for him to have been given a place.

Where is his reaction different to Kirk‘s statement that some gun deaths are a necessary evil for the „god given right“ of the 2nd amendment? Both seem to have lost basic human empathy.

Shall we ask the parents of the victims of the school shootings?

BTW why is a god given right not mentioned in the bible?

You also end up with a voter base that demands relatively little from their political leaders. The left-wing parties can win elections just using some feel-good measures targeted at recent immigrants and promising to make it easier for their co-ethnics to either immigrate legally or stay if they have immigrated illegally. That enables them to move right on economic issues to capture the politically powerful knowledge worker class.

> I don't know at what point people were convinced that the push against immigration is some kind of billionaire plot

Much like most other leftist rhethotic, this belief is not based on any real logic. Basically, the entire process went like this:

1. Corporations want more immigration to suppress middle class wages and workers' rights

2. They run propaganda campaigns targeted at the left and their virtues ("the poor immigrants are suffering and need our help! only racist nazis disagree!")

3. Said leftists, desperate to virtue signal and avoid being seen as racist or xenophobic, immediately move to support the cause unconditionally

4. They see the world as purely black and white, good vs evil, so when they ask themselves "do billionaires want immigration?" the thought process goes "billionaires=bad and immigration=good, therefore billionaires hate immigration"

Do you think billionaires care whom they exploit?

It’s a distraction and divide et impera to prevent that immigrant and lower class local workers join forces.

Some kind of employment ping pong. At the end it‘s always cheap labor

> There is no billionaire secretly hoarding all the top university spots.

Do you think Trump got into Wharton on his academic prowess? Legacy admits and donor kids take spots from both middle and lower classes.

> And no one is saying immigrants are taking the spots.

Sure they are. https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/08/27/trump-administration-pro...

Interestingly, some colleges tacitly subdivide these groups further.

Christ's Cambridge famously used to hand out "2 E" offers to those in the first group who they know would put the effort in anyway, but "3/4 A" offers to those in the first group they thought might just coast with a 2E offer.

A "2E" offer was certainly a mark of prestige.

(You get your offer in around December time, but sit your A levels in the summer).

Your link bolsters the point of the person you are responding to. The lowering of standards is the relevant portion. It would be relevant if they lowered standards for any group, just happened they lowered them for poor families.

He also provided no numbers or evidence - did his children fail to get in or something?