On "legacy admissions" in the US, see, for example: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/20...gacy-legacies/

Oxford University says:

"We pick the best and brightest students purely on their academic merit and passion for their chosen course. "

Anyone have evidence to the contrary? (Of course, the school you attended might have some influence, lol, but I imagine that's true on both sides of the Atlantic.)

My daughter wasn't accepted to my selective and expensive US alma mater despite her good qualities and test scores. I wonder whether having thrown more contributions their way would have helped, or having endowed, say, a new science building? Legacy alone is not enough. Never mind; she loved the small liberal arts school where she ended up.

No - better universities should not give a lot more better grades - the classes should be more difficult - difficult enough that only a fairly low percentage gets As.

The point of a better university is that is is more rigorous - and you are getting substantive content - not basket weaving.

If the grades are not a bell curve - then the classes are not rigorous enough - or teachers are marking to easily.

If the school don;t require a lot more - why are they "better"?

>>No - better universities should not give a lot more better grades - the classes should be more difficult - difficult enough that only a fairly low percentage gets As.<<

We cling to the idea that, through using external examiners to moderate and certify what the internal examination process is doing, the degree classifications at any UK university are worth the same as at any other university.

'hard to believe that the USA would have any truck with nepotism.'

Money talks

Bush senior, Bush junior. 'Nuff said

'hard to believe that the USA would have any truck with nepotism.'
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I am not sure that is stated with sarcasm or incredulity. It is one of the faults of conversing on such a forum. In either case, the history of prejudice regarding immigrants, intolerance of all stripes, and the attitude of those who succeeded against others is as deep in American culture as the founding fathers were of one mind. Many colleges and cultural institutions were established because they were closed to Jews, Blacks, Catholics, and other groups. Even today there are both whispers and outright allegations that are quotas against Asians in a number of the elite universities.

'hard to believe that the USA would have any truck with nepotism.'
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I am not sure that is stated with sarcasm or incredulity. It is one of the faults of conversing on such a forum>>

IMD - I'm british. I think that is probably enough information for you to work out that it was the former rather than the latter.

I have noted this well in my cyber marginalia:
Brits-sarcastic
Americans-Venal

_________________________

I grew up in NYC where the elementary schools have romantic names starting with a P.S. followed by a number. P.S. is the abbreviation for Public School as opposed to the British public schools of Eton and Harrow, for example. Of course, in the US, a private school is one that costs an ugly sum of money, a few have vaguely sounding British names such as Brearley, Spence, and Dalton and some of which offer a greased path to the elite colleges.

I, of course, went to one of the finer public schools in Brooklyn.

> Any class that gives a third of the students As is obviously slanted to make it much easier.

Pish tosh.

Programs in the College of Engineering where I labored were, and are, highly selective.

One would expect the upper third, yea the upper half, to be A students.

I would have been very disappointed in the Honors students I taught if any of them were to slack off so badly as to deserve no better than a "C".

I divided the Freshman engineering courses I taught into (1) those who would probably make it and (2) those who wouldn't. The latter received "C". I had already allowed the ones who had no talent for the program to drop.

The rest were grouped as "A" or "B".

Over many decades, the average grades earned by the A/B group varied by less than 5%.

((I))

Hi Ja,

> American and British English are to a very large degree mutually intelligible ...

What do I mean when I say

"I'm hopping mad about my flat"

"Please wipe that off with a napkin"

"Put this in the boot"

"What's under your bonnet"?

((I))

Hey NYT,

>If the grades are not a bell curve - then the classes are not rigorous enough - or teachers are marking to easily.<

A: One shouldn't apply Gaussian statistics to small groups, which one often finds in selective programs.

B: This is from the Faculty Handbook of my former institution:

A denotes excellent mastery of the subject and outstanding scholarship.


B denotes good mastery of the subject and good scholarship.

C denotes acceptable mastery of the subject and the usual achievement expected.

Thus, a C at Stanford implies higher achievement than a C at Athens Technical Institute.

OTOH, the expectations for an "A" at Stanford oughtn't to be set so high that one's weekly theme paper is worthy of publication in a reviewed scholarly journal, ought they?

((I))
Who just discovered that the faculty of UMCP voted to permit +/- grades.

A good example of the ossification of the system.

Italians also sometimes refer to a language called "americano". Many of them are surprised when I tell them that the written languages are so close that often I read several pages of an article before seeing a clue to the author's variety of English. The spoken languages are no more different than standard Italian as spoken in Milan and standard Italian as spoken in Naples. (The actual milanese and napolitano dialects, though, are almost mutually unintelligible.)

The spoken languages are no more different than standard Italian as spoken in Milan and standard Italian as spoken in Naples. (The actual milanese and napolitano dialects, though, are almost mutually unintelligible.)>>

not sure i agree with that, bvlenci. when we moved to Cornwall i found our [farmer] neighbour and the local butcher both more or less incomprehensible. it took me about 5 years to be able to understand them completely; they would both have thought that they were speaking standard English.

I thought I had made a distinction between the standard language and dialects. I'm sorry if it wasn't clear.

bvlenci - I think my point is that the distinction is not that clear.

Hi Ira,

Methinks that NYT, who insists on the Bell Curve in all classes, has never taught. Even though experts criticize grade inflation at places like Harvard, the reality is that when you have a group of superior students, the majority should do very well.

Now tonight I learned another word from you GAUSSIAN - “In probability theory, the normal (or gaussian) distribution is a very commonly occurring continuous probability distribution—a function that tells the probability…”

Gracias…

My graduate school program, which was considered a top 5,7 program had terrible grade inflation. Thank god.

<<No, linguists call these 'varieties' rather than dialects. A linguistic variety can have dialects of its own; Australian English has only a little dialectal variation but additionally has sociolects (variation based on social divisions) and creoles (the resultant language where two (or more) languages meet, such as Kriol (spoken in Queensland by Aborigines).>>

And is Scots a variety or dialect of English or a separate language?

(Lights fuse and runs.)

When I was in Edinburgh I got (as a freebie in a tote bag from the newspaper The Scotsman) a graphic novel of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde written in a language described on the cover as Scots. This language is not the variety of English that you hear people speaking in Scotland as a rule, it is a separate dialect that is mostly incomprehensible. I am thinking that people in Scotland would call their standard language English rather than Scots.