It’s a mystery worthy of an Oxford admissions question: just what, exactly, is occurring with applications to Britain’s most prestigious universities
As new findings published within the Guardian show, there are fresh questions for those looking to explain the distance between offers given to different ethnic groups on the university:
Oxford University have been accused of “institutional bias” against black and ethnic minority students after figures revealed that white applicants to a couple of the foremost competitive courses are as much as twice as more likely to get a spot than others, even if they get an identical A-level grades.
Figures for applications to the university in 2010 and 2011, obtained by the Guardian under the liberty of info Act, revealed that 25.7% of white applicants received a proposal to wait the university, compared with 17.2% of scholars from ethnic minorities …
White students were greater than twice as more likely to receive a proposal to review medicine than those from ethnic minorities. The effect persisted for probably the most able students: 43% of white students who went directly to receive three or more A* grades at A-level got offers, compared with just 22.1% of minority students.
For economics and management, the university’s best course, 19.1% of white applicants received offers, compared with 9.3% for ethnic minorities. Among the many most able, these success rates increased to 44.4% and 29.5% respectively.
The overall application gaps between different ethnic groups are stark, whether for all applicants or maybe only for people who go directly to get the head grades (A*A*A* or better at A-level):
Different people may jump to different explanations for the stark gaps. However the figures are worth pondering (especially given applications for law show no significant differences) in a bit more detail.
The the first thing to notice is that each one the figures relate to UK applicants – international are excluded – who provided information on their ethnicity on their UCAS forms (around a 3rd of all applicants choose to not provide this knowledge). This in any case means like is being compared with like.
The second is to identify that the long-running explanation given for an application race gap – disparities during which subjects students apply for – should have some explaining power, because the below table shows.
It shows what quantity of scholars from each ethnic group applied for a number of Oxford’s most and least competitive courses – and does show ethnic minorities usually tend to apply for a few of the hardest courses to get on.
So subject mix, it kind of feels, could account for a few of the overall gap between white applicants and similarly-performing students from ethnic minorities.
But this combination cannot explain the discrepencies within a number of those subjects themselves – and nor, as these figures show, can those differences be explained by ability, a minimum of as far as it’s reflected in the grades students go directly to get (university spokeswomen were keen to fret A-levels are only one measure of ability, which they are saying is likewise ascertained through additional tests and interview).
As ever, the knowledge can only really show us what’s happening, instead of why, or the way it could be changed. But we’ve posted the entire FOI data as released by Oxford below – have a look and tell us what you locate.
One important caveat, however: at the individual subjects, applicant numbers get very small (particularly when observing students with three A* or higher). Thus, some apparent differences between different ethnic groups will probably be due to the random quirks – or in other words, not statisitically significant.
To get robust results, we grouped all ethnic minority candidates together and compared them with their white counterparts, generating statistically significant results for medicine and economics and management.
The data is below – tell us what you discover within the comments below or via email to james.ball@guardian.co.uk.
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