[Pseudoscience-is-malarkey (OP)]

The UK has Ivy League schools, you guys just don't call them that. They are just as expensive, prestigious and as hard to get into than their U.S. counterparts. In fact, when I was in high school, I got a rejection from Cambridge and I DIDN'T EVEN APPLY!

[Bored chemist]

The UK has Ivy League schools

We do, indeed, have some second rank universities.

We also have Oxbridge and London.
My dad is older than the Ivy league; the University of Oxford is older than the Aztec empire, and completely uninterested in upstarts like the Ivy league.
I can't see why a league of universities started in a Soho restaurant would be that great anyway (Is there some other famous Ivy which I have missed).

They are just as expensive

I went to the university of Oxford for 4 years. I studied chemistry with chemical pharmacology.
It cost me the train fares.

At that time, tertiary education in the UK was free.

I got a rejection from Cambridge and I DIDN'T EVEN APPLY!

I turned down Cambridge's offer.

[alancalverd]

I got a rejection from Cambridge and I DIDN'T EVEN APPLY!

Quality assurance is defined as  "planned and systematic actions necessary to provide adequate assurance that a structure, system, component or procedure will perform satisfactorily in compliance with generally applicable standards." 
Far better to anticipate and prevent nonconformances than to react when they occur.

[Petrochemicals]

We have no MIT though

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology

[alancalverd]

No need.

A man reached the "10 items or less"  checkout at Walmart, Cambridge, Mass. He had 15 items on his basket. The clerk said "Are you from Harvard and can't count, or from MIT and can't read?"

Here in the Fens, by contrast, we have an excellent school of Anglo-Saxon studies and a world class engineering department in the same street. Last year, when such things were allowed, I had an interesting College dinner sitting between a professor of aeronautical engineering and a Fellow researching 15th century Dutch mysticism. One is expected to both count and read.

[Petrochemicals]

No need.

A man reached the "10 items or less"  checkout at Walmart, Cambridge, Mass. He had 15 items on his basket. The clerk said "Are you from Harvard and can't count, or from MIT and can't read?"

Here in the Fens, by contrast, we have an excellent school of Anglo-Saxon studies and a world class engineering department in the same street. Last year, when such things were allowed, I had an interesting College dinner sitting between a professor of aeronautical engineering and a Fellow researching 15th century Dutch mysticism. One is expected to both count and read.

You must be from the school of arts Alan, but where would Greek mythology or Egyptiology, Dutch renaissance master admirers or histriographers be if, let's say Hitler came through wanting a war. Or we needed to fill the shortfall in Engineer's to, let's say implement the corona vaccine production. Or perhaps rescue a captain of a craft that had a malfunction during flight? That sort of attitude is why we have a massive shortfall in maths and physics.

[alancalverd]

Far from it. In a civilised country we expect engineers to take an interest in the arts, though oddly the interest is rarely reciprocated.

A historian friend told me "You could get a PhD in history by choosing any date, reading all the contemporary newspapers, and writing a book about what happened in the world on one day. If I wanted to get a PhD in physics, it would take me 5 years to understand the question." 

Said College dinner was to raise funds for a new building named after the former student who invented the jet engine.    The professor of aeronautical engineering had taken over the post from one of Barnes Wallis's consultants on the Dam Busters bomb. Two of my undergraduate contemporaries were serving officers studying engineering on scholarships from the army and navy. Two others became directors of public health laboratories. Oddly, the historian in my gang later became secretary of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, where his detailed knowledge of Tudor England presumably contributed to the success of offshore wind power. 

Both Eisenhower and Schwarzkopf were history majors, as was a good friend recently commissioned in the Gurkha Regiment.

[Slickscientist]

What in your view is the easiest degree to get? They are all hard, but which is the least hard? Also, I like physics, but I am not good at maths. That is why I get put off.  (I can't believe I was runner up for the physicist of the year award 2019 in my school and that I am having ideas about physics-related theories)! What a world...

[Slickscientist]

A historian friend told me "You could get a PhD in history by choosing any date, reading all the contemporary newspapers, and writing a book about what happened in the world on one day. If I wanted to get a PhD in physics, it would take me 5 years to understand the question." 

Said College dinner was to raise funds for a new building named after the former student who invented the jet engine.    The professor of aeronautical engineering had taken over the post from one of Barnes Wallis's consultants on the Dam Busters bomb. Two of my undergraduate contemporaries were serving officers studying engineering on scholarships from the army and navy. Two others became directors of public health laboratories. Oddly, the historian in my gang later became secretary of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, where his detailed knowledge of Tudor England presumably contributed to the success of offshore wind power

Can you believe that Prue Leith has more than 10 honorary degrees!

[Bored chemist]

What in your view is the easiest degree to get?

The easiest is one you are interested in.

[Slickscientist]

True.

[Colin2B]

What in your view is the easiest degree to get?

The easiest is one you are interested in.

yes,  very good
There is however a worrying trend among folks looking at subjects to study and seeing science and maths as hard

[Slickscientist]

I am committed, but the numbers don't register in my head. I'm ok with numbers in chemistry and biology, but not physics and maths. I don't know why.

[alancalverd]

Relax. Maths often causes panic but it's more like German or Latin (utterly self-consistent and logical) than English (a pot-pourri of everyone else's grammar and vocabulary). Each step of a proof follows logically: the trick is to look for the logic rather than try to remember the steps.

My favorite company accountant  graduated in Economics because, he said, "There are no wrong answers, so everyone gets an upper second."