[Pseudoscience-is-malarkey (OP)]

Top colleges in the west often boast that they are a 100% meritocracy when it comes to admissions. But I see famous people with lower high school GPAs and SAT scores than me (SAT's are similar to your country's GCSE's I think) being admitted into colleges that rejected me, or probably would have rejected me if I had applied. This is why I was never surprised by the admission scandals in my country and Canada. Does the UK have similar scandals?

Edit: I ended up going to Syracuse University, which is quasi-prestigious.

Also... when I say "ivy league", I mean it in a generic sense. Surely in the UK there are schools that are easy to get into, not easy to get into, and very difficult to get into. The third one is what I'm referring to.

[Bored chemist]

There is no such things (mercifully) as a UK "Ivy league" university.
There are two (... maybe three?) good ones.
This site is run by one of them; I was a student at the other. So... here's my story.
Entry was based on a combination interview and exam results.
"Interview" is a great way to get past rules.
"The candidate gave a good interview" could conceivably gloss over (And his dad, who is an earl and a billionaire) was also at this college.

But getting in is, at best, only part of the story. I don't know (or greatly care) about that place in the Fens, but at Oxford, if you failed exams during the 3 (sometimes 4) years of the course you got one chance to resit, and then you got a copy of the UCAS handbook.
And at the end of the course you sat exams and handed in coursework and were judged on it.
I guess, in principle I could have kept a note of my "candidate number". The person who marked my exam script did not know my name.
(OK, if it mattered, they would have been told)
So, at least on paper, there wasn't a mechanism for nepotism/ bribery to work.
Realistically, it probably worked... most of the time.
If there are thirty thousand students and a hundred of them got in by bribery, would you ever know?

[alancalverd]

When I told my headmaster I wanted to study chemistry he said "You will need to go to university. It doesn't matter which as they are both very good". So here's the view from the Fens.

There may still be a few historic undergraduate grants for students from particular schools but the numbers were always tiny. If anything, the elite universities are going out of their way to recruit undergraduates from less privileged backgrounds. And Warwick never had any such connections anyway.

Royal princes seem to get in with "undisclosed" A level results and to leave with "unclassifed" degrees, but the object  of the exercise is to expose them to academic tradition before military service  - it's considered beneficial to the country for the monarchy to know how clever people think and argue, and they are destined for a particular job anyway, so the qualification is irrelevant: consider it mandatory training rather than voluntary education. And occasionally, one of them meets an intelligent woman with hardworking parents, who will make an excellent queen. Not a bad investment for the taxpayer.

The remaining 80% of the undergraduate intake are almost certainly there on "merit plus". Since everyone gets worldbeating A* grades in the public exams these days, selection depends on other talents and performance at interview. The polish acquired through diligent parenting or expensive schooling certainly helps, because the individual colleges consider themselves to be academic families rather than degree factories, with the ability to choose musicians, actors, jocks and chess players who will contribute to the extracurricular life of the place.

There are exceptions. Those with a penchant for drunkenness and bestiality are specifically recruited to study PPE at the other place, as a preparation for a career in politics.

[Petrochemicals]

. Does the UK have similar scandals?

no, we just have the upper class

[Bored chemist]

Royal princes seem to get in with "undisclosed" A level results and to leave with "unclassifed" degrees

It's a bit hard to say what traditionally "seemed" to happen with A levels.
My parents both went to university, but didn't do O- or A- levels because they didn't exist.
O levels no longer exist and it's not clear how long A levels will last given the series of screwups that have affected them.




Prince Charles, who was a pupil at Gordonstoun, achieved five GCSEs (O-Levels back then), two A-levels in history (B) and French (C). He was then awarded a 2:2 degree in history from Cambridge.
It's fishier than Grimsby that he got in with those grades; I guess he did a very good interview.

The Royals exam results are (like mine) public data.
In my day, the local newspapers printed the results for local schools. They seemed to have a tradition of getting them badly wrong.
If you care about the royal family...
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/uk-news/each-royal-family-members-level-15041783

[alancalverd]

; I guess he did a very good interview.

That is, after all, part of his inevitable job. Faced with the choice of educating the future king or telling him to join the queue at the labour exchange, what would you (as Master of Trinity) do? The class of HRH's degree comes as a surprise - it wasn't publicised at the time.

Pre-O andA levels, we had School Certificate and Matriculation exams which my parents took, so I guess yours did too. Fortunately personal recommendation did play a part in the 1930s: my college library includes a letter from his commanding officer suggesting that a certain young engineer might usefully spend some time in the Fens, where he developed the jet engine from an essay he had written for the RAF officer selection board.   

[Bored chemist]

Faced with the choice of educating the future king or telling him to join the queue at the labour exchange, what would you (as Master of Trinity) do?

I'd have done the arithmetic;
Costs- we may have to spend extra resources educating him and possibly- in the end - lie about how well he did.
Benefits- for decades to come lots of great candidates will apply to come here on the (frankly spurious but...) grounds that the Heir Apparent studied here.

It seems that the Master at the time made the same choice I would have.
I'm not going to comment on the scurrilous rumour that Miss Saïd was allowed a second resit of her exams at or around the time that her dad paid for this.
https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/

It's not a very credible story, he spent huge sums in lots of places.

[alancalverd]

lots of great candidates will apply to come here on the (frankly spurious but...) grounds that the Heir Apparent studied here.

Knowing that Trinity ranks second only to the United States of America in numbers of Nobel prizewinners, I think anyone, other than Prince Charles, applying for membership of the college would be hoping to emulate almost any of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alumni_of_Trinity_College,_Cambridge,  rather than inherit the Throne of England.

[Bored chemist]

Knowing that Trinity ranks second only to the United States of America in numbers of Nobel prizewinners,

Good selection of spies too.

[Petrochemicals]

lots of great candidates will apply to come here on the (frankly spurious but...) grounds that the Heir Apparent studied here.

Knowing that Trinity ranks second only to the United States of America in numbers of Nobel prizewinners, I think anyone, other than Prince Charles, applying for membership of the college would be hoping to emulate almost any of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alumni_of_Trinity_College,_Cambridge,  rather than inherit the Throne of England.

And a few paedophile and sexual deviants.

[evan_au]

I heard an interview with Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel-winning  UK geneticist who was rejected by every UK university because he failed his exams on the French language.

Eventually an enlightened professor at Birmingham realized that your performance in French had nothing to do with your ability as a geneticist, and (severely) bent the rules to let him in.

Listen, or read the transcript: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/what-is-life/12875806
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nurse

[alancalverd]

Knowing that Trinity ranks second only to the United States of America in numbers of Nobel prizewinners,

Good selection of spies too.

and

And a few paedophile and sexual deviants.

Face it, Trinity  men all obey Ecclesiates 9:10 "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might". And coming second to the USA in these categories is no disgrace among connoisseurs of the genres.

[Petrochemicals]

Face it, Trinity  men all obey Ecclesiates 9:10 "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might". And coming second to the USA in these categories is no disgrace among connoisseurs of the genres.

Hilarious, its just a right old larf' really.

[laurenewison]

I think nepotism is a problem that is relevant in all countries.

[evan_au]

British ivy-league universities

I understand that "ivy-league university" does not refer to the ivy plants growing on their walls, but is a misunderstanding of the Roman Numerals "IV" = 4.
- Apparently, it started as a choice of 4 prestigious universities in north- east USA.
- It has now grown to represent an athletic competition amongst 8 universities
- And expanded to mean any prestigious university

By the original definition, there can be no IV league universities in the UK.

[alancalverd]

You might stretch a point by counting Oxbridge, University College London, and Imperial College, as the traditional "big four" in England, but St Andrews and Durham are older than the big London colleges (now universities in their own right), so there could indeed be a UK IV League of the oldest, at least three of which are very good whilst one produces a stream of corrupt and incompetent politicians and a few good chemists.

[Bored chemist]

I understand that "ivy-league university" does not refer to the ivy plants growing on their walls, but is a misunderstanding of the Roman Numerals "IV" = 4.

or not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League#Origin_of_the_name

[Sheilataylor]

I think nepotism is a problem that is relevant in all countries.

Yes, but it's actually not all that bad, if you will - for money a lot can be done, but normally you can't and shouldn't.