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The more the mechanism of the myth-laden selection process at the University of Oxford is revealed (¡°Alan Rusbridger: lifting the lid on Oxford admissions¡±, 21?December), the more one is inclined to agree with Alan Ryan that it splits hairs, to the extent that half those rejected are not objectively distinguishable from those who succeed (¡°A select few: student recruitment in the US¡±, Opinion, 7 May 2015). Presumably no data exist on the fate of those who fail, although I read somewhere that a few are so disappointed that they decline to consider other universities and settle for the A-level job market instead.

As a University of Cambridge reject in 1964, I felt the pain acutely, all the more so because the then mandatory seventh term in the sixth form had raised such great expectations; but by the same token, the spur to succeed at the redbrick university that immediately accepted me was all the greater. Nevertheless, a slight sense of being an outsider clung to?me ever after¡­until last year when out of the blue and almost 50 years after the Cambridge fiasco, I?was invited to examine an Oxford DPhil. Finally I had been admitted and all was forgiven.

David Bignell
Via timeshighereducation.com

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