The University of Oxford’s new vice-chancellor has said universities “don’t actually have enough information about the students we are admitting.”
In an interview with the Guardian, Louise Richardson commended the diversity of the admissions process in US universities, which her daughters attended: “Harvard has a very sophisticated admissions process for identifying talent. Under the UCAS system students write 500 words describing themselves. In the American system they write essay after essay about themselves, and there are whole ranges of things they can submit. The process is very different.
“I accept all the advantages of the UCAS system, the ease of going through it, reducing the real disincentives in applying to a university that requires half a dozen essays and so on. But we don’t get enough information to make the kind of sophisticated decisions one would like.”
Richardson, however, stressed that she was not calling for a “complete overhaul of the admissions system.