A levels aren't related to Lunar Conspiracies, but critical thinking is, and this is important in that it gives us a chance to do a bit of critical thinking.

As is common, this is another "Cambridge is elitist" article.

Let's review.

She believes that her application has been rejected because she grew up on a council estate in North London.

This makes Ms Clarke the claimant of a fact. BoP lies with her. But the article includes no direct evidence of the claim. Critical readers will then immediately see the article as nothing but hot air. Mr. Sapsted, trumpetting Ms Clarke's cause, employs recognisable conspiracist tactics.

First of which is Sibrellian tactic of Appeal to Emotion. Just as Sibrel uses footage of starving children in Vietnam and other such emotive irrelevancy, Sapsted fills the articles will expression of disappointment from both Ms Clarke and Ms McAteer to create sympathy. They may be disappointed, but that doesn't mean they were unjustly rejected.

Second, is the classic conspiracist method of trying to prove his assertion by disproving the converse. The only justifiable reason for a university rejecting the application of a student is that they judge the student to have insufficient academic ability. Mr Sapted offers the excellent A level results of both Ms Clarke and Ms McAteer to show that they were suitable candidates and Cambridge should have accepted them.

If his arguments were factually correct, they still lack the logic to prove that Cambridge rejected them on elitist grounds. All it could potentially prove was that Ms Clarke and Ms McAteer weren't rejected on the basis of their academic achievement. But there are a number of other reasons other than Cambridge not wanting working class students. Perhaps Dr Wingfield didn't like them on a personal level. Maybe he did but more than he should and was concerned for the awkardness of having them in attendance. Maybe he was afraid that, being from Essex, they'd be a danger on the road. Maybe the competition bribed him to reject them. The reasons are countless. None of them justifiable, but not related to their working class backgrounds.

Apollohoax conspiracists are the same. They go on about shadow angles and illumination and radiation, but, if their arguments were valid, they would prove only that somthing is dodgy about the evidence. It does not follow from this alone that the hypotheses about soundstages in Nevada or secret government photolabs are indeed true.

It is affirmation of the consequent.

five A grades are not enough

Five A's are indeed very impressive and Ms Clarke and Ms McAteer are to be congratulated. We are all impressed. The University of Newcastle is impressed. The University of Warwick is impressed. The University of Southampton is impressed. The University of Birmingham is impressed. The University of York is impressed. Oxford University may even be raising an eyebrow. However, Cambridge University is not impressed. They require nothing less, irrespective of your social background. Prince Harry isn't good enough for Cambridge.

The argument is 'If I ran the zoo'. Yes, we may think it deserves place, but we're not Cambridge. It is Nasascamish.

This then leads to us considering other means of evaluating candidates. I have a couple of friends who were given conditional offers at Cambridge. They were asked for straight A's at A level, but that was only the beginning. They were also asked to get top marks in related STEP papers, exams that are of a standard beyond A level. They had to take special classes to prepare for these exams.

There is no mention made of STEP, AEA or any other related papers. It is Sibrellian tactics to leave this out.

The exact circumstances of the rejection are also made unclear from the article. It sounds as if the Ms Clarke and Ms McAteer recieved their results and then were promptly rejected by the university. Given that most people aren't very knowledgeable about how the system works, they won't understand the implications of this. And of course, after they're done reading the article, they won't bother to investigate furter, they'll just leave with the impression that Cambridge is elitist. A trademark Sibrellian ploy.

In Britain, almost all university applications for undergraduates is handled by the University and College Admissions Serivce (UCAS). Between September last year and around Jan/Feb time, applicants submitted their application forms (the general UCAS deadline is Jan/Feb time, but for Oxbridge applicants and applicants for medicine or veterinary science, both of which apply to Ms Clarke, the deadline is around October). As well as any personal and academic details, these forms contain the universities and courses for which the candidate is applying, maximum of six (in the case of Ms Clarke, who was applying to do medicine, only four). UCAS then forwards the details onto the institutions in question and they review the application, possibly asking for interviews.

The university will reply with a number of possible responses. They could issue an unconditional offer, which is an offer of acceptance without need to obtain any further qualifications. This is rarely made to secondary school students as the university would like the candidate to achieve certain grades before they'll accept them.

Conditional offer, which is an offer provided the candidate achieves the requirements specified. The requirements depend on the university, the course and the pre-university qualifications the candidate is taking. In many cases, in mine and no doubt in the case of Ms Clarke and Ms McAteer, the requirement is certain A level grades, often involving certain subjects.

Alternatively, they could reject the candidate.

Once all the universities have replied, UCAS sends the candidate and reply form (or they could do it online). The candidate the opts to firmly accept one university (provided they got at least one offer of course) and possible, give an insurance offer in the event they don't make the grades for their firm (if the firm acceptance is for an unconditional offer, there is nothing more to be said and there is no need for an insurance). The replies from the students must be returned by around Easter time.

This of course is not known to many people and so they cannot fully understand the holes in the article. If indeed, Ms Clarke and Ms McAteer were rejected after their results were published yesterday, this means they had both received conditional offers from Cambridge. There are then two possibilities.

First, they failed to meet their requirements for the conditional offer. They may have achieved straight A's, but Cambridge also are known to require more advanced qualifications, which weren't mentioned in the article. If their offer also required advanced papers of some kind, and they failed to get the required marks in them, then their rejection from Cambridge is understandable. They failed to meet the academic requirements. In which case, the article is a lie, not unakin to Sibrel's light flashes.

Second, they achieved the requirements for a conditional offer, but Cambridge decided to reject them anyway. This is not allowed and if it did indeed occur, it is a scandal a great in treachery, if not in scale, as last year's downmarking fiasco. The article would then be on page one and not on page seven. And indeed, the Daily Mail, the rag that gets angry at everything, would have a ten page spread on it. Instead, they're concerned with that comedian (I use the term advisedly) who crashed Prince William's birthday party.

There is another possibility, and from reading the article, I think this is more likely. Ms Clarke and Ms McAteer didn't have their conditional offers refused, they never received conditional offers. They were rejected in their initial application.

This has serious implication for Mr Sapsted's journalism. The article implies that Cambridge rejected the candidates with full knowledge of their excellent academic achievement. Only because I understand the system, do I know this is unlikely to be the case. Most readers won't, nor will they investigate further, so they will simply close the paper believing Cambridge rejected a student despite her having excellent A levels.

It is hard to accuse Cambridge of disregarding qualification that didn't exist at the time. Once, again, we have Sibrellian tactics. Just with Sibrel's Nixon argument, Sapsted has distorted the timeline to implicate the university.

The reasons for their rejection is laid out by Dr Wingfield. They may have had poor interviews. They may have performed poorly on the university administered tests. These are mentioned in the article, but since the implication is that the university rejected them despite their A levels, the value of this is watered down.

There is also no mention of AS level and GCSE grades, which are the only actual grades Dr Wingfield would have had to judge the candidates. While teachers submit predictions for the form tutor reference that accompanies the UCAS application, these results could have been lower than what Ms Clarke and Ms McAteer achieved. We cannot know because Mr Sapsted made no mention of it in his article. He ignores all these factors that may or may not explain the rejection in favour of dwelling on results that did not exist when the university made its decision. This is not unakin to Cosmic Dave's argument about limited photographs of Armstrong when there is ample television and sequence footage of him. Selective vision! It also is reminiscent of arguments about NASA's poor attempts to prove the prescence of its astronauts on the Moon. It is unfair to judge them on that because at the time, they didn't realise they'd have to prove it in the ways the conspiracists ask.

So, we have witnessed selective vision, emotive tactics, concealment of facts, playing the readers for fools, and most damning of all, affirmation of the consequent. Pseudologic is everywhere. By seeing it is innocent things like newspaper articles, it helps us to identify it when conspiracists use it and vice versa.

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

While we're on the subject of A-level results and University applications, how did you do Glom? Are you in fact going to be in the Birmingham region any time soon?

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Things are only impossible until they're not!-Captain Jean-Luc Picard

Admin of the new and very much improved Apollohoax forum

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

Good on you! See you in Birmingham for a drink?

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Things are only impossible until they're not!-Captain Jean-Luc Picard

Admin of the new and very much improved Apollohoax forum

Sure.

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

Another parallel with the moon hoax: it takes a lot more time and verbiage to debunk the claims than it does to make them.

If my calculator is working, there were 879 unsuccessful applicants to Cambridge this year. What about the other 877? Why didn't they go crying to the press? Could it be they understood and accepted the fact that not everybody gets in, and they might have been number 279 on the list?

I had to do a lot of thinking like that this year, since I applied to the US Military Academy at West Point. I personally thought I was as qualified as they come, but out of the some 2477 people with Congressional Nominations (a difficult task in itself) and academic and physical aptitude qualifications, I was one of 1163 people not offered admission. Naturally I have my criticism as to why I wasn't admitted, but I understand that these are my own prejudices (of a sense, not racial or anything). Nonetheless, I don't go to a local paper to print my sad, sad story because I'm not the only one in my position. The hoaxers would play on my emotions and preconceived notions and exploit them to "prove" their point. If only everyone had a lesson in thinking like this they would realize just how bad the HB's arguments are.

Well, I didn't get the University place I wanted because I got terrible grades in my exams. Serves me right for spending all my time riding motorcycles...

[-X #-o ops:

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Admin of the new and very much improved Apollohoax forum

These articles about Cambridge and/or Oxford being elitist come up reliably every year, especially in the wake of the Laura Spence fiasco a few years ago (for those not in the know, Laura was a student who achieved four grade A A-levels, but was rejected from Cambridge. This fact was, for some reason, picked up and publicly commented on by the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, and the girl soon found herself in the middle of a media circus). It drives me mad every year, because there are so many more factors besides academic achievement that go into getting a place in Cambridge.

For the record, I was rejected from Cambridge myself following an interview, despite a predicted (and later achieved) four A grades in biology, chemistry, physics and maths. Did I go running to the press to claim that my state schooling was the reason for my rejection? No. I fully realise that I was rejected largely because I fouled up the interview.

There is another factor to be considered, and one for which the universities are largely responsible and could alleviate with a little effort. My interview was, I thought, dreadfully conducted. Upon arrival, I was herded into a room with half a dozen other hopefuls, a copy of the Times and a plate of custard creams. My father, having been good enough to drive me to Cambridge, was immediately (and none-to-politely) sent to a completely different room. I was left waiting in nervous silence, then frog-marched to a small office for an academic interview (in which any technical details he asked me about formed in my brain but got lost on the way to my vocal chords, ending up as a random spasm of my left foot or somesuch!), marched back to the waiting room, where the custard creams were gone, and then marched to another office for a personal interview, and then told to go home. No attempt was made to make me feel like this was a place I should want to study, as they (I suspect) relied on their reputation as the top university for that. As a result of that, when my rejection letter came, I was not very disappointed. The sheer sterile formality of the event was very intimidating, and I wouldn't be surprised if that accounts for a few rejections after interviews.

By contrast, my interview at Sussex was a whole morning of talking to current students, touring the campus, and snacks and coffee laid on for interviewees and families alike in a very relaxed atmosphere, all in addition to the twenty minute interview with one of the tutors. After I left there I thought that there was a place I could really enjoy studying, and the events outside the interview itself certainly helped me to be more relaxed about it when it came my turn. (I was accepted, and spent three very enjoyable years there doing a degree in Biochemistry)

The article in question makes no mention of whether the girls were rejected before or after interview, which is a major issue. It just seizes on the same old working class student (an odd term, given the number of times we are assured by the government et al that the class system no longer applies in the UK!) with excellent grades can only be rejected /because/ they are working class, which is just not true. I knew a chap at school who was academically fantastic, but that was all that was favourable about him. He just wasn't fully developed as a person, and I could certainly see him being rejected from numerous places because of that.

Sorry, this seems to have turned into a bit of a rant, but it is a pet peeve of mine because it illustrates two of the worst things you come across in everyday life: The individual who feels that they are getting an unfair deal and has to make sure everyone knows about it, but fails to acknowledge even the slightest possibility that it could be a problem with /them/ and not the system that was to blame for their hardship, and the kind of sensationalist journalism that crafts a very emotional story (usually attacking someone or something) around a few facts that have been ripped from the context in which they should be presented. It is, indeed, just another manifestation of the attitudes that have led to the moon hoax idea refusing to curl up and die under the rock of logic that it should be buried under.

By the way, congratulations Glom.

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

Her "five" A-levels are only really four A-levels as no reputable university cares about General Studies.

I think it's obvious from her attitude why she was rejected by Cambridge.

The same goes for job interviews. I have had a couple of bad interviews at the place where I work, and they have given the jobs to people who did well. How they actually work has little to do with it, when it comes to the interview process. My last interview was conducted with two of the three wanting me to get the post, and knowing how utterly crap I am at selling myself, helped me all through that interview and I got the post. I've never been happier and I've never looked back.

What has this got to do with the Moon Hoax? Nothing. Just thought you'd like to know...

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Admin of the new and very much improved Apollohoax forum

The question is what the moon hoax has to do with real life. The answer is that if you understand why the moon hoax theory is crap, you understand the existence and avoidance of crap elsewhere in life. And there is a great social benefit to teaching people to avoid crap, because we tend to move in herds. And if the herds can collectively avoid the crap, we all get through life together with much cleaner feet altogether.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Nice post glom.
I read these articles each year and am baffled by the logic of them. They often seem to be accusations without much in the way of proof. I wonder how many of the people who cry out that the ox-bridge colleges are elitist have actually seen what it takes to get a place. Academic achievement is not the only yardstick by which candidates are measure that is true but social class entering into the selection process is unproven.

An anecdote from the hazy memory of Jumbo:
When i was doing my a levels, my school had 5 candidates for places, 2 oxford, 3 cambridge. My school was a good comprehensive educating the children of working to middle class families. It was certainly not some private school in the old boys network. Of those candidates 1 oxford candidate didnt get in. He got straight A grades but he didnt get in because there were 14 others after the place on the course he was going for at his interview alone. All had the same great grades but it came down to the interview. Someone else interviewed better on the day. The cambridge candidates all got accepted. They each had qualities that set them apart from 'just' being straight a students. They were either completely brilliant (though barmy enough to put an E.H.T in a sink full of running water during physics practicals ) or very very clever and very very articulate and so on. Class as far as i could see had no bearing on the result. The headline "Cambridge Is Not Unfair Or Elitelist" doesnt shift papers very well or fire up a sense of "us vs them" perhaps thats why its a headline seldom heard. Sadly the wolds opinions on this and matters such as the moon hoax seems to be swayed more by who can come up with something inflammitory (i have no idea if thats how you spell it) or who has the best soundbite than by logic.

My interviews at a couple of universities consisted of being talked at rather than talked to which put me off quite quickly. One interview was the interviewer telling me "Astrophysics is a difficult subject you know" repeatedly. This only happened after he had looked at my predicted grades and saw that i was doing amonst other things an art a level.

The uni i ended up going to provided a free lunch for me and my father. (Though later as a student i was one of the students who show their projects off to intrigued parents and found that it make staff members you never knew even existed appear at the mention of a free meal!) We had a tour of the campus and the town to show us it is a nice place to study. When it came to the interview the interviewer put me at ease and as a result i did rather well and was able to show what i was capable of.

By the way congratulations on the grades. Birmingham (and its physics deparetment IIRC that is the subject you chose isnt it?) looks like a great place to study. It was one of the places i looked at whilst choosing my course and i was most impressed.

Good point. I completely missed that out. Consider my conditional offer from the University of Warwick to do straight Physics:

Emphasis mine.

The University of Warwick is considered the finest university in the country after Oxbridge. It was my second choice after Birmingham and I would have put it down as an insurance offer but given that their offer was actually higher than Birmingham's, it seemed to defeat the point of an insurance. In fact, I couldn't put an insurance at all. Birmingham gave me my lowest offer.

Anyway, universities specifically rejecting General Studies is not uncommon. Cambridge is not likely to look too favourably on it, although admittedly, the offer one of my friends received didn't mention it.

Leaving out that fact is also important.

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

For one of my offers, i forget which, i needed at least 18 points to get in.I was allowed to use a maximum of one ucas point from the five i got from my general studies as level. The year after i left school it was made a compulsory full a-level subject rather than the compulsory as-level waste of space that i had to endure. I knew of only one physics course in the country at the time that would accept as general studies fully towards entry. Cardiff where i eventually went only really cared about my grades in physics and maths.

What do you do in general studies anyway?

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

College acceptance is an issue that varies dramatically from site to site and can depend on hundreds of factors.

Back in 1990, I selected three California state schools to apply to. UC Davis, UC Irvine and Cal Poly, San Luis Opsipo. The three locations got the same transcripts, and two (Irvine and Davis) got the same application. There was no interview or letters of recommendation.

I got accepted to Irvine and Cal Poly, but not Davis. Strangly, at the time, looking at stats of previous years of entering classes, Davis was the most likely school to accept me. (I ultimatly went to Cal Poly).

It wasn't that different a few years later when I decided to apply to optometry school. I toured two schools (One in Fullerton, CA, the other in forest Grove, OR) and talked to admissions councilers. The counciler in Forest Grove though I had an excellent chance to get in with high OAT scores. Six months later, the Fullerton counciler practically laughed in my face and said I didn't have a chance to get in.

When I did apply, I applied to nine schools to hedge my bets. True to expectations, I was denied from Fullerton. But I was accepted at Boston after a good interview, and had schedualed interviews with a school in Florida and was called by Oregon. I was also mistakenly denied by two schools (Chicago and Michigan) because they both made the same mistake: I applied the year after a Brian R. Coe applied and was denied entry. Both schools thought I was him and denied me. Chicago discovered this in an audit six months later and called me for an interview. I don't think Michigan ever figured it out (I was denied based on an incomplete application, for documents that I had a return recipet they had gotten, but I was already going to Boston...)

Anyway, this turned long, but the college application process is a bit of a mess. There's a bit of a lottery to it, to say the least...