If you’ve spent any time near a school library during October, when Oxford applications are due, you’ll be able to identify the unique anxiety that sixth-formers experience. Textbooks spread out on tables, students hunched over personal statements, and a quiet rivalry that no one quite acknowledges. That’s what Oxford does to people. On paper, the requirements seem simple: AAA, AAA, and occasionally AA*A. However, anyone who has actually gone through the process knows that the grades are merely a ticket to admission. Although the University has become noticeably more accepting of equivalents over time, the majority of applicants arrive with…
Author: Janine Heller
On a soggy October morning, you’ll see them if you stroll past Turl Street: first-year students hauling suitcases up the cobbles, followed by a parent carrying a newspaper-wrapped houseplant. It’s simple to assume that everyone in this place came in the same manner. They didn’t. Some of them are supported by a scholarship program that the majority of British people are unaware of, and this unspoken reality is transforming Oxford more quickly than the brochures acknowledge. University of Oxford — Scholarships OverviewDetailsInstitutionUniversity of OxfordLocationOxford, United KingdomFoundedc. 1096 (teaching existed by this date)Types of scholarships coveredUndergraduate bursaries, graduate scholarships, country-specific awardsFlagship…
The exact duration of the three-hour AP U.S. Government and Politics exam is never quite what students anticipate. On paper, three hours seems doable. Anyone who has actually sat through it, with a keyboard in the Bluebook app in place of a pencil, will tell you that the clock acts strangely in a testing room. Like any other class period, the first hour goes by. Stretching is the second step. The third either flies or drags, depending on which free-response prompt you drew. The exam is open-ended, and the structure is fairly simple. There are 55 multiple-choice questions in section…
The Yale fight song was played back to 1,431 students on Thursday night as they gazed at a screen of singing bulldogs. Some had their parents hovering over them while they sat at kitchen tables. Others were holding their breath by themselves in cafés or dorm rooms. It was a personal moment for those children. For the rest of us who were watching the numbers, it was something else entirely—a tiny but significant portion of a larger narrative about how difficult it has become to enter Yale. InformationDetailsInstitutionYale UniversityLocationNew Haven, ConnecticutClass AdmittedClass of 2030Total Applicants54,919Students Admitted2,328Overall Acceptance Rate4.2%Regular Decision Acceptance…
It was a Wednesday when the email arrived. April 22 marked the end of the waiting period for thousands of candidates who had spent months reciting the rule against perpetuities like a prayer in windowless library carrels. The complete list was made public by the New York State Board of Law Examiners by the following morning, and the numbers quickly spread through Slack channels for law firms and group chats. 41% is the headline number. The overall passing rate is two points higher than it was in February of last year. Technically, this is good news, but anyone who has…
The week before someone takes the MBLEx, there’s a certain silence in the hallway of a massage school. Students murmur under their breath the origins of their muscles as they sit on the carpet with highlighted binders spread across their laps. A friend is being tested on the brachial plexus by someone. Another has a color-coded spreadsheet that resembles a NASA mission plan rather than a study schedule. When you watch this, it’s easy to forget that these are the same people who were laughing about how the exam “couldn’t be that bad” weeks ago. DetailInformationExam NameMassage & Bodywork Licensing…
In the US, the law school entrance exam has an odd reputation. At different stages of the process, students either respect it, dislike it, or quietly acknowledge that they did both. For many years, the LSAT has been the most crucial score on a law school application, sometimes taking precedence over years of undergraduate coursework. Just that disparity reveals something about the perspectives of admissions committees. On paper, the test isn’t very long, but it feels that way. Each of the five 35-minute sections is followed by a writing sample that everyone reads but no one scores. Even though the…
You begin to understand why people argue about colleges in the same way that they argue about football teams if you stroll through Oxford’s downtown on any weekday morning. From his lodge, a porter nods. A gate creaks open to reveal a quadrangle that hasn’t changed much since the seventeenth century. Someone rides by with a flat white in one arm and a gown under the other. In the broadest sense of the word, the university itself is hardly noticeable here. In reality, the colleges are what you see. There are 36 of them, in addition to four permanent private…
Some websites manage to withstand the turbulence of the internet. Not the billion-dollar ones, not the ostentatious ones. the ones that are helpful. Among them is Starfall. You most likely already know the letter B if you have ever been in a classroom or at a kitchen table where a four-year-old is learning it. the backgrounds in yellow. The happy little voice pronouncing consonants. The strange, almost old-fashioned charm of a site that never quite felt the need to modernize itself into oblivion. It began with a particular human issue, as these things frequently do. As a boy, Stephen Schutz…
Like most important government documents, the letter was quietly sent out on a Thursday in February. It was addressed to members of Congress and contained the kind of announcement that often goes unnoticed in the morning news cycle but has a lasting impact on classrooms. The Office of English Language Acquisition, or OELA as it is known to practically everyone who works with it, was to be dissolved, the U.S. Department of Education told lawmakers. 90 days’ notice. Beginning in mid-February, that clock is almost up. DetailInformationOffice NameOffice of English Language Acquisition (OELA)Parent AgencyU.S. Department of EducationYear Established (Current Form)2002,…