Don’t be fooled – you’d get into Oxford
Rachel Johnson calls to tell me she’s doing a piece for the Financial Times saying she wouldn’t have got into Oxford if she’d been applying this year. She’s quite wrong, of course. A myth has grown up among my generation of Oxford graduates that it’s harder for their children to get in than it was for them, when in fact the opposite is true.
There are two reasons why they think this. First, they mistakenly believe that getting two As and an A* in their A-levels — the standard Oxford offer today — is beyond them. This ignores the rampant grade inflation of the past 25 years. One of the most remarkable facts about this year’s batch of A-level results is that it was the first time in 14 years the percentage getting top marks didn’t increase.
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