Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Norrington Table

I've just seen the publication of an interim Norrington table (a semi-official ranking of Oxford colleges according to this year's undergraduate Finals results). It looks like my move from Jesus to Corpus Christi is a step down, from 8th to 11th based on this year's figures!

5 comments:

  1. I wonder what difference it would make if, rather than rewarding colleges which got firsts, the points system rewarded colleges which avoided 2.2s and thirds? I suppose I could work it out, but bugger that for a game of soldiers.

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  2. Then Balliol would consistently do less well than it does (a frequent Balliol pattern is that it gets more firsts than anyone else, but fails to go top owing to significantly more 3ds / 2.2s than either Merton or SJC).

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  3. Rob,

    It does reward those that avoid 2.ii/3rds (by doing better), because it assigns a score of 5 to a 1st class degree, 3 to a 2:1 degree, 2 to a 2:2 degree and 1 to a 3rd class degree - as Chris suggests, Balliol fails to beat Merton/SJC because of its failure to avoid 2.ii/3rds.

    I take it what you mean though is why that particular division of points, that prioritises 1sts (because of the two point gap to 2.i). It does indeed mean that, if you have two students, it's better to get one 1st and one 2.ii (7/10) than two 2.is (6/10).

    I suppose any ranking will be arbitrary really, but there would be a good case for points being 5,4,2,1 given that most graduate jobs require a 2.i so that should be seen as the significant hurdle while a 'Desmond' isn't particularly useful...

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  4. Anonymous12:33 am

    Heh, if you were a year older it'd be even more of a step down. Last year we were in the twenties!

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  5. My thought was that it might lead to Catz doing better, given that it seems to be relatively successful at getting people 2.1s, but actually checking that would involve more maths than I can be bothered with (or have time for). Also, it's not clear why any result in particular has to be favoured at all: rather than have either 5,3,2,1 or 5,4,2,1, they could just have 4,3,2,1.

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