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Notes -
Who are these old Oxbridge families?
The royals themselves are split between St Andrews, Exeter, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Cambridge. Hugh Grosvenor, the archetypical old money aristocrat, went to Newcastle.
But that's besides the point, the fact is that university admissions in the UK are handled by either:
a) disinterested bureaucrats who don't care who your father is and are only looking at your grades
b) academics who care intensely about how smart next year's undergraduate class is going to be
The main reason US universities engage in legacy admissions is to ensure donations from wealthy families. UK universities really only started chasing after donors the way American universities do about ten years ago. There aren't any legacy children to admit because the whole thing of children going to their parents Alma Mater just isn't a thing here.
Oxbridge are in fact more meritocratic than most UK universities, because they interview as well as relying on how well you did in school.
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