A100 Medicine Admissions Statistics 2015
Dear University of Oxford,
Please can I request the following, anonymised, data for the 2015 application cycle that has just ended for Medicine (A100):
1) The number of GCSEs each applicant applied with, and itemised grades (e.g. 3A*s 4As 1B)
2) The predicted and achieved grades in A-levels or any relevant qualification
3) The first part of the postcode from which each applicant applied from (e.g. SW1) and ACORN band
4) The type of school the applicant attended (i.e. State Maintained (and Grammar itemised separately), Independent etc) at the time of GCSEs and then A-levels
5) The 'contextual score' assigned to each applicant to show under/over-performance contextually
4) Whether the applicant qualified for 'extenuating circumstances'
5) The BMAT scores in each section
6) The first choice college applied to and secondary college interviewed at
7) The outcome of application and college allocated to
8) If rejected, a generalised reason as to why
Yours faithfully,
Walter Monroe
Dear Mr Monroe,
I write to acknowledge your request under the Freedom of Information Act.
We shall send you a substantive response as soon as possible and no later than the statutory deadline of 26 October.
Yours sincerely
Max Todd
Assistant Registrar (Compliance)
Council Secretariat
University Offices
Wellington Square
Oxford
OX1 2JD
01865 (2)80299
Dear Mr Todd,
I am writing to request an update on the status of my request?
Yours sincerely,
Walter Monroe
Dear Mr Monroe,
According to our records, the reply is due today. A colleague will reply.
Yours sincerely
Max Todd
Assistant Registrar (Compliance)
council Secretariat
University Offices
Wellington Square
Oxford
OX1 2JD
01865 (2)80299
Dear UAS Foi,
Please can you explain as to how the residual GCSE score for contextualisation is calculated? Many thanks.
Yours sincerely,
Walter Monroe
The contextualised GCSE score is calculated as follows:
The number of A* at GCSE is normalised with respect to the rest of the cohort The proportion of A* at GCSE is normalised with respect to the rest of the cohort.
The two scores above are then averaged to produce the GCSE score.
For each candidate the GCSE score is spotted against the school performance data at which the candidate took their GCSEs (% of pupils obtaining 5 or more GCSEs at grades A*-C). The contextualised GCSE score is the standardised residual taken from the regression line.
Yours sincerely
FOI Oxford
I refer to your email of 2 July 2017, forwarding an expression of concern
about the potential for individuals to be identified from the spreadsheet
that we supplied in response to a request from Walter Monroe in September
2015.
I attach a revised spreadsheet in order to meet this concern.
FOI Oxford
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Richard Taylor left an annotation ()
Our attention was drawn to the fact exam grades and test scores for specific Oxford University medicine applicants could be identified based on, for example, a student's college and school type.
When we became aware of this we decided we couldn't justify publishing this personal information; students wouldn't expect information on their individual exam results, and other information relating to their applications to be made public.
It's unfortunate though that we've had to remove potentially valuable information from public view in this case. It doesn't look as if it would have been possible to provide all the information requested without releasing personally identifiable information.
The replacement response omits information related to colleges, making it improbable that individuals can be identified by others based on openly available information. (If anyone still has concerns then please do get in touch).
Hopefully anyone interested in statistics relating to Oxford University colleges' acceptance or rejection of medical students will be able to obtain non-personally identifiable information via other requests.
Removing information released in response to a FOI request is something we at WhatDoTheyKnow only do in exceptional circumstances; we apologise to anyone who has referenced the data we are no-longer publishing in their academic, journalistic or other activities.
The University should have taken steps to ensure the information was depersonalised before release.
Richard
--
WhatDoTheyKnow.com volunteer