From Jenna Orkin

Oxford University agrees to let in disadvantaged students with lower grades

I once had a conversation with Oxford philosophy professor Sir A.J. Ayer about this subject. "Freddy" was of the old school belief that there's no getting around it; the university needed to foster talent and achievement which revealed themselves in grades, tests, etc. I believed then, and still believe, that the criteria are skewed. leaving aside math and science, which you can't fuck around with, although you can make up for lost time, it's quite possible for a brilliant kid to perform badly on tests because he or she simply hasn't been exposed to the requisite culture.
when my son had to take an iq test for first grade, I was shown the questions afterwards and knew immediately which ones he would have gotten wrong. one was a 'what's wrong with this picture?' type in which a little boy was holding a saw with the teeth facing up. I knew my son had never seen a saw and indeed, he got the question wrong. a kid whose father was a carpenter would have gotten it right.
no big deal here but there are innumerable ways in which kids get screwed on tests. witness all the immigrants at ellis island who were deemed imbeciles because they didn't speak English. ok, we've evolved beyond that, but who was the imbecile in that case?
then there's the whole issue of why it's so important to go to Oxford in the first place. the whole pipeline to power question.... - JO