Thanks so much for the quick upload. Wow, the winners were impressive with strong answers to difficult questions. I'm really looking forward to what is sure to be an exciting final!!
Another Oxbridge final. I really don't understand it. The gap in the qualities of students at Oxbridge and the other universities must be truly immense.
I'd put it more down to the fact that Oxford and Cambridge have so many entries. Each of their schools effectively gets an entry whereas the smaller Universities (such as Newcastle here) only have one entry. Granted the brighter students will most likely go to Oxbridge, and that slight advantage will push them past the post, the fact that they have sometimes 4x as many entries means that they are most likely to get to the final and win
Thanks for your comment. I had thought about that. It still doesn't fully explain it (unless you think the teams are quite equal and luck plays a big part). One would think the best 4 persons from Newcastle should be able to beat most Oxbridge teams (because Newcastle can select from tens of thousands, while an Oxbridge college only a few hundred). This year this is probably true (Newcastle is quite a strong team in my opinion). But they couldn't really challenge Merton much. The other non-Oxbridge semi-finalist, Edinburgh, reached where they were with very small winning margins and got hammered by St John's Cambridge. In the end, I have to accept that the best team from Oxford or Cambridge is vastly superior than the best team from any other university.
A huge reason is that most university students do not give a toss about going on a university quiz show. They are mostly there to experience university (going out, meeting new people as well as furthering their education to improve employments prospects). This further reduces the pools of students to select from. However, Oxbridge students are usually a different breed. They care more about demonstrating their academic ability and have a genuine desire to work very hard (studying for their course on top of learning facts for such a show). In terms of intelligence, there will be very little between Oxbridge and other good universities (say top 20) just Oxbridge will work harder and care much more about academia. As they have a reputation to uphold, they are further driven due to the potential embarrassment around the university. Lastly, very few universities have a rigorous selection process for the best people... Manchester is possibly the only one outside the Oxbridge colleges.
Here are some numbers from this year (so, it might not be representative). There are 11 Oxbridge teams out of 28. In total, there are/will be 14 Oxbridge defeats, out of those 8 are by another Oxbridge teams. For a defeated Oxbridge team, it has somewhat higher chance of being beaten by another Oxbridge team (~=8/14=57%) than if everything stay random throughout the season (~=10/27=37%). This is because more Oxbridge teams get to the higher rounds than by chance. My opinion is that an average Oxbridge team is a little bit better than an average non-Oxbridge team. But judging from the usual bashing, a top Oxbridge team is much much better than a top non-Oxbridge team. In the end, I think that is not surprising. It´s another Oxbridge final because the top Oxbridge teams are extremely good.
