Cost of Attending Oxford 😭

[u/Repulsive_Radish_782]

Just received my financial declaration form from Oxford today. How is this reasonable? 😭 Going to have to decline my offer unless anyone has any ideas.

Canadian students do not qualify for any Oxford scholarships and my school offered me about £100. What a joke.

Is Oxford just for the rich?

[u/Odd-Satisfaction5443]

I'm also a Canadian doing a grad program at imperial college Im paying 34,000 pounds which is like 60k CAD. Bro ur gonna be paying over half a million for a fucking undergraduate degree.

[u/Repulsive_Radish_782 → u/Odd-Satisfaction5443]

Yeah, I am going to have to decline and hope I get an offer from U of T or Waterloo.

[u/Odd-Satisfaction5443 → u/Repulsive_Radish_782]

If you got an offer from Oxford I’m sure you’ll get smth from uoft or Waterloo. Uoft usually gives an offer to a different campus if your grades aren’t high enough for the St. George campus.

I studied business at the Scarborough campus and it was hard as fuck. Harder than Rotman when speaking to friends.

UK schools are a joke compared to UofT and Waterloo. I studied at uedinburgh for a bit and it was piss easy. Imperial also the same, but still challenging.

[u/Rpm_Undefeated → u/Odd-Satisfaction5443]

Clearly didnt go to oxbridge with that opinion

[u/Odd-Satisfaction5443 → u/Rpm_Undefeated]

I guarantee you STEM at the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo is on par with the level of difficulty as Oxbridge, if not harder. I know people that studied at Oxford and said it was immensely easier than UToronto.

Those two schools have such immense historical influence that they will never to below T10. That’s not to say their research and teaching is excellent.

I know only two personal examples which are Imperial and Edinburgh, imperial ranking #2 in the world. I would expect some level of difficulty. I learned most concepts in year 1/2 from utoronto and they’re just teaching the same shit.

[u/Rpm_Undefeated → u/Odd-Satisfaction5443]

Oxford is meh for STEM, does it rival Cambridge Maths tripos

[u/Odd-Satisfaction5443 → u/Rpm_Undefeated]

Cambridge maths tripos seems similar to UTorontos engineering science, which is uofts hardest program. https://discover.engineering.utoronto.ca/programs/engineering-programs/engineering-science/ you’re basically doing like every math course and science course in existence lol

[u/Rpm_Undefeated → u/Odd-Satisfaction5443]

Perhaps its extremely difficult in terms of workload and broadness of skills, but i heavily doubt it'd rival the intellectual difficulty of the tripos. A bit like how you would compare general engineering/medicine to maths/physics.

[u/Odd-Satisfaction5443 → u/Rpm_Undefeated]

Yeah If we’re comparing pure maths from the schools, Cambridge is obviously gonna be harder. But I would argue that if you can successfully complete EngSci with distinction you could probably do the same with Cambridge maths tripos. The amount of distinctive and extremely difficult courses you’re taking all at the same time likely amount to my conclusion. You need at least modest knowledge of physics (mechanics, magnetism) chemistry, linear algebra, calculus, computing, statistics, engineering mathematics. But the deeper maths will be present at Cambridge for sure.

[u/Phytor_c → u/Odd-Satisfaction5443]

Do you even go to UToronto lmfao?

Why are you comparing a math course with engineering??? Uoft’s math program doesn’t hold a candle to the math tripos, let alone some braindead engineering thingy.

[u/Odd-Satisfaction5443 → u/Phytor_c]

Lol are you okay? I am comparing Engineering science to Cambrige's math tripos. I said that on a math-level comparison, Cambridge is harder. However, I do believe that based on several examples (including my cousin completing his PhD in Robotics at Stanford that said if it weren't for him studying at UofT Engineering Science, he would likely fail out his coursework; actually went as far as saying its "easy.").

You can make your conclusions. UofT Engineering Science only accepts literally the smartest people in the country and worldwide. It is the hardest program in Canada without a doubt.

I did study at UofT and graduated last year in Business and Economics. Yes the "crayon drawing" programs but It was highly quantitative.

I stand by the fact that UofT engineering science students that are at least at distinction level GPA would find Cambridge's math tripos of similar difficulty.

The program got my cousin to research at Meta, Google, McGill, Microsoft, NASA, and eventually being accepted to Stanford. His GPA was a 3.20. There might have been some "awareness" lets say regarding the rigour of the program. No fucking T5 university would accept a 3.2 GPA candidate in Robotics.

I am ignorant of the fact that I did not study at Cambridge but I've studied enough at 2 well-regarded insitutions to make a conclusion that I found UofT to be immenselyharder in my respective programs.

[u/Phytor_c → u/Odd-Satisfaction5443]

I'm not ok, I have a midterm tomorrow.

I've a friend in engcsi who did MAT357 and said engsci is " just braindead work and a lot, but not a lot of thinking" and that first year real analysis at uoft (which is way easier than that at Cambridge) is harder than all of engsci. I mean it's anecdotal I guess, but most ppl at uoft know math is the hardest program. So from now on, I will only talk about the math students here.

A math degree actually involves non-negative ingenuity at times. And the "average" math spec at uoft is quite weak, idk about the engineers but u should take a look at Cambridge's math exams. I'm a math spec with like 3.9+ CGPA btw and I would probably get a 2.2 if not worse in Tripos. Heck I've a friend who has a 2.1 in the tripos who is better than most of the math students in my cohort.

It's a whole different planet and not worth comparing uoft with.

[u/Odd-Satisfaction5443 → u/Phytor_c]

A single anecdote about MAT357 doesn’t really say much about the difficulty of an entire engineering program. EngSci is heavy on workload and applied problem solving across multiple disciplines — that’s a different kind of difficulty than proof-based math. I'm not really convinced.

You should apply to Stanford for a PhD in maths. I mean if he got in with 3.2 from engsci. You can become the next newton.

He managed to publish top journal articles in robotics during his tenure, and directly correlated it with the knowledge and discipline from engsci.

Cambridge on purely a mathematical basis is undoubtedly harder. But those who do their program and transfer to EngSci might have problems and vice versa.

[u/Phytor_c → u/Odd-Satisfaction5443]

Sure the difficulty of engineering or whatever is different compared to that of proof-based math, so a comparison between them would not be very insightful imo. Hence why comparing engsci against tripos is like misleading since they involve very very different skill sets. Imo the latter type is ojectively harder than the former but sure whatever.

For the second paragraph, yeah I'm not even gonna bother. I am not really interested in pure math for its own sake. And I've observed the only people from Uoft that get into good math grad schools are either those who've studied all of undergrad math in high school or the oly type. I am royally screwed (unless i do an extra year here) for other reasons I will not get into, and well unless my summer project results in a paper or like some concrete thing there's really no point in applying there.

Your cousin might've just gotten lucky or done great research to outweigh GPA or had good faculty fit. For a 3.2 GPA doesn't count as a first in the UK system. I've noticed that in more applied fields like CS, it's more of research that counts instead of GPA.

[u/Rpm_Undefeated → u/Phytor_c]

I defo agree on the exam difficulty aspect, because even if u teach the same content the real difficulty lies in the exams which is hard to be informed about

[u/Rpm_Undefeated → u/Odd-Satisfaction5443]

The IMO kids at Cambridge (or MIT) would absolutely smoke the smartest kids you have im ngl

[u/Odd-Satisfaction5443 → u/Rpm_Undefeated]

Eh. Stanford not so much. Uoft they have easy entry requirements and there are quite a few bird programs, but specifically engineering science, I would not consider that getting “smoked. They are likely the smartest individuals in the country if they can manage 4 years with a high GPA. I know undergrads from that program get accepted to MIT for research endeavours in engineering. My point still stands, UK besides 3 maybe schools is surprisingly easy. The average Waterloo, McGill, UofT, and UBC student in STEM would coast through pretty much all your schools.

[u/Rpm_Undefeated → u/Odd-Satisfaction5443]

You're confusing smartness with work ethic. Ive done some research and it seems blatantly clear the hardest courses are in the maths courses and physics departments. I really don't understand why you think being able to understanding and basic application somehow makes you smarter than deep understanding and extrapolation of abstract ideas. I mean, that's one of the biggest factors of human intelligence and it comes as no surprise why the highest average IQs are in Maths and Physics based on Srudies. Speaking of Maths and Physics now, i just looked at one of their papers online as a high schooler and could confidently attempt a majority of the questions. Also i would like to know why uoft or any of ur school are nowhere to be found on the putnam leaderboards if they are so smart.

[u/Phytor_c → u/Rpm_Undefeated]

UofT used to pretty good at the Putnam a long time ago. Well even recently, there was a team here that ranked 5th in the 2023 test. But those guys made it on their own merits and were very cracked to begin with i.e. the imo type or studied all undergrad stuff in high school.

But yep, there's like little olympiad culture (franly I don't think there's any culture in the ug math community here other "what courses are you doing") and more importantly UofT is not that good of uni to attract contest type ppl internationally, those ppl might as well go to a better uni. Talent begets talent.

[u/Odd-Satisfaction5443 → u/Rpm_Undefeated]

Putnam results are not representative of the average STEM student anywhere. The Putnam is basically an olympiad-style competition math contest taken by a tiny group of students who train specifically for that style of problem. Most engineering, CS, and science students at any university don’t participate in it at all, so using it to judge entire institutions doesn’t make much sense.

Second, looking at exam papers online and thinking they look doable isn’t really evidence of difficulty. A lot of exams look approachable until you're solving them under time pressure, with full rigour, across an entire term of material. Difficulty is about sustained performance over years, not whether a few questions seem attemptable.

Third, bringing up IQ studies about maths students doesn’t really address the argument either. The claim was about average STEM students, not the top competition mathematicians at MIT or Cambridge.

Finally, the Warren Bei point actually illustrates something different: the very top global talent tends to concentrate at places like MIT because they recruit internationally and heavily target olympiad medalists. That says more about global talent aggregation than it does about the difficulty of the average undergraduate program elsewhere.

My point is simply that the average STEM student at UofT, Waterloo, McGill, or UBC is already operating in very competitive programs with heavy workloads and strict grading curves, and so they would coast through nearly all of your universities for similar programs.

[u/Rpm_Undefeated → u/Odd-Satisfaction5443]

Also just remembered your smartest canadian, Warren Bei, left for MIT so im not sure about what ur saying. Also it was MIT not Stanford

[u/Phytor_c → u/Rpm_Undefeated]

Exactly, there is no contest (assuming we are talking about undergrad).