Laura Spence Affair - Background

Background

Laura Spence was a pupil at Monkseaton Community High School, a state school in Whitley Bay, North Tyneside. In 1999, she applied for a place to read medicine at Magdalen College, Oxford (there were one hundred students in her school year, but she was the only one to apply for a university place at "Oxbridge"). Spence had taken ten GCSEs, obtaining the top A* grade in each, and had been predicted (and later achieved) top A-level grades in Chemistry, Biology, English and Geography. Spence was interviewed by Magdalen College but she was not offered a place because — according to the college — other candidates (of whom there were 22 for 5 positions) had equally good qualifications and had performed better at interview. Nevertheless, there were allegations that Magdalen College had discriminated against her because of her state-school background and/or because she had come from a "working-class" region. The reason given for Spence's rejection was, as one media report put it, that she "did not show potential". It was subsequently reported in the British media that Spence was one of ten British students to be awarded a $65,000 scholarship by Harvard University, where she intended to study biochemistry.