An Oxbridge reject is someone who has been rejected from either the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge. The term "Oxbridge" is a portmanteau of Oxford and Cambridge.
The term has received some criticism for its derogatory and elitist nature. Eric Thomas, Vice-Chancellor of Bristol University has criticised it because of the way in which it makes people view British higher education through an Oxbridge prism.
In 2000, Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer and subsequently Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, started a major political row about higher education when he accused Oxford University of elitism in its admissions procedures.
The Laura Spence Affair, as it became known, is one of the most publicised cases of an Oxbridge reject. Rejected from Magdalen College, Oxford to read medicine, Laura Spence went on to study with a scholarship at Harvard in the United States. The rejection was seen as discrimination because of her state-school background. She subsequently went on to study graduate-entry medicine (a 4 year course) at Wolfson College, Cambridge.
Read more about Oxbridge Reject: In Literature
Famous quotes containing the word reject:
“Once women begin to question the inevitability of their subordination and to reject the conventions formerly associated with it, they can no longer retreat to the safety of those conventions. The woman who rejects the stereotype of feminine weakness and dependence can no longer find much comfort in the cliché that all men are beasts. She has no choice except to believe, on the contrary, that men are human beings, and she finds it hard to forgive them when they act like animals.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)