Top of the Swots
MERTON BEAT OFF arch-rivals St John's to top this summer's Norrington Table, but the real stars of the show were Sommerville with a dramatic sixteen place rise from twenty-fourth to eighth.
The improvement sees Baroness Thatcher's old college at an all-time high. Somerville has never before been ranked higher than twentieth.
Somerville's success has been attributed to the former womens College's decision to admit male undergraduates in 1994. Dame Fiona Caldicott, Principal of Somerville, was quoted in the national press as saying that the admission of men enabled the college to attract a higher quality selection of female applicants.
St Hildas, the only remaining all-female college in Oxford, dropped two places to 28th, a position that may fuel critics' concerns whether its single-sex status can be justified in academic terms.
Merton's success was their eighth in twenty years and their third in the last five.
St John's narrowly missed out on the top spot, seeing 40 of their 115 candidates picking up firsts, compared with 30 out of 81 at Merton. But John's topped a cumulative table commissioned by The Times, their results being the best over the past twenty years.
By contrast, Harris Manchester remained firmly rooted to the bottom of the table. None of their 26 candidates managed to achieve a first.
The table - proposed by Sir Arthur Norrington, Trinity's President from 1954 to 1970 - ranks colleges using a points system whereby a first scores five points, a 2.1 scores three, a 2.2 scores two and a 3rd scores one point.
5th Oct 2000