Talk:University of Bristol admissions controversy

University of Bristol admissions controversy was a Social sciences and society good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
August 31, 2009	Good article nominee	Not listed
September 29, 2010	Good article nominee	Not listed

Current status: Former good article nominee

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"Row"

Is "row" really an appropriate word for the title? I'm a speaker of American English, so I'm quite possibly wrong, but I've always thought the term "row" was rather informal and almost slang. If it is, the title should be termed more academically. Dylan (talk) 21:05, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think I named the article. In British English its hardly slang and is used as a synonym for noisy argument. I suppose I used row to capture the sheer intensity of the argument which desended into accusations of polticial correctness, class bias and elitism. The sort of thing that could only happen in class-obsessed England. 2003 University of Bristol admissions dispute wouldn't be objected to and is possibly more neutral. 172.202.216.161 (talk) 19:09, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Following peer review it has been suggested that this is in fact a controversy rather than a dispute or a row. Rename ! Francium12 (talk) 01:17, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

GA nomination

I have put this in for GA nomination. I am slowly getting to the facts of the controversy and getting past some of the rhetoric Francium12 21:56, 25 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

I have decided not to list this article as a Good Article for reasons listed on the review page (linked in the template above; see the bottom of the review page for my final comments). Happy editing! — DroEsperanto (talk) 01:21, 31 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:University of Bristol admissions controversy/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Jezhotwells (talk) 22:09, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I shall be reviewing this article against the Good Article criteria, following its nomination for Good Article status.

Disambiguations: none found

Linkrot: none found Jezhotwells (talk) 22:12, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Checking against GA criteria

GA review (see here for criteria)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
Lead: The dispute was caused by concerns over bias in the admissions system for the University in favour of state school students[n 1] after the rejection of some students from independent schools[n 2] with strong academic records. This reads as if the schools have the "strong academic records", not the students. I think you mean the students. If so, please rephrase. Done

The controversy over the University's widening participation policy which allowed the awarding of slightly lower offers to promising applicants from schools with poor academic records resulted in a brief boycott of the University by some independent schools and intense media debate about the fairness of the admissions policy.. Better split into shorter sentences. Also please use commas to define phrases. Done

The boycott was lifted after two months when the Independent School's Council admitted that there was no evidence of unfairness in the admissions system. "admitted" is a weasel word here. Done

Two years later survey of independent schools concluded that: "It is likely that rejections which may have seemed discriminatory to parents and schools have in fact, been due to a large rise in suitably qualified applicants"[4] and independent evidence was compiled suggesting that claims of bias were wildly exaggerated "a survey"? missing "a" Done

Bristol University introduced an access initiative in 1999 after the Dearing Report in part a result of government policy as well as being a principled attempt by the University to attract applications from state schools, something Bristol has traditionally struggled to do. The "Dearing Report" needs a clarifying clause or sentence to explain what it was about, especially as the wiki-linked article is rather sparse. Mixture of tenses, perhaps better to split this sentence.

The aims of the 1999 Participation Strategy were to: Is this the same thing as the "access initiative"?

In English there were 47 places and 1500 applicants of which 500 had a perfect A-level score of AAA at A2 meaning that many top candidates will be rejected. Unwieldy, no commas and poor grammar "of which" should be "of whom".

Eric Thomas also emphasised the work Should be wiki-linked on first mention above.

The University of Bristol stated that it is against any kind of discrimination in the admissions process[29] and stated that the policy of offering lower offers to exceptional students from state schools and disadvantaged backgrounds was not in order to satisfy the government and gain access to additional funding: Again unwieldy and clumsy, e.g. "of offering lower offers" Also, repetitive of first para in this section. Not done

Reaction, needs less subdivision, e.g. Students and Head teachers are rather short. Not done

Papers such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Express criticised the admissions policies in their headlines. "such as" is a weasel phrase. What did other pares, e.g. Times, Guardian say? Needs broadening to show either all media comment against policy or a range of media opinions (which I think is the case.

The controversy resulted in applications to Bristol falling for the first time in a decade[43] as applications fell by 5% although Bristol downplayed this attributing the decrease to random fluctuations in the level of applications. The supporting cite is from February 2004 - a year after the boycott? As the usual deadline is mid January, this is a report on applications for the 2004/5 year, rather than 2003/4 - the time of the boycott. Done Yes the negative press on admissions impacted on applications the next year. I've added the dates to make that clearer

The lead does not fully summarize the article, not covering the reaction from media, students, politicians, etc. Not done I don't really want to say any more in the lead than various people reacted to the policy and boycott as it risks overwhelming the lead
The lead needs to summarize the whole article in an executive summary style. Please see WP:LEAD.

Overall: The prose could do with another copy-edit to improve phrasing, clarity, sentence structure. Commas should be used in many cases and sentences made shorter and clearer. Shorter sections should be consolidated. Word choice could be improved. Many successive sentences start with "The". Try reading it out loud, to see where improvements could be made.
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
~~Reference #6 is a bare URL, for consistency format as the other references.~~

~~Reference #12 is an URL, without a link. When I put it into a browser no result was found.~~

~~Some External links are already used as references so should be removed as per WP:EL.~~ Done Removed Francium12 02:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Better, but still careless. If you wish to take further to WP:FAC, even more consistency will be required.

~~:The EL Bristol's student newspaper Epigram's take on admissions does not have anything about admissions~~ Done Link rot so I'll remove it - doesn't appear to be hosted anymore
If you wish to take the article further, to WP:FAC, you will need to change the citation dates to the now favoured day, month, year format,e.g. 15 September 2010 and add details of the article writers, where available. Also they could do with consistent formatting using the appropriate citation templates.

All references that I could check supported statements.

For now I will be happy to get it to GA :-) Francium12 02:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
~~All this happened six years ago - what are the relative numbers of private and state school students now?~~ Done Added 2009/10 statistics. Rather depressingly imo the numbers have not budged Francium12 01:51, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A summary mention needs to be in the lead as well.
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.:
It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
What is the relevance of File:Wills Memorial Building from road during day.jpg and its caption to the article? Done Merely for illustration more than anything. I changed the image but I'm struggling to find anything particularly useful for this article. The Vice-Chancellor and Trevor Phillips do not currently have images that can be used on this article unfortunately
You don't have to have an image for GA and this image doesn't illustrate anything in the article so it should be removed. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:48, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Overall:
Pass/Fail:
OK, this needs some more work to address the points raised above. On hold for seven days. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:13, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hold extended for remaining issues to be addressed. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:48, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As no more edits have been made to address the remaining issues, since the hold was extended, I am failing this nomination now. Jezhotwells (talk) 01:48, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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