Read on Twitter
Brief thread about this, particularly about Maimuna Hassan, who is featured:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53765190
Muna">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-5... got a place at @Newnham_College, @Cambridge_Uni. She lost it due to the A-level fiasco. She was down-graded due to her school& #39;s historic performance. I know her.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53765190
Muna">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-5... got a place at @Newnham_College, @Cambridge_Uni. She lost it due to the A-level fiasco. She was down-graded due to her school& #39;s historic performance. I know her.
I don& #39;t like flashing credentials but I am doing so in case @Cambridge_Uni or @Newnham_College are listening. I have an MEng and DPhil in Engineering from @UniofOxford, where I am now Professor of Computational Neuro. Muna& #39;s place was in Engineering. I am qualified to comment.
I spent several hours with Muna before her @Cambridge_Uni interview as part of a small outreach thing I do locally each year. Muna is quite obviously a star. In several years of meeting applicants, Muna is the standout STEM candidate.
@ChiswickSchool is a wonderful inclusive heartwarming place for kids to learn that cherishes talent, but it does not have a strong academic record in STEM subjects. Muna was predicted A*A*A (her mock result), but has been downgraded to A*AB because of this record.
When I first met Muna, she was soft-spoken and shy - meeting Oxford Prof before Cambridge interview is a scary situation - but even then her inner strength and drive was completely obvious. We did some interview prep and it was clear there was stuff she hadn& #39;t covered in school.
I gave her a big list of things to go through with her teacher that would be important for interview, and met her again 2 weeks later. She had learnt it all. She was flawless. It was totally astonishing. It was completely clear to me that she deserved a place at @Cambridge_Uni.
Muna is a female candidate from an underrepresented community. Her parents are Somali. She is at a state school without a strong track record in STEM. The hardest possible circumstances to get into @Cambridge_Uni. But she got there completely on merit.
. @Cambridge_Uni and @Newnham_College would be *completely and utterly mad* to deny her this place on the basis of a ridiculous algorithm that penalises exactly the people we need to promote.
I am sure there are many stories like this today. It is a travesty.
