ABSTRACT
Chapter V showed that neither prestige (as measured by Collison's scale) nor the sixth former's own assessment of academic reputation dominated the process of selecting a college. There was usually a correlation of + 0.3 to +0.4 between prestige and the applicant's order of preference among the universities. This figure might have risen to + 0.5 if it had been possible to make finer prestige distinctions. Roughly 30 per cent considered academic reputation fairly important in choosing among colleges of the same type but greater weight was placed on the quality of social amenities and especially on interesting course work. While this suggests that academic standards were not the only crucial factor, it could be misleading. Applicants may have assumed that academic standards were high in all colleges and that these could not therefore be a basis for distinguishing the better from the poorer ones.
