Talk:Euan Blair

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article must adhere to the policy on biographies of living persons. Controversial material of any kind that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous. If such material is repeatedly inserted or there are other concerns relative to this policy, report it on the living persons biographies noticeboard.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article. [FAQ]

[edit] Picture Source

Picture ran here, as part of a newspaper article.

[edit] To dos

Some to dos, possibly not sensible, for what we get around to it:

• Spectator breaking news of Euan and Nicky being tutored by masters from Westminster School in 2002 - Telegraph story is still up, Spectator isn't.
• More complete over-view, less bitty. Restructure, etc..
• References! Lots and lots needed, especially here - living subject, sensitive details, litigious individuals, lots of press attention.

James F. (talk) 16:58, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Yale University

Euan apparently wasn't qualified enough to get into Oxford, but Yale seems to think he's prime material for its Graduate School. How is that possible ?

Not to mention he also got a full scholarship ! Too much for America claiming to be a "meritocracy". 201.52.32.9 00:27, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Please. His admission to Oxford was evaluated in 2001. His admission to Yale five years later. He is being judged on a completely different record. In the interim he graduated Bristol with a Second Honors. He is being judged on different criteria. And, although Yale is a very fine school, it is not Oxford. You are comparing apples and oranges. 66.108.105.21 15:07, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Is the above comment suggesting that Oxford is more selective than Yale? I'd be interested to know whether that comment was posted by an American or a Brit, by an Oxford graduate or a Yale graduate, or neither. It's very gratifying to see my university compared favourably with Yale, but I think most people in Britain seem to think that American universities are superior to our own. I have a friend (twice an Oxford graduate) who is desperate to go to Princeton, Yale, or Columbia, saying that Oxford, Cambridge, and all the other British (and indeed European) universities are unable to support her studies (and Australia, Canada, and New Zealand apparently don't bear thinking about!) On the other hand I knew a graduate of Duke and Yale who went to Oxford for another masters degree because he said that in America, American qualifications are seen as inferior to British ones. But try telling that to the British parents who will remortgage their houses to send their children to university in America because they think an American education will get them further in life in Britain. I do think Oxford (and Cambridge) academics make a good point when they say that the tutorial method of teaching, requiring the student to write one or two essays a week, and providing one-to-one (sometimes 2:1) teaching, together with the intellectual intensity of the collegiate system, makes Oxford (and Cambridge) the best undergraduate experience, but I would have thought that for graduate studies there wasn't much to tell between them.--195.92.67.75 09:39, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello. My comment was from an American, a graduate neither of Oxford nor of Yale. My understanding is that as far as undergraduate training is concerned, Oxford/Cambridge are far superior to any American institutions. As far as graduate education is concerned, they are about the same level. That is, a PhD from any of these schools is considered superb credentials. In the US, I believe there is indeed a certain cachet to a degree from Oxford/Cambridge, but in academia, people are judged more by the perceived quality of their current or past research (i.e. dissertation, published papers, etc.) than by anything else. In the media and general public, the English universities maintain that cachet. But I don't think there is much of a perceived difference when Oxford/Cambridge are being compared to schools of the caliber of Princeton or Harvard. I might suggest that one reason why British families want their sons/daughters to attend a US school is because in the business world, a degree and, more importantly, the contacts made at a school like Yale or Harvard is immensely valuable in one's career. That may be the issue you are encountering. In any case, my candid aside was not meant to obscure my main point, which is that Blair's two applications were in very different circumstances, and do not really lend themselves to the reasoning to which I was responding. 66.108.105.21 16:45, 3 December 2006 (UTC)