Oxbridge of America
A nine-panel argument that because Oxbridge admits over 1% of British 18-year-olds while Harvard and Yale admit under 0.1% of Americans, the U.S. should treat its top-1% colleges as one mega-'Oxbridge.'
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Cartoon by Ben Orlin, Math with Bad Drawings. https://cartoons.mathwithbaddrawings.com/2025-09-10-oxbridge-of-america/ (CC BY-NC 4.0)Transcript
[1] "OXBRIDGE OF AMERICA: A Badly Drawn Manifesto"
[2] "In the U.K., the two fanciest universities are Oxford and Cambridge, often lumped together as Oxbridge. It makes sense. Both are maxing out the fancy scale. No sane person would draw sharp distinctions between them."
[3] "So, what's the U.S. equivalent? Presumably it's Harvard + Yale. (Yalvard? Harvale?) WRONG. Utterly wrong."
[4] "Yale and Harvard have 1/2 as many undergraduates, in a country with 5x the population." STUDENTS: Yalvard = 14k, Oxbridge = 28k. NATIONS: U.K. = 69m, U.S. = 340m.
[5] "How many British 18-year-olds go to Oxbridge? More than 1%. How many American 18-year-olds go to Yale or Harvard? Less than 0.1%." "My rough numbers: Yale and Harvard enroll about 3.5K out of 4.4m kids, while Oxford and Cambridge enroll about 9K out of 800K kids."
[6] "U.K. elite college culture is about distinguishing the 99th percentile from the 98th or 97th. U.S. elite college culture is about distinguishing the 99.9th percentile from the 99.8th or 99.7th. This is, statistically, madness."
[7] "We're splitting hairs at the top. And it seems (to me, at least) that it's driving our ambitious young people bonkers."
[8] "SOLUTION: List the most selective U.S. colleges until we've encompassed 1% of 18-year-olds. Then, agree to treat them all as maximally (and equally) fancy. Any distinctions between them shall be seen as ludicrous gatekeeping, as silly as arguing Yale is better than Harvard (or vice versa). Thus, America's Oxbridge is…"
[9] "The Harvumbia PrinceKins Cornona Yaleastern Swarthwestern Dukeherst Brownmouth Chicagoford Calichusetts Institute of Technology (but if you can't get in there, UCLA is also a very good school)"