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Contrary to your summary of my views, I have never "defended" Oxbridge admissions ("Oxbridge targets 'cannot be met': Ryan", October 26). Tutors spend immense amounts of time and effort making fine discriminations on the basis of what seems to me to be hopelessly inadequate evidence.

Given my druthers, I'd abandon the October 15 deadline and interviews; find some way of normalising A-level scores across different boards; set two aptitude tests and take students in rank order down the aggregated scores.

All I was saying was that even this would not alter the state/private balance of the intake - let alone their class background.

Alan Ryan, New College, Oxford.