Or, as cousin Melchior put it, 'anything other than a first or a fourth is wasted'.
(Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh. Not sure how internationally read it is, but a worthwhile classic. British degrees are classified from firsts to thirds (via upper and lower second class honours) - but the story is (initially) set at Oxford, which at the time awarded fourths.)
The BBC's serialisation of Brideshead, starring Jeremy Irons (Charles Ryder), Diana Quick and Anthony Andrews, was a huge hit with students when it aired in October 1981. The TV room in the Students Union was full every Sunday throughout the whole series. As for Charles's cousin Melchior John Gielgud, who played Charles's father, delivered some classic lines including this rejoinder to Charles's request for a loan - "Hard up? Penurious? Distressed? Embarrassed? Stoney broke? On the rocks? In Queer Street? Your cousin Melchior was imprudent with his investments and got into a very queer street - worked his passage to Australia before the mast."
Seconded, and now you say it I'm wondering if the line I quoted might actually be (only) from the series. The book is excellent, but it's not so funny, or with such snappy dialogue (of course, really, of course TV writers have to add that sort of thing).
'[Puts book down, objecting to Charles also occupying himself] I do think you might talk to me - I've had a very exhausting day. Entertain me. Take me out of myself.'
People sometimes talk about it in terms of exams in the sense that they'd achieve a first overall if that exam was 'it', or that it brings their average up etc. - but strictly speaking you can only achieve first class (or any other) honours for the degree as a whole. It's commonly (but not necessarily) >70% overall. Equivalent to achieving some high GPA range.
I have always known it as "C's get degrees" but that's sort of a crass expression, not really the equivalent of the quote which is presented as "life advice" for the enrichment of those that receive it.
"C's get degrees": The bare minimum to get the credential is the optimal use of resources.
"You want either a first or a fourth. There is no value in anything between.": Either excel at school to maximize your achievement or don't worry about your grades and simply pursue whatever comes your way from the opportunity to be there to enrich your life.
Amusingly along those lines, I once had a prof in my Ph.D. program tell me that if I was getting all A's in my coursework, I was doing it wrong. (I.e., not spending enough time on research.)
This is pretty common at other places - my PhD advisor was exasperated that a polymer chemist would get an A in Physical Chemistry II, when I had a national lab collaboration to work on, a fellowship to write, and a first-author paper to get out the door.
In retrospect? Yeah, I probably should have taken a B and finished relevant things faster. I have almost zero use for my understanding of the mathematic accounting of the particle-in-a-box.
Of course in grad school a C is a failure, so the wiggle room is slightly less generous.
In high school maybe. All my stem classes in college were graded on a curve. First exam freshman year was physics. I walked out thinking I failed. There were questions I did not answer. Later that night they posted raw scores. Mine was 48 pts out of 100.
I was ready to withdraw and reconsider engineering as a major.
Later still they posted the cut offs. 40 was the cutoff for an A. Avg was 36 and the cutoff for a B. My 48 was the 4th highest score.
It's not quite equivalent in that it's more standardised and every university uses it. I think it's more accurately equivalent to 3.x GPA or above; probably you could find graduate entry requirements (though most are probably fine with at least a 2:1/upper second) stating exactly that as their equivalent admissions criterion.
Harvard takes in a lot of students on the basis of athletics, legacy, and other non-academic considerations. While I've seen students admitted to specific colleges in Oxford due to family ties, that has always been a matter of which college a student attends; I've never seen someone get in that way who wasn't already going to be admitted to the University on academic grounds.
If you look at the top 1/3 of Harvard students who deserve to be admitted on academic grounds, you end up with a much smaller pool than "top 1/3 of Harvard students".
It’s not like the legacies that get in are unqualified. You can look at any of their resumes, they still have stellar grades, standardized test scores, extracurriculars and more. Legacies aren’t just dumb rich people, their parents just went to that top tier school (and I’m sure you can imagine just having parents that highly educated can be a leg up in how they raise you their entire life). In fact, legacies can often be overqualified and should go to a more competitive school but are guided into the legacy school by their parents / guidance counselors.
At Harvard, about 12-15% of recent classes are legacy. Zero are admitted on the basis of athletics alone, that is literally the tenet on which the Ivy League was founded.
Even if you were right, though, it’d be an odd take — even if 25% (or 50%!) of Harvard students were admitted noncompetitively, they would simply not be part of the top 5% of Harvard students? Like they’re not diluting the top 5%, they’re just not in it.
I stand by “top 5% of Harvard” is a higher bar than “top 1/3 of Oxford”. But I will grant you that these are all based on GPA anyway, a rather noisy measure of even academic ability, let alone anything else we might care about.
I got a 2:1 from Imperial, guess what I think is on par with top 5% at Harvard ;)
I'm only kidding, but more seriously it's certainly not all equal, and few are really in a position to compare any two, nevermind several - it's a bit of a joke that we then make 'a 2:1 in an engineering or related subject' or 'at least 3.5 GPA' or whatever a requirement as though the institution and cohort doesn't make a difference at all.
I think it's reasonably widely-read in the United States, though I haven't read it myself.
Probably more are familiar with the British Granada Television adaptation, which was shown here on the Great Performances series on PBS. I don't know how well that conformed with the book.
(Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh. Not sure how internationally read it is, but a worthwhile classic. British degrees are classified from firsts to thirds (via upper and lower second class honours) - but the story is (initially) set at Oxford, which at the time awarded fourths.)