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See this: How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the UK, particularly for weak or borderline students?

And, compare it with this: How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?

I am not understanding why the former was closed while the later one bagged 110 votes.

USA and UK are two big and popular higher education destinations with slightly different systems. Both have a good number of followers. For instance USA=>{Switzerland, Canada, China, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and so on}, and UK=>{former British colonies and vassals, and compatible with most part of Europe}.

UK is world leader in producing research papers (on the 3rd position after USA and China. But, produces way more as compared to its population size). Also, because of its past empire, it has a large follower, probably larger than the USA in terms of population.

So, What is fundamentally wrong with my question?

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  • If you (or anyone) is interested in writing a comprehensive answer, which might help clarify how this question would be helpful, flag it (or ping a moderator in chat), and we can briefly reopen it to allow you to post a pre written answer.
    – StrongBad
    Commented Aug 30, 2018 at 17:24

4 Answers 4

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The highly-rated question you linked was created as a community wiki as a way to close numerous related questions as duplicates, since these types of questions are quite common here. As such, it includes an answer to a question that would ordinarily be far too broad to be accepted.

See this meta discussion.

Had that question not been created as a community wiki question based on a discussion in meta, it would have been closed just like yours.

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  • Exactly. This is not a typical example, but was created to serve a specific need: so that we don't have to answer each "how do I get admitted" question individually. I can see having a similar question for the UK, but that only makes sense if the answers would be substantially different to the US version. I personally don't think this is the case, but I don't know the UK admission system enough to be able to tell.
    – xLeitix
    Commented Aug 30, 2018 at 14:31
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    They probably would be different. The question may be whether it's answerable for the UK, where (at PhD level) such things tend to be decided entirely by individual universities or departments according to their own rules. Perhaps an experienced academic would be able to generalise enough to make it broadly applicable without being so vague as to be useless...
    – Flyto
    Commented Aug 31, 2018 at 11:15
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The thing that is fundamentally with your question about the UK is the same thing that is fundamentally wrong with the one about the US. The questions are both too broad and too narrow at the same time. The admissions process in both countries is a huge topic with books and books written about it. At the same time a good answer depends on the individual department and individual student.

I am not understanding why the former was closed while the later one bagged 110 votes.

Your question on the UK was closed for that reason (i.e., not a good fit for the SE system). The one on the US was not closed, most likely, because it was the result of a meta discussion that concluded that the community wanted to make an exception for the US. As for the up votes, my guess is a lot of people found it helpful and some people up voted it simply because it helped solve the problem of the influx of bad admissions questions.

There is nothing special about the US question and we can make another exception. All it would take is a clear demonstration of the problem and how the question would solve that problem. As it stands now we do not get a lot of UK admissions questions. This means that there may not be a problem to be solved.

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I don't know about the UK system, but as I gather from the comments below your question, there might not be a sufficiently uniform admission process there, and there may be not specific advice that can be given for weak students.

For instance, if you asked the same question about my country (Italy), I'd have voted to close too, because there are probably as many different admission processes as universities, and the criteria may even change year after year (the admission process for me 20 years ago was completely different from the current one in the same university, and we changed the process at least another couple of times). And I wouldn't have any specific advice to give to a weak student before the application, it would be too late to do anything.

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  • you have to understand that UK is world leader in producing research papers only second to the USA. Also, because of its past empire, it has a large follower, probably larger than the USA in terms of population.
    – user84565
    Commented Aug 29, 2018 at 17:34
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    @yahoo.com I understand that, but that has nothing to do with the admission process and doesn't change the fact that there may be not a sufficiently uniform admission process around the country.
    – Massimo Ortolano
    Commented Aug 29, 2018 at 17:36
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    @yahoo.com Nitpicking: no, the UK is not "world leader in producing research papers only second to the USA". China is second. (Other charts compiled with different criteria seem to confirm.)
    – Federico Poloni
    Commented Sep 3, 2018 at 9:09
  • @FedericoPoloni, Okay. My bad! Corrected in the main question.
    – user84565
    Commented Sep 3, 2018 at 9:20
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It's called American exceptionalism.

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  • This doesn't seem to add value and makes no argument that links the referenced question with this idea (which I'm presuming is your opinion).
    – SecretAgentMan
    Commented Sep 6, 2018 at 16:55

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