Talk:Newcastle Scholarship

The Code
The table of recent winners frustrates me....it refers to far too much arcane terminology us non-Etonians don't understand. I've managed to crack the code of OS and KS and have clarified accordingly....I still can't work out what ma (small caps, and most likely not master's degree) or ME mean. I'm loath to remove it in case it's valuable information that adds to the content, but I really don't like its current form and it can do with improvement. Rayman60 (talk) 18:51, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I suspect "ma" means major, i.e. the older brother of two, and "mi" means minor, the younger brother. (Students would be addressed by surname, and this mechanism was used to resolve ambiguities. Or so I gather.)Alan Stokes (talk) 20:29, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Objection to proposed deletion
I intend with some hesitation to remove the proposed deletion template from this article. The article could do with further source citations; I have started with a few, but more can be added. As for general notability, the scholarship has for nearly 200 years been the Blue Riband prize awarded at Eton, which has been for much of that period (if it is not still now) the most famous school in the UK. As such, the prize is repeatedly referred to in biographies and memoirs of statesmen, writers, and other notables who attended the school. A quick Google Books search for "Newcastle Scholarship" in conjunction with "Eton" results in over 2,000 hits (though some no doubt are duplicates). The Scholarship's history has been the subject of a learned, if relatively brief, published monograph. And quite a lot of work has gone into the article already. I can see that the article might be viewed as a typically irritating sample of Etonian self-regard but, that aside, I do not see that it does any great harm. 45ossington (talk) 15:06, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

AfD
"With some hesitation", I think this needs to go into AfD, as there have been no significant changes to the article since the proposed deletion 2 years ago. The multiple issues it has are not fixed, and I think it really doesn't fulfil WP:N. The sources that are included are obscure at best, and mention the scholarship only in passing; the monograph on it is a primary source produced by Eton. The tables of winners truly is an indiscriminate collection of information (WP:NOT), and aren't actually up to date. These tables are something for Eton to keep track of - not Wikipedia. Calling this Eton's Blue Riband prize is frankly not true: Eton has countless prizes (as you can see on the Eton College page), many of which have similar/greater reward money and as much prestige in their respective fields. The Newcastle prize simply happens to be older. Whether Eton is the most famous school in the UK is certainly subjective and debatable, but also probably irrelevant. Long story short, I think this prize is something to keep on the Eton College page, but that doesn't deserve its own. Knowto (talk) 22:24, 20 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for responding to my points. I will have my say on the AfD page, but by way of brief reply:


 * The obscurity of the sources is a matter of opinion; they are, I think, reliable.
 * The monograph was published by Eton but was written by a reputable independent academic, Dr David Butterfield (and it is in any event not necessary, in order to establish a matter's notability, to show that it is the primary subject of a published text).
 * I'm not sure what you mean by describing the list of winners as an "indiscriminate" collection of information. Wikipedia is full of lists and the tables in this article do not appear to me to fall into any of the four categories expressly identified at WP:NOT.
 * The Scholarship is in fact generally acknowledged to be Eton's most prestigious prize (a fact not disproved by the existence of equally remunerative prizes in other fields). I expect that a published source for that proposition could be identified if necessary.
 * You don't explicitly address my point about the number of hits on Google Books. I think the article has reference value, eg, for people who read biographies which record that "X won the Newcastle Scholarship at Eton" and think to themselves "What is that, and why does it matter?"
 * The article has contributions from at least a dozen identified editors, who presumably all take an interest in the topic; it's not an obsessive individual's personal hobby-horse.
 * 45ossington (talk) 09:43, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Age of students?
What age are the students who enter the scholarship exams? Gebjon (talk) 12:38, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
 * In the range of 16-18 years old Dorset100 (talk) 12:48, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Deletion of list of recent Classics prize winners
Conscious that there are several who consider that the entire article should be deleted, and several more who consider that the tables need revision, I have thought further about the list of the Classics prize winners since 1976. The Classics prize is not the main Newcastle Prize and is inevitably awarded to specialists studying classics; its institution as a separate prize was presumably a sop to classicists when the school decided that the main prize should be one for which any senior boy at the school could plausibly compete. I doubt that the list of classicists is of any real external interest and it hasn't been brought up to date since 2012. Although I was originally responsible myself for adding many of the names in the table, I have come to think that the table of Classics prize winners since 1976 should be deleted. I also think that deletion mightmake it easier to defend the value of the remaining (principal) part of the article. What do others think? 45ossington (talk) 11:32, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
 * In the absence of adverse comment, I have acted boldly.45ossington (talk) 13:59, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

What's the current prize?
It says historically the award was the "considerable sum" of £250, but doesn't say what it is now? Is it still the same? 2A01:4B00:BE01:6600:ACDD:E1DE:E3B0:E35F (talk) 10:39, 8 October 2022 (UTC)