Unless things have changed recently, before getting accepted to one of the top universities in the UK you'll be expected to do an in-person interview.

(I remember having to choose one lecture to study beforehand and I chose Feynman's introduction to Special Relativity. I didn't even know who Feynman was at the time but really enjoyed his book of lectures, and a couple of years later he became one of my heroes after reading "Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman")

For Oxford and Cambridge there is an in-person interview.

But for any other university, A-level subjects and grades are the only important factor. To take an example, LSE is often the third-ranked university in the country, and they literally have web pages listing grade requirements [1].

Naturally, not everyone has recent UK A-Levels so there's a little flexibility, but the results of standard tests are what drive admissions.

[1] http://www.lse.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/howToApply/departme...

Absolutely not in my opinion. What about students that have to work while going to school? I had to do this and I can assure you that it really hurt my GPA. Other more well off students will of course have higher GPAs because they can afford not to work and can pay tutors. These students who have worked full time or have faced other difficulties will not be able to explain why their academics are lacking if it's entirely academics based.

I also think essays and interviews are great ways to assess the candidate's true interest and compatibility with programs.

But it's not just interest, it's ability to complete the course. Sure I might be interested in Mathematics, but terrible at it. What's the point of admitting me to an Honours Maths cousre? Also, there are usually strict legal limits on the hours you can work if you're under 16, which is when you'd be studying for the exams required for University admission, so I don't think it'd be much of an issue. Note that I'm thinking of the UK, where University admission is usually at 17 or 18.

Fun fact: Mathematics is not restricted in most German universities. If you are allowed to go to university in general, you are allowed to study maths – no matter your grades pre-university.

Demand is low enough that they can do that.

How does it handle things like schools that can afford dedicated SAT (or German equivalent) prep classes compared to those that can't?

The entry criteria aren't based on something like the SAT, although International Baccelaureate perhaps comes close in Europe? Not sure, maybe someone else can explain?

So there are no prep classes or anything like that in the UK. Everyone sits the same set of exams (modulo being Scottish or English/Welsh/NI, which have different types of qualification) and those results dictate whether you can go to University or not. I suppose you could study more if you wanted?

Surely anywhere there are exams, there are rich parents paying for exam prep in order to gain an advantage.

In Germany, university admission is based on your final grades in school, which are an accumulation of your grades of the last two years.

Rich parents can of course help their kids be better in school, but there is no efficient exam prepping.

Grades only really matter for medicine, psychology, and perhaps law. If you want to be an engineer or physicist or mathematician etc, they take everyone.

Better or richer schools will always have an advantage over schools with worse teachers or less funding, particularly with the way we currently do exams.

In Germany funding doesn't vary much for schools in the same region and is basically based on size of the student body.

The last two years of school are generally a prep course for the German SAT equivalent (and grades in those two years account for around two thirds of the final score).

>In Germany funding doesn't vary much for schools in the same region and is basically based on size of the student body.

In which case schools located in areas with a higher cost of living are effectively receiving less because any teacher working their, while on an absolute scale making the same, is making less on the more realistic scale that adjusts for cost of living.