The Oxford Union has rejected the claim that Oxford and Cambridge universities operate an elitist admissions policy by 410 votes to 87. Anthony Smith, president of Magdalen College, which provoked controversy this year when it rejected Tyneside student Laura Spence, said it was not the interviewing techniques of dons or a follow-on from 19th-century snobbery that prevented state school students coming to the university, but that they "did not apply".