Responsions was a name describing the first of the three
examinationTo examine somebody or something is to inspect it closely; hence, an examination is a detailed inspection or analysis of an object or person....
s once required for an
academic degreeA degree is any of a wide range of status levels conferred by institutions of higher education, such as universities, normally as the result of successfully completing a program of study.- History :...
at the
University of OxfordThe University of Oxford , located in the UK city of Oxford, is the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and is regarded as one of the world's leading academic institutions. Although the exact date of foundation remains unclear, there is evidence of teaching there as far back...
. It was nicknamed the
Little Go and was generally taken by students prior to or shortly after
matriculationMatriculation, in the broadest sense, means to be registered or added to a list, from the Latin matricula - little list. In Scottish heraldry, for instance, a matriculation is a registration of armorial bearings...
, the idea being that without standardised qualifications from school examinations, the University had to verify for itself the quality of the students that
collegesThe University of Oxford comprises 38 Colleges and 6 Permanent Private Halls of religious foundation. Colleges and PPHs are autonomous self-governing corporations within the university, and all teaching staff and students studying for a degree of the university must belong to one of the colleges...
were accepting. The examination consisted of comparatively simple questions on
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
,
Ancient GreekAncient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic , Classical , and Hellenistic periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
and
mathematicsMathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions....
.
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Responsions was a name describing the first of the three
examinationTo examine somebody or something is to inspect it closely; hence, an examination is a detailed inspection or analysis of an object or person....
s once required for an
academic degreeA degree is any of a wide range of status levels conferred by institutions of higher education, such as universities, normally as the result of successfully completing a program of study.- History :...
at the
University of OxfordThe University of Oxford , located in the UK city of Oxford, is the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and is regarded as one of the world's leading academic institutions. Although the exact date of foundation remains unclear, there is evidence of teaching there as far back...
. It was nicknamed the
Little Go and was generally taken by students prior to or shortly after
matriculationMatriculation, in the broadest sense, means to be registered or added to a list, from the Latin matricula - little list. In Scottish heraldry, for instance, a matriculation is a registration of armorial bearings...
, the idea being that without standardised qualifications from school examinations, the University had to verify for itself the quality of the students that
collegesThe University of Oxford comprises 38 Colleges and 6 Permanent Private Halls of religious foundation. Colleges and PPHs are autonomous self-governing corporations within the university, and all teaching staff and students studying for a degree of the university must belong to one of the colleges...
were accepting. The examination consisted of comparatively simple questions on
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
,
Ancient GreekAncient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic , Classical , and Hellenistic periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
and
mathematicsMathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions....
. It was abolished in 1960.
The equivalent to the "Little-Go" at Cambridge was termed the Previous Examination. It consisted of elementary examinations in Latin, Ancient Greek, Divinity and Mathematics and was abolished in 1960:
Karl PearsonKarl Pearson FRS established the disciplineof mathematical statistics.In 1911 he founded the world's first university statistics department at University College London...
's obituary of Raphael Weldon (p.8) refers to Weldon
"preparing (c. 1877 for Little-Go and the London Preliminary Scientific. For the classical part of the former he seems to have worked by himself. Pearson also refers to 'Little-Go' in Cambridge in 1842 in his biography of
Francis GaltonSir Francis Galton FRS , cousin of Sir Douglas Galton, was an English Victorian polymath, anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician. He was knighted in 1909.Galton had a prolific intellect, and produced...
.
The name derives from Anglo-French
responsion, Medieval Latin
responsion, and from Latin
responsio, to answer, or give a response. In this sense it was sometimes used to describe the giving of a payment or the sung response in a choir.