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Assuming by “the British,” you mean the British government, then the answer is yes. However, the government’s response was inadequate when compared to the unprecedented scope of the disaster. Over one million people died of starvation and disease in Ireland and another million fled the country because of lack of food.After the potato blight destroyed the potato crop in 1845 and some sense of the looming human catastrophe began to be understood in London, the Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel arranged for the purchase of £100,000 worth of maize and cornmeal from America. Peel worried, however, whether by intervening in the marketplace, his government might "stifle private enterprise" and act as a disincentive to local relief efforts.Due to poor weather conditions in the Atlantic, the first shipment of maize did not arrive in Ireland until early 1846. Moreover, Irish mills were not equipped for milling maize, and thus it took time to convert the mills before the cornmeal could be distributed. In addition, although some unmilled American corn was distributed, the Irish did not know how to cook it, and eating undercooked corn led to serious bowel complaints among the Irish peasants.In October 1845, Peel moved to repeal the Corn Laws, tariffs on imported grain that benefited British landowners but kept the price of bread artificially high. The issue split his party and he was unable to push the reform through Parliament. He resigned the ministry in December, but the opposition was unable to form a government and he was re-appointed.Early in 1846, In March, Peel set up a programme of public works in Ireland, but the famine situation worsened with the failure of the potato crop again that year. Peel finally succeeded in repealing the Corn Laws, but it was too late by then to materially help the starving Irish. The measure split the Conservative Party, Peel’s government fell, and the Whigs under Lord John Russell came to power.Unknown to Peel, his efforts had also been thwarted by the British official charged with administering famine relief in Ireland, Charles Trevelyan. Trevelyan subscribed both to an austere evangelical Christianity and a rather simplistic theory of laissez-faire capitalism. He, therefore, dragged his feet in carrying out Peel’s policies in 1845–46, and sent reports to London that grossly downplayed the seriousness of the situation in Ireland. He came into his own under the ministry of the Russell Whigs, many of whom sympathized with his views. Here is something that I wrote in response to another question some time ago:… we had on hand during the famine a very godly man, Charles Trevelyan, son of a West Country clergyman and the British administrator directly responsible for the government's handling of the crisis. Trevelyan, a pious Englishman of an evangelical bent, made it clear that his God didn’t just allow the Irish to die in mass quantities, He positively willed it: "The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated." The famine, Trevelyan added, was "a direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence."Fortunately for God (who, according to His adherents, moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform), His servant Charles Trevelyan was on hand to ensure that His will was carried out. Trevelyan did his best to thwart the well-intended (but inadequate) relief efforts by the Conservative Peel administration and came into his own under the Whig government of Lord John Russell, which looked to Trevelyan for guidance as to what to do. Being in close communion with God, Trevelyan understood that the real problem was the sinfulness of the Catholic Irish, and the famine was "the sharp but effectual remedy by which the cure is likely to be effected. God grant that the generation to which this opportunity has been offered may rightly perform its part.”Eamon O'Kelly's answer to Why did the Christian god of the Irish Catholics allow the two-thirds of the Irish population to starve to death in the Irish potato famine?In addition to the efforts by the Peel administration, many private British charities did what they could to alleviate the sufferings of the Irish, but the unprecedented scale of the catastrophe overwhelmed their best efforts. An estimated over one million people died of starvation and disease in Ireland between 1845 and 1849, and another million fled the country because of lack of food.Individuals rich and poor, as well as religious and secular charitable organisations from around the world, also contributed what they could. Here is Wikipedia:Large sums of money were donated by charities; Calcutta is credited with making the first donation of £14,000. The money was raised by Irish soldiers serving there and Irish people employed by the East India Company. Pope Pius IX and Russian Tsar Alexander II sent funds and Queen Victoria donated £2,000. According to legend, Sultan Abdülmecid I of the Ottoman Empire originally offered to send £10,000 but was asked either by British diplomats or his own ministers to reduce it to £1,000 to avoid donating more than the Queen. U.S. President James K. Polk donated $50 and in 1847 Congressman Abraham Lincoln donated $10 ($307 in 2019 value).In addition to the religious, non-religious organisations came to the assistance of famine victims. The British Relief Association was one such group. Founded on 1 January 1847 by Lionel de Rothschild, Abel Smith, and other prominent bankers and aristocrats, the Association raised money throughout England, America, and Australia; their funding drive was benefited by a "Queen's Letter", a letter from Queen Victoria appealing for money to relieve the distress in Ireland. With this initial letter, the Association raised £171,533. A second, somewhat less successful "Queen's Letter" was issued in late 1847. In total, the Association raised approximately £390,000 for Irish relief.Private initiatives such as the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends (Quakers) attempted to fill the gap caused by the end of government relief, and eventually, the government reinstated the relief works, although bureaucracy slowed the release of food supplies. Thousands of dollars were raised in the United States, including $170 ($5,218 in 2019 value) collected from a group of Native American Choctaws in 1847. Judy Allen, the editor of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma's newspaper Biskinik, wrote that "It had been just 16 years since the Choctaw people had experienced the Trail of Tears, and they had faced starvation ... It was an amazing gesture." …Contributions by the United States during the famine were highlighted by Senator Henry Clay who said; "No imagination can conceive—no tongue express—no brush paint—the horrors of the scenes which are daily exhibited in Ireland." He called upon Americans to remind them that the practice of charity was the greatest act of humanity they could do. In total, 118 vessels sailed from the US to Ireland with relief goods valued to the amount of $545,145. Specific states which provided aid include South Carolina and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania was the second most important state for famine relief in the US and the second largest shipping port for aid to Ireland. The state hosted the Philadelphia Irish Famine Relief Committee. Roman Catholics, Methodists, Quakers, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Moravian, and Jewish groups put aside their differences in the name of humanity to help out the Irish. South Carolina rallied around the efforts to help those experiencing the famine. They raised donations of money, food, and clothing to help the victims of the famine—Irish immigrants made up 39% of the white population in the southern cities. The states ignored all their racial, religious, and political differences to support the cause for relief.Great Famine (Ireland) - Wikipedia

TLDR: There is a small sample problem because of the college structure.Oxford and Cambridge are among the few universities that interview every candidate who is offered a place. Interviews are conducted by colleges, which are responsible for filling their course places. Interviewing and selecting is expensive and time-consuming, but it's worth it to get the best candidates.To give the idea of numbers.I was doing admissions for a big course at one of the larger Oxford colleges a few years in a row. We were a group of 8 tutors. We receive almost 200 applications before the few round test. Two of us read every single application (including every personal statement and every teacher reference to understand the student's background) and marked out outstanding candidates. There are about 10 dimensions on which to consider a candidate including various exams. Then they sit the test. We mark 200 short essays, write a report on each one and carefully normalise them. Then we select about 36 students for interviews. They all come to Oxford for three days. They have at least two half-hour interviews with at least two tutors in each one. Then, we lock ourselves in a room for 4-8 hours and select 20 candidates. Sometimes, we call students for further one or two interviews because we need to reach a consensus. We give offer to 12 and suggest another 8 are interviewed by other colleges. We then go to a meeting with other colleges and pitch our candidates to other colleges. This meeting lasts another 2-3 hours. Some candidates are offered further interviews at other colleges the following couple of days. We track each student to check up on them. About 3 get offers from other colleges. Almost all students accept our offers and make their conditions to come to Oxford.Now, since it's safe to assume most students would apply to both Oxford and Cambridge if they could, we would need to interview and consider twice at many candidates to get exactly the same pool. So quality of our interviewing and selection may suffer (which hurts candidates more than anyone).Then we would have to hope that our prediction about who goes where (Oxford or Cambridge) pans out. For a good candidate, the probability of getting them is 50% since they would get an offer from Cambridge as well. When you're doing admissions in a small college you may be aiming to get 2 or 3 students for a particular course (if there is only one tutor on that course). With a fifty-fifty probability for each student, the probability of getting zero or 6 students is considerable. But this might mean either requiring none or two tutors to teach at that college the next year since tutorial groups are only 2-3 students. This could create serious financial and organisational difficulties for the colleges.Because of the fragmented nature of the admissions process (colleges doing their own admissions for courses), it's difficult. Harvard doesn't have this problem since they are admitting 1000 students without any course specification and they can accommodate a reasonable glut or shortage. They know pretty well how many will come.Now, a solution may be to centralise the admissions process i.e. give university-level offers to the students for a particular course (which may be around 100-200 kids). Well, someone will have to interview all of them, but suppose we find resources for that. Once they have accepted the university offer, allow them to apply to different colleges by ranking them and let the colleges rank their candidates. Then, it becomes a pretty straightforward college-admissions problem from classical matching theory analysed by Gale and Shapley (AMM, 1962)*. But this may mean that colleges will find it difficult to create interesting and diverse groups of students......though clever market design can even solve that!***http://www.u.arizona.edu/~mwalker/501BReadings/Gale&Shapley_AMM1962.pdf** Page on stanford.edu***On 19 June, I came across this paper (Page on columbia.edu) at the Social Choice and Welfare conference that shows that under reasonable conditions (in particular, that Oxford and Cambridge are viewed very similarly by the potential applicants), it may, in fact, be efficient to restrict applications to only one university - so a centralised mechanism isn't even necessary.

Understandably, you probably want to try fish and chips. Be wary: a lot of rip-off merchants are all too well aware of this. Be very wary of any chippy with a union flag in the window, especially in London. Look out for tired battered fish in the warming shelf and if you see it go somewhere else, preferably away from tourist areas. The best fried fish is cooked to order. Small-to-medium towns by the sea are the place for fish and chips, which really shouldn’t be eaten without a salty wind in your face, so if you want the very best take a day (or longer) trip to the coast. Two legendary London chippies, Geales in Notting Hill and the Sea Shell in Lisson Grove, were superb once (thirty or more years ago) but have been taken over by commercial entertainment groups capitalising on the names and now offer mean portions at outrageous prices and should be avoided. It pains me to say this as one who adored Geales once and always took my visitors there for generous portions at affordable prices. Go to the North Sea Fish Bar in BloomsburyLondon’s own dish of the people is eel, pie, mash and liquor, and you’ll be hard pressed to find it in the tourist areas but make a point of seeking them out. It might have become extinct had it not become a cult among City workers in the 1980s. There aren’t as many as there were and my old favourite, Cook’s of Dalston High Street, has closed. Eels, either stewed or jellied, I can take or leave but pie, mash and parsley liquor (which is bright green but don’t be put off) is unforgettable. The Cook and Manzie families ran several of them, mostly around the south and east of centre. I was very sad some years ago when I heard that Goddard’s of Greenwich had closed but now I’m told it’s open again.If you’re travelling, consider it possible that the journey may be at least as enjoyable as the destination. Give the motorways a miss and try the back roads, stop in towns and villages that catch your fancy, take food breaks in local cafés and restaurants and fill up with petrol. Motorway service areas are ghastly places using their monopoly to fleece you. At least pull off the road. A-roads may be primary (yellow numbers and white letters on a green background, usually fast and busy) and not-primary (black lettering on white, backroads). B-roads are a magical mystery tour. Be bold, try things that aren’t in the guidebook, you may get a lovely surprise and you’ll certainly learn something you didn’t know about British life.If you are heading for Scotland, remember that Scotland is significantly different from England. (The touristy parts of Edinburgh may be an exception to this). Don’t confine yourself to Edinburgh; Glasgow is a fine city in its own right and in so many ways the country’s cultural centre (what Edinburgh makes a big thing of for a month every August, Glasgow does without fuss all year round). Glasgow is the place for independent theatre, major rock gigs and classical concerts; the TV organisations are based there; it’s the place to go for the best restaurants. Glaswegians are not reserved and will move further into your personal space than Londoners will. It’s not threatening (if you are American you may even feel more comfortable); they are interested in you and ready to welcome you as one of us! If they ask where you stay, they aren’t interested in whether you’re at the Marriott or the Novotel, they want to know where you call home.While you are in Scotland, don’t underestimate distances. You get to the densely-populated Central Belt, and even up to Inverness and Aberdeen, on fast roads but beyond that distances feel much longer, the roads are few and far between and even the A-roads are often single-track, only wide enough for one vehicle to pass. There are signed passing places and a clearly-defined etiquette for using them: take turns to pull over and let oncoming cars through, and pull over if somebody is behind you going faster (it may be a local for whom the scenery has long since ceased to take the breath away, as it will yours, and they have a life to get on with).