Pissed off at sister's snobby comment

As I said, yes, it was unfair of me say that, but I was more thinking back to when I was a student myself forty years ago - times have changed.

Which also goes to the point that other posters have made about parents opinions on particular universities.

Warwick is most certainly not a 'minor university'

Exactly this. A lot of MNers work in recruitment or in diversity/social mobility jobs/initiatives and are at the coal face.

It's not about bragging rights for parents.

Extremely rude, I don’t get all this snobbery around Universities. My daughter applied, got offers & decided on her 1st choice. Her teachers at Sixth Form were shocked & said she should go to a far better one, well the one she applied to is the one she wanted for the course, the location & the accommodation. It’s actually the same one I went to 20 yrs ago & I’ve done well in my career!

Thank you very much for the link - that's a rarity!

Unless the "prestige" is directly linked to the specific course he's taking, I would go for the non-RG one. In your example, four years of film studies and a masters in film making seems like waste of time (and money) compared to doing the film making course. Courses like that in contemporary subjects rarely have much to do with the historical prestige of a university, they will have much more specific reputations within the relevant industry, and that's what he'd be best looking at when deciding.

Yes! School exams can be so intense, especially when they're taking so many subjects all at once and still having to do normal lessons! I personally think the exam system in schools/colleges need to change; when I tutored uni students, so many were convinced they weren't academic because they'd struggled at A-Level. Turned out they were absolutely fine and bright...it was just the school system that had made them insecure!

I'm made up for your DC! I bet it's a massive weight off their shoulders to realise how different things are in uni!

It was unfair of me to describe the university in the way I did, it has changed a lot since I was a student decades ago.

The university is Warwick and the course is MORSE (Maths, Operational Research, Statistics & Economics) and there are related courses of Maths & Statistics and Data Science that have the same requirements.

There are other offers made, especially if you have done well in an entrance exam (eg STEP or TMUA), but generally speaking, A* in maths is always required.

https://warwick.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/bsc-morse

My youngest DC was always shit at exams and never reached their full potential. With Covid, didn't get to sit GCSEs or AS levels. Fell short of first choice uni.

However, in the last two years DC has been in 1st class territory because uni works for them way better than school did!

She's well jel !!! 😄

I'd do the non RG uni. He can always go to a RG uni for postgraduate studies if he wants the prestige of the name (which honestly means sod all!).

There’s no truth in that - your grade isn’t relative to the others on your course.

So true. Of my group of closest friends, 3 went to Russell Group, one didn’t. Guess who has had the most successful career directly related to the vocational course she studied?

She's well jel of course! 🤢

Yes it was insensitive and rude. I'd be annoyed too.

Something similar happened to me, I did a degree a few years ago in a field that's not usually academic as such, it's related to my work. But it's still a degree. I got the highest possible grade and was delighted until a family member said that most people doing this degree wouldn't be the strongest academically so it was probably easier to get a high grade in. Perhaps there is a little truth in this but it was still a shitty thing to say.

She’s slagging off the uni not you

Despite your views, people who do really well at school don’t tend to go to the lower ranked unis - people will usually aim higher than this.

It's far more nuanced than this.
For example, high achieving students from low socioeconomic backgrounds or who are first in family to attend university are less likely to attend a higher ranked university.
They will often choose their local institution regardless of ranking.

There's emerging evidence that these groups in particular don't even look at rankings and league tables when choosing a university.

No I think you are niche and you seem desperate to prove that it doesn’t matter at all where you go to university when it does, hence why so many parents are so keen on getting their kids into the top institutions.

I mean, parents are not always be best judge of these things. There's a significant amount of research that suggests parents knowledge of education and the labour market are not up to date.

University choice, student experience and graduate outcomes are not as straightforward as you're suggesting. And employers are starting to understand this. Thankfully.

What's the uni and the course? I am genuinely curious, don't think I have ever seen such requirements and would love to know

As the OP and others have said, this can vary very much depending on the particular subject.

For example, I went to a university that is usually ranked within the Top 10 in the world. My DS studied a very similar course to the one I did a generation earlier but at quite a different university.

Interestingly, in this particular field, graduates of this course at the, rather minor, university he studied at are now amongst the most sought after by recruiters in this field.

This has led to an amazing increase in the required grades for this course (and related ones) at this university. They are generally asking A star A star A with A stars in both maths and further maths. (or all A stars for those not taking further maths).

That is considerably above offers that are made in other areas.

Sometimes, some universities are just particularly strong in certain areas compared to their general performance.

I said: "I have been very happy with the course, teaching, opportunities and the whole experience and would recommend it to anyone."

I would recommend my course to anyone. I would not recommend my uni as the best choice for an undergraduate degree for my DD.

All of this disagreement and point-scoring actually just reinforces how much snobbery (inverted or otherwise) there is about the cachet of particular institutions and goes some way to illustrating why the OP's sister feels as she does. The real issue here is the way that she behaved towards the OP; that said, if the OP won't address how the lack of empathy affected her, then the sister has no chance of apologising and putting things right should she be so inclined.

Okay then. You've been told the same thing by another academic, a HoD too, but fine by me. I'll ignore my own professor husband, every academic I've ever known and worked with, push aside my own experience, because some random law tutor on MN says so. 😂

Anyway hiding the thread now, enjoy your evening