State school - Uni . Who are your adult (20-30) kids still friends with?

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From my friendship circle it appears that all the private school kids stay in touch with the friends they made there. Their weddings involve the friend's they made at secondary school plus a few Uni ones.
The state school kids seem to have friends from where they grew up or work.
Is this a thing or just common to the people I know.

Both my sons went to state school/uni and are very much in contact with secondary school friends/attend their weddings and other events. They are also in touch with more recent uni/work friends.

I think you’re generalising quite a bit. It very much depends on how socially integrated you felt somewhere and nothing to do with whether you went to state vs private.

I went to private secondary. I’m in my 40s and still close to school friends (though we live all over the world now). I don’t have any friends from uni as I worked FT through uni and didn’t live on campus. My adult friends are from work, postgraduate education and parents of dc’s friends.

Dh went to private secondary. Never kept in touch with a single school friend. All his adult friends are from uni and a few neighbours, parents of dc’s friends.

We had similar privileged upbringings. He hated school but loved uni. I loved school but didn’t really fit in at uni and was working a lot. That’s only difference really. Our close friendships reflect that.

Your post doesn't make sense. You say private school kids remain friends with those they were at school with, whereas state school kids remain friends with those they grew up with - they're the same thing!

And if people go to uni they usually remain friends with a few they met there.

And are you really saying that you think state school people make friends through work, but privately educated people don't?

@mindutopia well thats the question I was asking.
I went back back to the small affluent town I grew up in. So I know lots of people generally. It was just something I had noticed as a difference between state and private and wondered if it was just me.

My son is still close to friends from school, and also has good friends from uni. Surely it depends how close the friendships were to start with and also how much of an effort you put in to maintain them? My son makes an effort to contact ex school friends when he is in his home town, otherwise he wouldn't see them. He went to state school.

They aren't the same thing. Friends you grew up with could be neighbours, kids of your parents friends, friends from clubs and hobbies.

Of course everyone makes friends through many sources. It was noticeable to me that private school kids remained friends with their friends from school to a greater extent.

I think there may be a degree of truth in this, although clearly it's by no means universal. A couple of factors that might contribute to this:

Parents at private schools typically remain more involved in school life than their state school counterparts, and so will form friendships with other parents in a way that just doesn't happen at the majority of state schools. These ties between parents means that the children are kept in the same orbit after they leave home.

Private schools typically have a stronger alumni network.

Children from private schools are much more homogeneous in terms of social class and are more likely to have similar career trajectories, compared to the much wider demographic in state schools. So it's less likely that their uni/work friendships will feel like a 'better fit' for them than their school friendships.

Obviously these are all generalisations.

Eta - also, private school typically forms a greater part of your identify than secondary school, with a greater sense of membership/belonging. Even more so if you have a parent that attended the same school.

Is it more what then happens in terms of location. So my friends (private school) went en masse to Oxbridge (I exaggerate but not much) and then left their home towns for professional careers so are (generally) in clusters away from their childhood homes. My DH’s (state school) friends are nearly all still in the medium size town they grew up in. I therefore have no difficulty keeping up with my friends (despite living a couple of hours from many of them) because we’re all scattered whereas DH’s school friends have long since stopped talking to him because he’s living elsewhere and not there for Friday and Saturday nights in the local pub.

Hard to analyse really what others friendship circles look like.

Thinking about the people I was at school with, some are all mates still (as always posting together on social media), some seem to have held on to a handful of relationships but not many (like me), and others seem to have entirely disappeared.

I imagine it varies by individual and how local you are to where you grew up.

I think i agree OP. Private school kids do tend to keep their school friendships more.
Mainly because they are more homogeneous as are their parents.

I have considerable experience of both sectors

I was bullied at school. I was happy at university. I made stronger links at university. Coupled with only rarely visiting my home town... (about 3x a year)... I don't have any school friends.

DH was happy at school and at university. He has a big family in his home town. He has friends from both eras.

Both very similar schools, just different locations