To think it would be hard for someone from an ordinary background to not feel a bit left out in at a top flight uni?

[Hammy02]

I just can't see how people can have even similar experiences at such places if they are from massively different backgrounds. Do people tend to stick with people from the same backgrounds as each other? Even in my 6th form, those from wealthy backgrounds hung around together as they generally did more expensive things at the weekend than everyone else. Eg, holidays abroad half a dozen times a year while the rest of us had Saturday jobs.

SecondTimeLucky I don't know if maybe it was because I got involved in sport and theatre, meaning the people I met were sewing costumes in the evening or doing circuits then having big group pasta dinners, and there was rowing practice on Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons, so the people I hung around did a lot of these things in a group. No matter how rich/poor they were, sodding off to a cottage for the weekend wouldn't have fit in with the practice schedule, and between studying & rehersals there wasn't a great deal of time for dinnners out and shopping.

I do think getting involved in extra curriculars at uni is very important.

Oh and I found my Oxford college much more affordable (book grants, subsidised accomodation etc etc - I'm from v working class background) than my friend found Royal Holloway, and RH was MUCH more snobbish than Oxford based on our experiences.

YAB(a bit) U. I went to Oxford from a comp - and have friends from all backgrounds. On the other hand there were a group of vv rich people who didn't bother with the likes of us (not all of the vv rich by any means, but some). They spent v little time in college. I suspect the delightful bunch now running our country were very similar.
But most of the people at my college were wildly academic and a bit otherworldly, so i don't think they d even notice. They were, however, baffled by the fact that I could a) cook, b) relate to the opposite sex in a non-flirtatious manner. One of them insisted I took him shopping for soap, because he found the whole thing so confusing.
But whoever said that eight week terms left little time for weekends away had it right. Very few of us ever left the city.

I went to Cambridge and the majority of people I knew were from state school. Everybody mixed together, and there were a huge range of backgrounds. Obviously other people will have had a different experience but I really didn't see anyone being left out or any difference between backgrounds at all. Of course some people stuck in tight little groups but that happens everywhere, and it wasn't just the rich people either.

YABU to think that the majority of people at a "top flight uni" are not for "ordinary backgrounds".

However, my friend at Leeds uni tells me the state/private divide is very pronounced there, which surprises me.

Yep tis true, the cream (as in rich and thick) of the public schools does tender to gravitate to Leeds. They go there because they are too stupid to get into Oxbridge or Durham or Exeter, despite having hundreds of thousands chucked at their education. The pick Leeds because, it will be 'like reallly, y'know urban...yeah?'

I used to work for S. Services in Leeds and admittedly wasn't looking at my best in my knackered old Parka and hair all over the place, I'd spent the day doing home visits and had stopped in the city centre. (Which I didn't know too well at the time) On my way back to the car I'd got a bit lost and stopped to ask a group of sloaney type students directions to Greek St (where my car was parked)

I'd got as far as 'Excuse me' when they swept past me bellowing 'no haven't got any change' in my direction.

I was speechless.

YABU. I went to Oxford, and a posh college at that- think Brideshead, and actually it was pretty uncool to be overtly 'rah'.

In college life was as cheap as it could be made, subsidised accomodation and food and beer at £1 a pint so it was a great place to be on a budget. There was a hardship fund too if you really ran out of readies which my DH drew on a couple of times. Being away from college without a good reason was not allowed so no holiday cottages were ever involved...

Heard on the radio this morning that 1 in 3 students at Russell Group universities are on bursaries designed to help poorer students. The kind of thinking expressed in the OP is what holds back a lot of bright kids from less privileged backgrounds - IME you are more likely to be held back by the inverse snobbery of your own class, than the overt snobbery of those in the class 'above' you.

What is "a bit left out"?

Are they going to understand that they're "different" from the rich kids? Yes. Will the rich kids be in the majority? Almost certainly not. Does any of this matter? Not in the slightest.

Uni teaches so many valuable lessons about life in addition to the subject being studied. There are rich, poor (although thanks to current education policy, significantly less of these ) and all types in between there. Students will learn that there are w*nkers, those with chips on their shoulders, those who've led a sheltered life, and utterly lovely, delightful human beings across all the social strata who'll all be represented.

I encountered loads of social snobbery at Uni (1st generation, working class background, strong regional accent) and also met some of the loveliest people who 17 years later are still very dear friends. I learnt how to handle my background in front of these people (no hiding it, no apologies, no aggressive shoulder chips either) which stood me in good stead when I entered my chosen profession (law at a City firm). Never having been on an aeroplane or not having a holiday for the previous 6 years, not being able to afford to learn to drive etc. honestly didn't matter. It's not something my friends and I ever focused on.

I remember bantering with an old Etonian that I couldn't believe his parents had spent all that money on school fees when I'd come away with better A level results from my comp, courtesy of the tax payer (I wasn't usually that chippy though!)

There is something for everyone at Uni. You find your thing, your level, your friends, yourself (cliche I know!) I'm so saddened by the current policy of school fees which will discourage people like me from going to Uni or forcing them to live with parents and/or get jobs with long hours during term time. My time out of lectures making friends and socialising were equally as valuable to me as the degree at the end of it. Being different isn't necessarily a bad thing and learning that at Uni was an important lesson for me.

Oops! That should be current policy of tuition* fees (for university).

I think a lot of this is also to do with region. I was never asked where I went to school because I have a Northern accent, so there was no point in rahs even questioning me. To even be asked this question, posters on here must have been able to pass as plausibly posh to begin with.

There is no way I would encourage DS to go to Oxbridge. There are perfectly decent Northern universities to go to.

To pretend to prospective students that there are no social issues within certain universities is disingenuous. People who enjoy the experience often do so because they are attempting to transform themselves into something else anyway and have little pride in their own culture, so attempt to ape somebody else's.

I was at the local state primary school, then went to an independent secondary school on a scholarship, then to Cambridge. My university friends come from a mixture of state and private education and it was not an issue at all.

My DH went to a state comprehensive and then to Durham. I have noticed that ALL of his university friends are state educated, which I suppose implies that there was a divide between the richer and poorer students. It certainly never bothered him though.

But ClothesOfSand, why do you think it's better to go to a local university? Isn't part of the fun of going to university moving away from home and trying out a new area? My DH is from Norwich and went to Durham university.

The North is pretty big. DS could go to Newcastle and be hundreds of miles away from home.

It depends what type of person you are anyway. Lots of people don't want to move a long way from home or try out a new area.

I thought this, which is the main reason I refused to apply to Oxbridge as a sixthformer. That fear, and some odd "principles" that I struggle even to articulate now. I would not make the same decision now.

I suppose it depends on whether you/your DC want to go to a "perfectly decent" university, or one that is ranked among the best in the world.

Oxbridge is the best in the world for research though, not teaching. A lot of the tutorials and so on at Oxbridge are carried out by postgrads. I think students would get better teaching at another university where they were being taught by lecturers. The Oxbridge style of tutorial system doesn't suit all students anyway; it is really best for people who are articulate and confident.

It is all a bit irrelevant for DS anyway, who wants to do Dentistry, which he can't do at Oxbridge anyway.

I reckon to have a good university experience you need something between 10 and 50 mates. Out of 10,000 students it should be possible to find that - the societies will help you find the people with whom you have stuff in common with a minimum of fuss - once you've found your group the old Etonians or chippy Northern Chemists or trendy clubbers or hearty rowing types or whatever can safely be ignored.
One close friend at Oxford was a proverbial Northern Chemist, I didn't have any mates from any of the other groups, and I didn't know anyone at all from an actual Public School, or the big name female equivalents, although many from minor Indies, and a load from grammars - a handful from comps (including DH).

Also of course, Oxbridge are not the only "top flight" universities - I bet Imperial isn't full of rahs.

If you bet Imperial isn't full of rahs (regardless of whether you are right about Oxford and Cambridge being "full of rahs") then you should be disagreeing with the OP and saying that there's no reason someone from an ordinary background wouldn't fit in at a "top-slight" university.

DP, I think you have described how people do cope at universities with major social divides, but wouldn't it be nicer just to go elsewhere? Just because somebody is a Chippy Northern Chemist, it doesn't follow that they are going to have anything in common with other Chippy Northern Chemists. It would be more pleasant to go to a different university where less of a herd instinct was operating and people were going to act in a more mature, less small minded way towards each other.

I think some universities have more of a balance than others.

I am disagreeing with the OP - should perhaps have made that more clear.
I think there are a lot of fairly wealthy students, including a fair few rahs, at Oxbridge, and certainly the privately educated are over represented. But that doesn't mean that a person from a more average background need feel left out, because it's still easy to make a bunch of friends who you'll fit in with - if you've got 20 good mates you can ignore the rest.

And some other top universities are less class-skewed, so it's even less of a problem.

YABVVVU and please please do not communicate such fears to any teenager you may know who is considering going to Oxbridge.

I went to a state comprehensive then Cambridge and hung about with all sorts of people, from other state school pupils to Old Etonians. I never found anyone who was a decent human being to be at all snobbish and elitist; if anything the poshos tried to play it down as they were faintly embarrassed - also, if you go to a "top flight" university you will find that a lot of the public school kids were at those schools on scholarships earned through being bright.

As other posters have said, the rents etc in Oxbridge are so cheap and hardship funding so easily available that there is no discernible difference between the haves and have nots. You are not allowed to have a car for example. In term time there is no gallivanting off on expensive weekends - far too much to do and frankly why would you want to go anywhere else when you live in such a beautiful town? In short, my view was that I had passed the same exams and deserved it as much as they did. Yes I had a few freshers' week conversations which began "where did you go to school?" but nobody ever stopped talking to me when I told them. And I was quite fascinated by what it was like to go to Eton. And I had some bloody fantastic times during the vacations at my friends' huge posh family houses!

I went to a RG uni in the early '90s. The splits I found were mostly based on interests rather than money. There were some very old money types who liked to slum it in the skanky sauf London clubs with us, and some rah's who liked dressing up for Browns etc... However, some people didn't appreciate how much money (freedom) they had compared to others.

I found the big problem (in the early days) was the lack knowledge about the wider world and life in general. I was the first in my family to go to uni. The only newspapers in my house were the sun and notw. I found uni and London a huge culture shock and learning curve. I'm not sure the tutors really appreciated how isolating this can be - I mean how was I supposed to know what guadiamous igitur was, let alone sing it!

Yes it would be nice to go to a university where class and origin played no part at all - but if my DC were deciding between a good university/course combo where they'd fit right in and a great university/course where they'd be less of a natural fit but still have a plenty of good friends and be happy then I'd advise the latter.