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.

I think people vary enormously in how they react to finding themselves in a new environment or with different people.

It's like people who emigrate: some enjoy the challenges and the different experiences, others draw in their horns and become expats. Others (like me) have a sudden feeling that they have come home.

My dad went to university from a rural working class background and enjoyed it because he felt the scholarly life suited him better than the life he'd come from.

Dh was a scholarship boy at a private secondary and never felt any different from the others, but then he comes from a very adaptable family.

Well I coped fine from a relatively underprivileged back ground. When you go to University the nice librarians give you lessons in how to use the library (although his school should have also taught him). The people who really didn't cope at Uni also came from a wide range of backgrounds: ethnic minorities who only commuted in, very privileged but had never thought for themselves, and a whole host of undiagnosed learning difficulties. As well as those who suffered stress for various reasons; including pretty toxic parents.

Lesley, uni is not about socialising.

There are loads of different backgrounds at Oxford and Cambridge. Not necessarily studying, even.

However, in people's lives they will have to deal with all sorts. And if you get an Oxbridge degree you'll be more likely to fin yourself in the same company as during your degree.

Thing is this thread is about people from ordinary backgrounds, not underpriveleged ones (though those experiences are really interesting). That's what I find so baffling about the OP's post, though I notice she hasn't come back to explain, revise her definition, or engage with any of the responses.

I went to cambridge. I grew up in a single parent ( mum worked part time in a shop) household in housing association house with very little money , first one in family to go to uni and all that
I made friends with all sorts of different people.... I remember the first time one of my best friends said he was going to london to see a bit of Wagner with his mother at the weekend....I thought he was joking . I dont however remember any great divide.... i used to hang out with toffs as much as proles like me. plus a lot of the socialising revolves around formal halls/dining in college.... which are cheap and sports clubs/ am dram and the like which dont tend to cost a lot of cash. I think the media actually put intelligent people from lower income families off applying. Actually its far more important the you are bright and self confident rather than posh.

Thing is this thread is about people from ordinary backgrounds, not underprivileged ones

But who defines 'ordinary'? I thought my background was entirely ordinary until I went to university - for me it was 'ordinary' not to have had an indoor loo, to have parents with serious literacy problems so that I was filling out forms etc from a very young age, to know (without anything being said) never to invite anyone home, because there wasn't really enough food to go round in the times when my dad was unemployed or on strike pay, and not to know anyone who had gone to unversity until I went myself, having figured out somehow that there were grants and scholarships I was eligible for.

It was 'ordnary' for me, and it's probably pretty ordinary for a lot of people still, surely?

YABU - DH and I both went to a top university from normal backgrounds (immigrant backgrounds, first in family to go to uni, etc.). At first it felt as if the place was full of rick kids, who I really struggled to socialise with, but when you started looking around you soon found loads of people like yourself.

But there were also kids from working-class backgrounds who came with massive chips on their shoulders and struggled to settle in because things were not the same as at home, and they hated it. It does sort of mean moving out of your own comfort zone a bit, but in the end it is worth it.

Well HardCheese that was partly my point - the OP didn't define ordinary and, as you say, everyone thinks their own experience is normal, so we're all talking at cross purposes.

Average is some form of middle class these days, so I'd say that is ordinary.

Underprivelege as you describe is limited to a small minority of the population, so is not normal, I'd say not ordinary.

Some people use 'ordinary' in quite a loaded way to assert a proud 'salt of the earth' working class identity, in a way that can encompass a lot of inverted snobbery.

Maybe that's what the OP meant but because she didn't make that clear, I find the idea that average people would have difficulty at university absolutely baffling, since most people at university are round about average, it's just that people are exposed to a wider cross-section than previously (probably more shocking for the uber-priveleged than the average) and there is a skew in attendance at the wealthy / least weathly ends of the population.

I think that some people (regardless of class, wealth or social background) will cope better than others with changing to university life, looking after oneself and making new friends.

I and others upthread have pointed out that going to university from a poor/working class/underprivileged background/humble beginnings (use phrase of choice) actually felt so natural, it was like I'd found what had been missing from my life for the past 18 years. It was a revelation that I could have an intelligent conversation, using "big words" (as my fellow school friends would describe them) and actually feel engaged, respected and stimulated rather than a bit embarrassed and like a fish out of water. I interviewed for Oxford and didn't get in but those couple of days staying in halls with a bunch of bright and friendly young people (all far, far wealthier than me) was like someone switched on a light. I knew my A level results were my ticket out of my old life and into a new one, I'd tasted what I wanted and it only made me hungrier to get it.

Assuming that bright people from underprivileged backgrounds won't cope or keep up is doing them a huge disservice. Plenty of cosseted ex-public school boarders or comfortably middle class mummies boys and girls struggle equally with having to do things for themselves for a change. Different backgrounds may present different challenges but it's all part of the growing up experience.

More pertinent barriers to entry which we should be discussing are huge fees and costs of living associated with attending university along with lack of support, guidance and role models for anyone who would be first generation university in their family.

I'm from an 'ordinary' (not underprivileged) background and went to a Russell Group university; I didn't feel that there was a huge divide at all. The wealthy students and students from the 'big name' schools did tend to stick together and not bother with anyone else but they were just another group of people. I found that the majority of my fellow students were from the same sort of middle-of-the-road background as me. I do know people from disadvantaged backgrounds who found the attitudes of some they met at uni a struggle, but these are a couple of isolated cases tbh.

What I found more evident was the attitude of some of the students at my boyfriend's different Russell Group university, actually. I'm from East Anglia, he's from the south east, and we found a lot of people he knew from the Midlands or the north were very 'anti' towards those from the south; sneering at us, thinking of us as 'snobs' for no apparent reason. I know it goes both ways, but there seemed to be a lot of inverse snobbery among people he knew.

I come from a very poor background and found university much much easier than being at secondary school for all kinds of reasons. But I did find in the 80's that most people had no idea how poorer people lived and thought a middle class lifestyle and background was normal.

lottiegb - You said "Average is some form of middle class these days, so I'd say that is ordinary."

It depends what you mean by middle class. But in "April 2010 median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees were £499." tbh I don't think this level of salary is a middle class one and yet it is in fact the average salary for the UK then.

I too found university easier than school for a plethora of reasons.

And yes, the majority of students at the time had vey little idea of how the other half lived. However, seeing the comments on here trying to say that the vast majority of students in top flight universities toady are ordinary, and the majority of people in the UK are middle class, tells me that people still have no idea how the other half live.

Well, I don't really want to get into trading differently-generated statistics, or defining class too closely because that turns into a whole other disucssion but.... I understand the median individual FT salary to be £26k and median household income about £33k which certainly doesn't signal 'not middle-class' to me. If you use 'type of work' definitions, only a minority now do manual or unskilled jobs. I do think a lot of people like to define themselves as working class in a 'proud of my roots' way, who really aren't.

Anyway, the experiences discussed, whether from average, comfortably middle, working class or underpriveleged backgrounds have all been interesting and almost unanimous in saying you don't go to university to socialise with people exactly like yourself and that nobody should be discouraged from going. The fact that people form underpriveleged backgrounds got so much from university proves that point all the better.

I was just making the point that I found the OP's post particularly odd, because she wasn't talking apparently about underpriveleged people, so must have a very strange idea about who populates most universities as well as very self-limiting ideas about how people mix.

I totally agree wordfactory. And it is not just our opinions, but the stats back up that ordinary or average is not middle class.

When I went to university, people seemed to think they came from poor backgrounds just because they went to a state school. Ignoring the fact that in actuality they came from middle class backgrounds.

lottie - Don't disagree with your stats and thats fine if that is your definition of middle class. Old style manual or unskilled jobs are seriously in decline. People who are working class now are imo more likely to do lower skilled desk jobs now such as call centres.

University apart, I went to and from a grammar school by bus, wearing my uniform and royal blue blazer. When I alighted from the bus once, a pupil from a nearby secondary modern school asked me what school I attended. When I told her, she just spat "Snob!" at me and walked away. My parents lived in council accommodation all their lives and never made much money.

To throw in my tuppence worth of personal experience. I went to Liverpool (red brick and Russell Group) and met and was friends with more people from working class backgrounds who were the first generation to go to university there, than at my north-eastern comprehensive, where all my friends were children of university-educated professionals.

At the time Liverpool had one of the lowest percentages of students from private schools and the ones who chose to go there probably knew that, so weren't seeking a homogenous bubble.

So a big vote for depends a lot on the university as to who you'll meet but the point of going is to mix with everyone and extend your horizons. Also, that finding this stuff out beforehand is a good idea and much easier now with the internet.

I went to Portsmouth Poly in 1990, in the first week the public school kids, including Ben Fogle stuck up twat seemed to sniff each other out and cluster together. No idea how they did it but it was amazing to watch them 'working' the room, they could just tell who were the 'right' people. After a fortnight they were best buddies, watching rugby, united by their poor A-levels and school fees.

Our group of 'ordinary' folk were mostly first in the family to go to uni but we do have a couple of private school kids pleased to escape the torment of their secondary school years. So encourage your kids to keep an open mind somewhere on a forum an Eton schoolboy is asking if the 'ordinary' people will be friends with him.