to ask if DC shouldn't bother with university if they can't get into a Russell Group one?

[TuTuTilly]

I'd never heard of the ruddy things before I joined MN. Didn't even realise I'd been to one. I do recall when I had a tedious summer job in Human Resources which included "sifting" job applications for an international firm of accountants, being told to dump any that weren't from a handful of universities.

So my question is; if your child can't get into an RG university - should they accept that they will be unemployable oiks upon graduation and resign themselves to a life working in call centres?

Want2bsupermum That is not how it has worked in the companies I have worked for, involved with service and product marketing to SMEs and consumers. The real challenge in marketing is analysing markets and the competitive position and developing a strategy to exploit them. A&P are just marketing tools although with ad agencies there is always a tension because they like to think they are the strategists. You have to do an apprenticeship as product manager, perhaps a stint in sales (which I did, and learnt negotiation skills locking horns with major customers as well as marketing skills developing their marketing plans and tailoring services for them). However the real fun starts when you are senior enough to be involved in the development and implementation of strategic plans, and in a market led company everything including the organisational strategy is directed at ensuring the company is aligned to the strategy for exploiting it's markets. For some time I was seconded to the Finance Director as part of a project group that included Goldmans and a city law firm to develop a strategy for divesting some parts of the business, but their value could only be maximised with a credible marketing and investment strategy (endorsed by MacKinseys).

In this country there is a well established route by which you develop your career in marketing leading hopefully eventually to the Board and even CEO. This is a classic example, the last CEO of Carlsberg www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/61376/profile-prince-ales---doug-clydesdale-marketing-director-carlsberg-Tetley

I'd disagree with that, Bertha New Scientist ran a good article the other week on how positive discrimination is working well when employing people with Aspergers. I know for a fact that in the world of finance a couple of the very large employers will often look for Aspies, who would score very low on EQ, although they may not in fact have a low EQ.

Agree. EQ and IQ both very important. In the popular fields, there are many applicants with both.

So I think you are being not too helpful if you encourage children to think they will get by with their winning smiles alone.

CCDS at A level may not be 'thick' but if that is all my daughter can get, I won't be encouraging her to apply to any university.

Dawn I think that there have long been (undiagnosed) aspies in many fields where they have relevant strengths, including the city and finance.

There is a false dichotomy here between EQ and IQ. Most people have enough of both to function pretty well.

The point here is, all else being equal, RG gives a student a better chance of success. If everyone at crappy universities had fabulous personalities then they would have to find some other way of standing out and getting ahead. Rolling the dice on your winning smile when your education is going to cost you real money doesn't make sense.

If you have the drive and determination to get ahead, then prove it by getting into that RG university that is top on your list and then prove it again by graduating with a 2:1 minimum.

'Certainly the Scientists at her uni are recognising that it isn't just a case of encouraging girls to study Science, science has to actually change so it can benefit from female ways of thinking, which will in turn, make it a more attractive subject of study for women'
Ye gods

Are you being tongue in cheek by any chance?

Xenia -- the only person I know who is in PR makes a ton of money. She started off as a personal shopper in Bloomingdales in NY, no qualifications whatsoever, but had been to a rah rah school in Ireland and definitely knew how to shop, and talk. Parlayed her way into PR for a prominent actor whose clothes she picked out. She is definitely a smart person and works hard, but I do think she is an exception. University would have gone right over her head. Marketing is a different kettle of fish though Supermum is right to state that sales and rainmaking is where it's at.

The idea that people who have Aspergers Syndrome lack empathy and/or emotional intelligence is outdated.

It's all relative. Yes BCC are not great A level grades and will not get you through the door for most higher paid graduate professions which is great - we don't want not very clever heart surgeons. We want the brightest to do the work which demands the highest IQs.

Carolyn McCall is an exception though, not the rule. And it took her to age 51 to net in 2012 £2m in pay and bonus. Also she's a mere hired hand, not a 100% owner of a business. I want women to own if they can. More money, more power that way and less chance they can be sacked.

She did not pick the easiest route. On the whole marketing and PR people are paid less than some other jobs and it is important if pay matters to someone that they are aware of that when they make career choices.( I never said NLCS girls became PR girls. I don't know a single one. It is certainly the job of blondes who want to work for a few years before snaring Mr Right if they look good enough, blonde enough and thin enough I suppose).

I wouldn't call him 'Mr Right' if he is shallow enough to want blonde and thin.They would both get what they deserve!

I'm sure some people do well in PR, but the truth is most don't. I get given a new one every year or so by my publishers. They are always female, always posh, always badly paid. Cannon fodder. Tis the same in publishing. The odd senior editor will do well, but most are female, posh and badly paid.

maths ye gods, why engage in evidenced debate when you can troll out prejudice and subjective opinion? I was just reporting on a current of thought my DD had been exposed to at one of the top RG unis, on one of the most highly regarded Science courses. I thought it was interesting because it mirrors a debate that has long been had in business, indeed was raised on Question Time last night, in the context of whether the banking sector would have engaged in such risky behaviour if more of it's senior managers had been women. Most of the sources are on jstor etc but here is one that isn't behind a paywall that quotes many if you are interested in actually thinking about the issues scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v10n2/zuga.html

If you are going to be an entrepreneur then marketing skills are going to be vital. Indeed plenty of the most successful entrepreurs I have encountered living the most affluent lifestyles in this affluent bit of London, alongside the bankers, lawyers, CEOs and Directors (including Marketing Directors), set up companies that exploited the current boom in demand for diversified marketing services and then sold their companies on to the traditional advertising agencies who were slow to pick up on the change in the nature of A&P and needed to play catch up to make themselves into one stop shops. Many marketers have made millions on that market opportunity. But no matter, thankfully most students won't go to Mumsnet for career advice and nor frankly will or should they aspire to live in this rather unreal London bubble.....

The key thing for OP is that, as reflected in this article on preparing your CV for a career in marketing, as with many other career choices, your education is just a footnote, having studied on a well regarded course, RG or not, is almost a default. Far more important is your personality and how you present yourself, your skills, vocational qualifications, experience etc careers.guardian.co.uk/cv-for-marketing-roles

The Director of Public Relations and Communications was actually the Chief Executive's right hand woman on our Board with responsibility for Government, investor, employee and media relations as well as Corporate Responsibility but also his sounding board on the major issues we faced. Our former baby sitter is Head of Public Relations for a large broadcasting Company and has a very interesting challenging and financially rewarding career, working very much alongside a very high profile Chief Exec, whilst still in her twenties.I think that assuming the blonde posh girls handing out freebies and making the arrangements for corporate junkets are in anyway representative of the important role a Head of PR in a large company can play is naive.

It's intriguing to see what other people prioritise most in life.
I sincerely hope that those of you obsessed with RG Universities and the 'right' job, ie. one which provides only a six figure wage... have spent TWICE as long teaching your kids the value of a real education, ie. empathy, compassion for others, humility, respect and team work. Oh and I really hope non of my children go into law because I'd hope they'd prefer to prioritise their home life above and beyond any job.
And I say that as someone who's eldest is expected to get 12 A* in her GCSE's.

stepawayfromthescreen that is exactly one of the things I hate about having had to raise my DDs in this unreal London bubble. Empathy and respect for others is something many parents don't teach their children, indeed the intense vicarious competition over getting into the right schools means that many of their DCs have low self esteem because they feel their parent's love was conditional, those who aren't actually directly damaged by their parent's self indulgent behaviour, and indulge in extreme attention seeking behaviour, feeding off the self esteem of others. It has felt as if teaching my DDs those values has actually made them a target, though thankfully there have always been a few DDs raised with similar values with whom they could resist the group norms. I comfort them by saying that these cool alpha girls will not do well in the real world, their skill set will only ever be effective in a girls' school or women's prison......

I really am the only parent in the world who doesn't take predictions as grades already gained, aren't I.

Many of the six figure salary earners I know, including myself, clearly prioritise their home life above and beyond their job.

However, that's an aside since I think most people in this thread haven't been obsessing about pushing their kids into the future equivalent of six figure salary careers. For a good long chunk of time people were defending real education in the face of a sustained onslaught from the dull philistines.

Then why do it Cop? Why not bring your DC up somewhere more conducive?

If every A* prediction materialised, Micheal Gove just might have a point about them being too easy!

word Conducive to what? I imagine Copthall has reasons for living where she lives, not everyone works from home like you and I often do, some people have to have a degree of proximity to a workplace or an airport or similar, two income households have to optimise two sets of requirements in that respect, then there are considerations such as family, community etc. And having lived (when just out of uni) n the area of London where I think Copthall now lives, at least one in which she seems most interested And posts a lot about, there are massive advantages to living there, which probably outweigh the disadvantages. Not everyone can afford multiple properties even if they do earn a decent salary. As prom season approaches I certainly hanker after my old bedsit in that area, it would be much handier living there again than living where I live now. And I know Dd1 feels th same.

word it's like that how much do you earn thread. So many people confidently stating that they expect to be earning in that bracket in 5 years. How? How can they expect this? At the very least, have they never heard of hubris? More pertinently (and 'how the other half live'-y, in my view) have their lives been so untroubled that they have never experienced something going badly tits up? Sometimes I really think that the majority of people on MN are either hopeless optimists or have had incredibly golden lives. Or maybe I've just had an incredibly grimey one.

Russians - I have no beef with london. We live there half the week and I think its fab for the DC now they are teens. But Cop sees it so negatively! I'm sure if I felt that way about my DCs environment I'd move hell and high water to change it. I just wondered why she hadnt

As for optimistic declarations, to be honest I just think those people lack any sort of imagination! That dullness of mind coupled with arrogance is common. And perhpas one of the reasons why most people are NOT highly successful.

Very interesting the prejudices displayed on this thread.

So I am a lawyer and this is incompatible with prioritising my home life? What rubbish. Different things get different priorities at different times. There are many different types of work of can do in law. Not all require 12 hour days in the city. They do all however require A level grades above a few Cs.

So the sciences have to 'adapt' to 'female thinking'? Appalling statement on any number of levels.

Aid am a 'dull philistine' because I question the value and utility of spending 3 years studying English Literature at the tax payers expense? Surely a sterling example of the 'rigour' of analysis in this field.

Don't we just want our children to find out what they enjoy and how they can translate this into earning a living? Not necessarily mega bucks but enough to give them choices in life - such as having a family or travelling or living somewhere nice. But basically being able to spend life doing something they enjoy or at least don't hate with soul sucking passion.

So, to take it back to the thread, I think if your child can't get the grades for an RG university, tha child needs to think very carefully about whether university is really the right path at all, especially in over populated fields such as English and Law.

Spero you described yourself as dull and unimaginative up the thread. I have to say that your posts in this thread don't actually lead me to doubt your self analysis. Especially your oft repeated statement that there was nothing you could possibly do at university other than law. Law is fine, I haven't got a problem with people doing law, I think law is a great career and an interesting academic discipline. But I think doing it purely because there's nothing else you can think of to do is appalling. I'm not surprised your world view is so bleak and bitter in the circumstances, though. I think the views you have expressed are philistine, yes, and I'm as entitled to say so as both of us are to criticise people who assume decently paid women don't priorities their home lives (which is, I agree with you, a ridiculous thing to say).

You were not the only person I tarred with the dull philistine brush though.

The abject failures love to suggest that successful women have no empathy and are bad parents and their children do not know about lvoe and rounded lives. That is wrong. If you are successful at your work you are often better at bringing up children as you are brighter. You probably excel; at your hobbies too as in general you are good at everything. Successful women tend to be better at everything even the softer stuff than less successful women. however it comforts the poor and unsuccessful to assume the rich are unhappy and bad.

No one is saying advertising and particularly web applications you can sell for a fortune cannot be areas in which you are successful. Sorrell has not exactly done badly etc but it is harder particularly for younger women to earn a lot on average in marketing as so many of those young girls want to flounce around at silly parties looking pretty and they tend to end up just married without a job. I do not particularly recommend going into PR when people graduate. By all means join one of the better advertising agencies which you might end up owning of rounding your own but getting in at the bottom in PR can be a bit like going into acting.

I don't live in inner, just outer, London and I don't think we are part of any kind of group as it is such a mixed area which is one of the nice things about it.

When I was 18! I like to think I have matured a little since then.

I am sorry you find it so hard to accept that some teenagers don't have an enormously extensive view of the world and what it can offer. My parents were both from working class backgrounds and weren't very clued in to what the world could offer. I don't think my school helped widen my horizons. Being innumerate and contemptuous of English Lit did seem to lead to only one conclusion as far as i could see.

And I feel very blessed that more my luck than judgment I have ended up in a career that is a good fit with my skills and earns me enough money to have choices.

Oh the idea that rich and successful people all have hopeless home lives, and are deeply unhappy is so stupid.

Or the idea that people earning less are all terrific parents!

To be honest some of the most driven peopleI know earn very little and pay little regard to their families eg artists, musicians, actors etc.