To wonder if it really matters what university you go to?

[yappydappydoo]

Part of me says yes, part of me says no.

I do think there's more to it than what university you go to as to whether you get the job or not. I think experience is also important (more so these days when it seems pretty much everyone has a degree) and the people themselves and how they come across and how they will fit into the team, etc. However I can't help thinking if there was no difference between two candidates other than one went to a good Russell Group university and the other went to a bottom of the league table ex-poly then it might become important iyswim?

Also I'm not an employer but I can't help thinking that because so many people these days go to university that employers do have to differentiate between candidates somehow to choose who to invite in for an interview and one of the easiest ways to do that would be by what university they went to. I actually know someone who does interview for graduate jobs and to narrow applications down he immediately disregards any that went to universities that he hasn't heard of and then works from there.

The whole university snobbery thing seems to be worse on the internet.

I go to an ex-poly, newly made a university 5 years ago, was quite low in the league tables (this year it jumped a lot of places). For a lot of careers, of course a degree from my uni is going to pale in comparison to a RG uni degree. In my chosen career field, however, the expertise and experience we gain is absolutely invaluable at my uni, and isn't something you'd get at any RG institution.

A lot of people confuse the concept of degrees being worthless career-wise, with degrees being worthless full stop. It's unfair and damaging to the confidence and feelings of recent graduates and those working towards a degree, to hear that your hard work will be wasted even if you get a 1st. thankfully the attitude is not prevalent here, but it's rife on other forums.

No one IRL uses the term 'Oxbridge' certainly no one who went to any of the Oxford or Cambridge colleges.

Look at what the units offer as well as the name. I used to work at a uni with one of the highest graduate employment rates in the uk. It was mostly because if the high proportion of sandwich courses we offered and the high quality of placements. Lots of students were offered graduate jobs by their placement employers and this uni had a strong reputation for producing work-ready graduates, which employers appreciate.

I don't think that a RG university necessarily gives you a better education but it does help with getting jobs, particularly if it's Oxbridge/LSE. What's really galling is that the work you need to do to pass the degree - anywhere- is so much harder than the work you need to do to get the A levels to get your RG place. And I think this entrenches inequality because kids from state schools can be coasting along happily, top of their class, and then it's only when they get rejected from Oxbridge they realise it would have been worth working harder, whereas the private school kids are more aware and have their competitors in the class with them.

And I think this entrenches inequality because kids from state schools can be coasting along happily, top of their class, and then it's only when they get rejected from Oxbridge they realise it would have been worth working harder, whereas the private school kids are more aware and have their competitors in the class with them.

Really?
The state school that my son is hoping to go to has had over 50 of its sixth formers go to Oxbridge over the last three years. Looking at the private schools local to me they don't have more going to Oxbridge. It might be true that some state schools get very few students going to Oxbridge but it isn't true of all state schools. I'm sure there are some private schools who have very few students gaining places at Oxbridge too.

If it's any consolation for those who are reading this that feel discouraged by their own / their offsprings' decisions, I completely f*cked up my A levels but managed to scrape a place through clearing to an 'unknown' university.

After graduation, I decided that I wanted to work in marketing, and knowing that it was a competitive industry I steered clear of the big companies and instead found a job at a small local marketing agency (which happened to have some pretty impressive clients), answering the phone, making the tea, and making it clear that I could help support the account managers 'for free' by working a couple of extra hours at the end of each day 'for work experience'.

Word got through to the MD that I was an enthusiastic hard worker who was keen to learn and unafraid of getting my hands dirty by starting on the bottom rung. I was quickly promoted and the rest as they say is history.

It was a great life lesson that being a graduate doesn't always bring entitlement to a great job, but more that hard work, enthusiasm, and a great attitude does. It may take longer to get there but it's worth it in the end. It was a very grounding experience!

I do a lot of CV sifting now, and I'm not afraid of giving 'unknown' graduates just as fair a chance as any. What I notice initially is good spelling and grammar, and an effective covering letter that reflects what I'm looking for: personality, confidence, friendliness and enthusiasm.

It's interesting because I've been to both - ex poly for my undergrad and RG for my post-grad. However I was doing vocational courses and since qualifying I've had several interviews and where I studied has never been mentioned.

I think if you want to do certain careers with certain firms they will cherry pick from Oxford/Cambridge and their chosen 'better' unis but for some undergrad vocational courses the ex-ploys provide just as good a training. In fact the uni I went to undergrad came out best in the rankings for my subject even though several RG courses were available. In particular, courses for health therapies (SALT, physio, OT) weren't degrees until recent years so were always done at colleges/polytechnics so they had well established courses in the subjects and went on to become universities when the requirement for the jobs changed.

I work for an organization that has a large and very popular graduate trainee scheme. It matters not one jot which uni as long as they have a second class degree or higher. We use online tests, assessment centers etc to recruit the people with the right potential - it is not based on which uni they went to.

I think it depends what you want to do.
^^

This.

If you want to go in to nursing you are probably going to be at an expoly because that is where the nursing degrees are taught.

Not many ballet classes at Oxford, or sound engineering or a number of other subjects.

I think it depends what you want to do.

Definitely.

DS1 plans to apply to two particular courses because those are the ones most favoured by the handful of companies that he would like to work for.

It is also slightly complicated by the fact that we are in Scotland, and Scottish unis have different entry criteria to English unis.

A lot of uni's specialise in certain fields and have strong connections to certain industries. For example I know that Southampton and Bath engineering schools are close to a number of F1 teams and Dyson do a lot with Imperial College. I went to a uni which is an old one but not RG as it had a particular course I wanted to do and strong connections to consultancy firms.
I do think that old is generally seen as better than new (with some notable exceptions) but I am not convinced that RG cuts much ice outside of the academic sphere.

worridmum - I don't think there is an need to pick out specific uni's off the list and diss them. Why do you assume a uni in Belfast would be inferior?

I think one of the things that matters hugely, which people discount, is whether or not you can live there happily for three/four years. I think a lot of people assume it's somehow trivial to consider whether you actually want to live in a big bustling city, or out in the countryside, or 250 miles from mum and dad, or whatever. But realistically, even if you are on a brilliant course and you're academically suited to it, it is not going to go very well if you are miserable most of the time and feel isolated.

Same with teaching methods. I do find it a bit odd that people researching where they/their children might go can reel off league table results (and I swear, it can't possibly matter if one university got 13th place and another 17th - it'll all change next year). But they can't say whether the course involves mostly lectures, or seminars, or small classes, and they don't know how much of the degree is coursework and how much is exams. So you end up with students who know they are poor performers in exams, who know they respond badly to stress, who end up on exam-heavy courses because they didn't know to shop around.

Btw, I agree with imperialblether's post. But, I will also point out it's just as unthinkingly mean to harp on about firsts (or firsts/2.1s). I do have a 2.1, so you may put this down to being chippy if you like.

sash, funnily enough I know somebody who does lighting in the West End after being at Cambridge (admittedly nothing to do with her degree though, she used to do it for the theatre societies).

Some good courses can't even be done at some universities - marine engineering for example, but then you tend to be applying to companies who know those universities.

I do think it gets complicated when you involve Scottish universities though - plenty of Scottish people (and EU students) don't apply outside of Scotland due to the fee advantages. Clever students who in England would have applied for Oxford/Cambridge generally don't (unless they really want to go), so Edinburgh/St Andrews etc. get more of those higher tier students.

But the same thing applies in Scotland as does with the rest of the UK.

There are a lot of universities, some that are consideredthe "good" ones (Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrew's, Aberdeen), the newer ones which are pretty well thought of (Heriot Watt, Strathclyde), the ex-polies that have some great individual courses but aren't really well thought of outside that, and ones which are just dreadful in nearly every way.

Same as everywhere else.

For the record, Queen's University Belfast is a good one.

Same

Yes, I didn't word that very well. I meant if you had a Scottish student from one of the top Scottish universities, had they been English they might have been an Oxford/Cambridge student if that makes sense. Top Scottish ones are regarded quite as highly as those two (not that many are!), maybe more on a level with Durham perhaps? But the student could have been Oxford calibre rather than Durham calibre, but gone to Edinburgh due to the cost advantages.

aren't regarded even... I think it's bedtime!

I get what you mean Polka.

To go so far away from home and pay an extra £30k for the privilege you'd have to be pretty keen on Oxbridge.

Also it's a self fulfilling prophesy - if all the clever kids from the year above you at school went to Edinburgh then that is where your first thought is to go.

The whole Russell Group nonsense was spawned out of the 1994 Group.

Whoever said it was Lobby group is spot on; self-promotion based on money coming in for research, so obviously if you have higher numbers of researchers you have more money.

One example of a non-RG university, St Andrews is extremely highly regarded for many subjects and is extremely well-established. Also, for example, Dundee University sits up with Oxford and Cambridge for life sciences research and teaching but isn't an RG university.

I find it shocking that people don't research reputation in specific subjects rather than seeing RG universities as the be all and end all.

Salmo, if a biotech company was hiring someone then I'm sure they'd be imposed by good A-level grade and a science degree from Dundee, if it's well respected in that field, because they'd be in the know about it. But if people are wanting to use their degree more generally, then the name will carry more gravitas, more often with big firms hiring a lot of graduates onto schemes.

Russell Group predates 1994 Group. 1994 Group was composed of smaller research driven universities that weren't invited to the Russell Group meetings. The reason for both Groups was to retain as much research funding as possible as they were worried that the new, ex Poly, universities would be after this money. Nothing much to do with the teaching of undergraduates, yet people consider membership to be the benchmark of a good university for undergraduate studies.
As far as the OP's question is concerned - it shouldn't matter but it makes a difference for getting your foot in a profession/career. Five years on, recruiters will be far more interested in how well you do your job than whether you went to a university ranked at no. 10 rather than no. 40 in some newspaper's list.

Btw, I agree with imperialblether's post. But, I will also point out it's just as unthinkingly mean to harp on about firsts (or firsts/2.1s). I do have a 2.1, so you may put this down to being chippy if you like.

Why is it unthinkingly mean? I have a 2:1 but I d

I have a 2:1, but I don't get upset if someone says that a first is more highly regarded than a 2:1. It is just a fact.

Mmm.

I don't get upset if someone says Cambridge is more highly regarded than Harper Adams or London Met. It's just a fact, too.

Doesn't mean it's not worth thinking how someone listening might feel, I think.

Lilymaid - you are right. The Russell group was founded in 1994 too.

The 1994 Group was formed to protect the interests of other Universities - also in 1994, obviously.

So the Russell Group presumably predates the 1994 group by a matter of months.