Oxbridge degrees - worth it?

[Pombearsandnaiceham]

What do you think? Would be interested to hear your thoughts :)

Yes Lucy, it's not the barristers of twenty or thirty years call that young entrants need to look at but the CVs of the recent pupils taken on for tenancy. They are seriously scary. If you go back a couple of decades or more you'll see a good old sprinkling of Durham's etc now head of chambers who didn't even get First's. Things were significantly less competitive back then, at the Bar. Far, far too many people do the BPTC, so it's a buyer's market, hence the advantage of an Oxbridge degree.

TBF tutorials / supervisions are usually 1:2, and for English we got two tutes a week, every week. In my final year I had 1:1 tutorials for the special author paper but 1:2 is the norm.

I know. However some people meet those standards and good luck to them. I want very bright committed barristers doing the hardest commercial law. It serves the public best. That is why I never understand professions wanting to make entry standards easier! Who would want to be operated on by a brain surgeon who wasn't very bright?

A bit off track here but I would just like to say thank you to the OP and contributors of this thread. I live about 25 miles outside of Cambridge and visit fairly regularly (for nights out if I'm honest!) and am always overwhelmed with the beauty of the place and would LOVE to live there if my circumstances allowed. I've also visited Oxford which is equally as beautiful. Having read this thread I have read a LOT about the various colleges and how it all works, what student life is like and I just wanted to say to any of you that went how DAMN LUCKY you are that you had the opportunity to be part of one of them. Maybe lucky is not the right word, hard work or natural talent maybe. It all sounds amazing. The history I have read has been a fantastic read

I'd be interested to know the ages of some of the people banging on about how oxbridge still helps for magic circle law firms...

I'm in recruitment at an Mc firm and while that may have been true years and years ago it's certainly not now and hasn't been for some time. We get a lot of applicants from oxbridge who aren't really suited to the client aspects of the job and we also get a lot that come across at interview as a lot less bright than their cv would have you imagine. In my experience the standard of candidate at interview is generally no better from oxbridge than from the likes of Durham, The london unis, warwick, Southampton, Bristol etc.

Since the recession the number of training contracts has dramatically decreAsed at most firms and so we have to be far more careful about who we offer them to. We no longer focus so much on oxbridge and our budgets are generally on par for all good universities. The only reason that oxbridge gets a little more time and money spent is that it's collegiate and it's hard to arrange things that all colleges will advertise, send students to or getting involved in etc and we do sometimes (despite wishing we didn't have to) therefore end up doing multiple events to cover off multiple colleges. Overall though, I wouldn't say that oxbridge is favoured any more at all.

Bananafish speaks a lot of sense. Oxbridge just wants to attract the brightest undergraduates, regardless of their background. The biggest hurdle to this is teachers, parents and others (possibly including some posters here) telling them that Oxbridge isn't the place for them. Support (financial, academic and pastoral) is excellent. It's hard work to get in, and harder work to keep up academically, but the right students thrive. If anyone has children who have the potential to get the required grades, take them to open days at Oxbridge and at other universities too, so they can make their own minds up.

An Oxbridge degree is "worth it" if it's going to help you realise your potential.

There are Oxbridge degrees and Oxbridge degrees. Some crappy oxford humanities degrees have less than 2 applicants per place and are full of thick Private school kids
Cambridge STEM degrees likely to be full of brighter kids.

I attended RG for my MSc and PhD. While I found the Oxbridge students had a leg up in those degrees when it came to presenting their work at conferences/academic posts, it didn't equate an instant success or getting jobs over those non Oxbridge. I interviewed for a position while finishing my PhD, and I got the job immediately. It's a prestigious institute to work for, top development economics centre in Europe. I was told I got the job because my RG Uni is better than Oxbridge at Social Policy Analysis, that seeing the name of my degree at the RG Uni on my CV just made the interview a formality. TBH I wasn't expecting that, I beat out only Oxbridge candidates and apparently I was the only non Oxbridge candidate they interviewed.

I'm a black American. Although my experience in the UK is only at the MSc and PhD level, I found a class, race, and mental health issue at my RG Uni. Many of the PhDs in my degree had severe depression and mental health issues and had zero support from the University. I was the only black person doing a MSc and PhD in my field (development economics/economics, let that sink in). In fact, most of the students were Chinese or very wealthy British/European. Most of the students I taught at undergrad level were public school students, and the comprehensive students used to ask me for help navigating the Uni because they felt lost and out of place. Quite a few of them would drop out and go to a different Uni. I don't doubt some BAME students at Oxbridge felt out of place and without support, but I'd suggest that's a problem with many RG Unis as well.

Care to elaborate, madamarcati?

The five least competitive courses at Oxford are Classics, Music, MFL, Chemistry and History. I wouldn't personally describe any of them as 'crappy'.

Land Economy at Cambridge was always traditionally the course of choice for thick sons of the aristocracy and for the ringer athletes being drafted in for the CUBC blue boat; I don't know if that is still the case...

Land Economy at Cambridge was always traditionally the course of choice for thick sons of the aristocracy and for the ringer athletes being drafted in for the CUBC blue boat; I don't know if that is still the case*

It still was on the early 2000s when I went there. There was a running joke that they were the cream of academia as they were all rich, thick and white.