Scottish Universities a tad posh ....

[TalkinPeace2]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-18317093

St Andrews admitted 13 students from deprived areas out of a total student body of 7370

well yah !

And yes, the posh English students and Americans really do stand out, it's true. I do find the atmosphere and staff much easier to be around than Cambridge though.

In my day you could at least get nearly to St Andrews by public transport- I don't think you can now!

It's where you go if you're not quite at the top, but posh, bit like Exeter. It's for those who cannot make Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Bristol etc. It's not even Russell Group. It's where you go if you're not that good, a kind of second tier place for well connected but not as bright as others.

Russell Group? Darling, Leeds and Liverpool are Russell Group!!

Oh, bloody hell, Xenia - once more and with feeling: RG is a group defined by research income by volume. And that's pretty much it. If you look at St A's per capita income it punches way above most RG universities. There is so much crap spouted about HE by people who know a lot less than they think or should.

Yes you can, seeker - mainline to Leuchars and then bus to St A.

I went to Glasgow Caledonian, nearly the least posh!
St Andrews definitely has a 'rep' though.

We currently have 4 ex-pupils at StA from my not posh school. My husband went there from his not posh school down the road. I don't know where they get their stats from but all his University friends are very lovely but from all kinds of backgrounds. My Universities were far more elitist feeling than St A.

Agree with Xenia on the whole, about academic standing at least. Less convinced about St. Andrews being undilutedly posh.

On what grounds. Yellowtip? TWAT scores? RAE? Or rumour?

Ha! That was meant to be TQA. How very unfortunate.

And for what subjects? This is why discussions about HE are so strange - there is so much variation from subject to subject. E.g. which UK uni is really, really highly respected internationally for life sciences?

My test is what old fashioned employers think. It doesn't matter if they have the best researches in the world for the bog standard graduate recruitment programmes for jobs which are well paid usually those where the degree doesn't matter too much for what you do next such as accountancy, law, advertising etc they go by the institution and they have a mental pecking order which is Oxford, Cambridge then Durham, Bristol, probably LSE in there. St Andrews is not on the list unless what you are really after is posh in which case if I were recruiting say for Sotheby's and needed someone with the right accent etc and good connections to sell the stuff I might well not cross St A off the list and might indeed have it on my list.

Xenia - you are severely out of date. Durham and Bristol are way below UCL, Imperial, LSE and King's on the recruiters' list of desirable universities these days.

It's only going to get worse. St Andrews and Edinburgh are one of the few Scottish Unis that will charge £9,000 for each year - making it £36,000 for English students rather than £27,000 as there is an extra year to pay for. Therefore, richer English students will go there.

@ habbibuin fact I think I could usefully think back across my experience of graduates from the universities mentioned (taking the eighties as a snapshot in time) and list them according to the apparent prevalence of twats in each. I think (haven't yet done this scientifically mind you), the twat factor would be in inverse proportion to the academic standing of each, with the rah factor being closely connected to the twat factor but not wholly synonymous (perhaps the rah factor could be used as a negative historic moderator of sorts).

where do recruiters get their ideas from?

Not what I've seen at all although If you were asking me for a complete list I would have universities in London on it, not all of them but some of them.

A good way to check these things is find the career you are after and look at where the latest students have been recruited from. Obviously it varies from career to career. The only one I can think of where CVs go on line is the Bar.
So let's take brickcourt.co.uk and look at the most junior tenants - where they went. I am just looking now.

Cambridge, Oxford, Cambridge..

Okay I've run out of time and lost interest. I suppose places like Saatchi and Deloittes and Enst & Young don't put up full CVs of junior staff so you would need to go to the linked in profiles of the new recruits and I've not enough interest to bother but I certanily think anyone advising their teenager about where to go who has a rough idea of their likely career route is advised to look from where those employers tend to recruit and whether HR at the place concerned love Westminster ex poly or are sold only on Oxbridge or whatever.

Go to any of the big international firms' HR departments and ask them where they actually and actively look for recruits, and the big six are Oxbridge and the four London universities. Anything else is already second-tier.

Times change. It wasn't like that in our day

I also went to St Andrews a loooong time ago

One of the challenges it faces is that Scottish students have a tradition of going to their "local" Uni so that they can stay at home, which obviously means that fewer "local" students will go to St Andrews.

I wouldn't say I was working class but I went to an ordinary state school in Glasgow and St Andrews was my first choice. I didn't want to do a 6th year and try for Oxbridge. I liked the idea of a University town - and it was good for the subjects I was wanting to do. I also very definitely didn't want to stay at home, so I didn't even apply to either of the Glasgow Unis (shows my age: there were only two back then). Leeds, Aberdeen and Edinburgh were my other choices.

The other students in my Hall of Residence (the Atholl) were a cross section of society, from a train drivers' son, another lad who was one of thirteen kids and his father was a taxi-driver, to the daughter of a Swedish millionaire.

The "yahs" are their own particular breed which are not indicative of the whole student body.

I think there is often an issue with the schools themselves restricting choices and not encouraging kids to apply to places like St Andrews - and in some case, positively dis couraging them from applying.

I don't think it's fair to refer to "our day" bonsoir when I've had three children graduate very very recently. I probably know as much as many about things now.

My research here is not going very well on this topic, laughing as I type... Getting side tracked by funny comments:

....." up in arms about a shift in the profession's graduate recruitment strategy that could see them forced to mix with "riffraff".

"I did not study at Oxford and the LSE to end up working with people who graduated from Leicester or Queen Mary," wrote one person on legalweek.com in response to the news last week that magic circle outfit Freshfields is extending the number of universities from which it recruits.
Others suggested that students from the less traditional universities were "dirty" and "substandard" and that recruiting them was a pointless concession to political correctness.

It's a phenomenon partly explained by recent research from Dr Louise Ashley of the Cass Centre for Professional Service Firms, which found law firms turned down candidates who looked or sounded working class in order to preserve their upmarket brand.

One City solicitor told Ashley: "There was one guy who came to interviews who was a real Essex barrow boy, and he had a very good CV, he was a clever chap, but we just felt that there's no way we could employ him. I just thought, putting him in front of a client ? you just couldn't do it."

And St Andrew's had Fisher and Donaldson......

Up to you Xenia, but the fact of having DC graduate recently does not mean you are up to date on employment/recruitment and the desirability of certain universities over others.

There is a lot of residual parochial snob value in the UK, just as there is in France, about certain schools and universities, and indeed about certain paths of study over others. Things are changing very fast indeed right now and greatly increased university tuition fees in the UK are going to make the employability of certain graduates a lot more transparent very fast indeed.

Mmmmmmmmm :):):)

....that was to seeker :)

As an aside, ds (age 11) has already decided that he wants to go to Glasgow to study Maths, Physics and Astronomy. His parents, however, want to go to either the Sorbonne or to MIT/Harvard only because they want an excuse to visit Paris/Boston