Will being 'poor' make you stick out like a sore thumb at Oxford?

[nothingchangesonnewyearsday]

Is the prestige of going there and the desire to study that particular course, enough to offset a 'poor' background?

Help! Dc applying for uni. Has great grades but worried not being rich is going to impact friendships, socialisation, etc!

Living costs - I don't have prepaid meals, I do get a meal in hall once or twice a week generally. I usually spend around £250 per term on food, laundry socialising etc, bearing in mind that my parents give me basic store cupboard ingredients and a week's fresh shop at the start of term, and I rarely drink/ go clubbing so my social events and societies tend to be free or very cheap. It could easily be double or triple if you go on regular nights out and buy drinks for everyone, but that's the same at any uni I'm sure! Expensive things like college balls are once in a degree and most colleges should have funds to help pay for tickets for anyone struggling to afford it.

In the right college, no. Definitely pick one with a high proportion of state school kids

* They had an Oxbridge talk this week where the message seemed to be: we will expect a near perfect standard from you because you are privileged to go to this school, and we will accept other children with significantly lower grades than you because we want more state school pupils from power backgrounds*

Oxford quite rightly wants the poor kids who get excellent grades while working / caring almost full time. That shows more potential than middle class students being coached, poked and prodded into their A grades. For example I have a sibling who got 4 A grades while caring full time and working full time ( night shifts). Despite this every uni he applied rejected his application for not showing enough ‘commitment’ to his chosen profession. (he went on to get a 1st, a patent that made the uni that did accept him millions, and is now lecturing there part time while leading an entire function at his FTSE 100 company)I am glad Oxbridge are starting to see the value in having people like that. Their achievements and life trajectories tend to be a lot more impressive and interesting.

They will be fine. It can be a weird culture shock sometimes but they will have an amazing time. Good luck.

What college would everyone recommend?

I wasn't super poor, but they threw money at me when I was an undergrad and I never felt judged for it. Some of the funding also put you onto target lists for the big companies if you wanted so we were taken out for dinner and given more sponsorship and job opportunities than the rich kids. Not having to buy books and only 8 week terms massively helped keep costs down. Almost everyone I was with worked some way or another during the holidays.

A previous poster said about their lack of experience making them stand out. I'd say for me it was the opposite. The college gave me a travel grant so I could go abroad for the first time. A lot of the students have spent their whole school lives in the library so there aren't too many county hockey types. If you play too much hockey you don't get AAA! That meant that I could try loads of new sport that I couldn't do at school because at school the rich kids belonged to swimming/hockey/netball/athletics clubs outside school so a beginner didn't stand a chance. The university clubs were very welcoming to complete beginners. And there's the expectation that everyone will try rowing at least once, and no one does rowing at school so everyone is a beginner! At 6am on the river everyone looks like shit so no class divide . Rowing really gave me the confidence that maybe I could do sport and it wasn't expensive. There are loads of museums and libraries and interesting people to talk to so that made up for not having been to the grand museums in London/Paris/NYC. There is also lots of student drama and music so you can go to see all the plays and operas and orchestras you never had the chance to as a kid.

I guess I was lucky because I had very open minded friends who didn't judge and we all had something to learn. The rich London kid had never eaten mangoes, because they grew up with a completely white social circle!

Thanks @Bakedpotatoandgin!
We don't have a choice about prepaid meals, it's compulsory. We give our son 250 pounds per month for other costs and although he seems to be coping, he feels everyone else is so much better provided for. He socialises very sensibly, so I was just wondering how valid his perceptions are.

Hesperida - £250 a month sounds very generous to me! Especially if you're at a catered college. Of course there will be people spending more, but it hasn't bothered me so far

Tbf his perception might be valid if he has a lot of very rich friends and pays attention to what they have. But personally I'm quite happy with my cheap, mostly vegetarian and alcohol free shopping and socialising. If my best friend wants to spend £35 a week on fancy cheese that's up to him!

@nothingchangesonnewyearsday I'd advise choosing a college based on the specialisms and experience of the subject tutors there. A lot of tuition is done within the colleges, particularly in the arts and humanities, and the quality of tuition can vary significantly between them. It's worth your DC reading the profiles of the staff who teach that subject and meeting them at Open Days.

Other than that, it's worth considering things like the location and size of the college and the accommodation arrangements across the three years. I've heard some undergraduates complain that their college felt a little too like a boarding school for their tastes.

As for individual colleges, I've been struck by the number of times that I've heard Lady Margaret Hall praised for being welcoming, inclusive and having a good standard of tuition in various subjects.

Thanks @Bakedpotatoandgin!
(So your username doesn't refer to your lifestyle then;-)

Another thing worth mentioning, if you get an interview at Oxford, you go and stay and eat in the college for 3 or 4 nights but it is completely free of charge. They lay on bits of fun in between the interviews, quizzes,table tennis tournaments etc.
You only have to pay transport, and you can get a grant for that paid if your parents are on a low income.
DS treated it like a mini holiday, (he had a double bed and en-suite!).

I went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and didn't feel out of place. Personal background rarely came up in discussion with my friends. Then again, I come from a poor background but not a working class one. It's not going to be the same for everyone.

Despite what Oxbridge say the work restrictions are an issue. The idea of getting work in the holidays doesn't work so well if you've had nothing in term time and don't have connections - and for me course field trips during the notional vacations too. I got a job one summer out of three and nothing in the shorter vacations. I was able to get a bursary to fund my studies; without it there'd have been a very real chance of me dropping out for financial reasons. I still had to make sure the college allocated me rooms with low rent, which itself was never a certain thing and caused some worry.

On the plus side, nearly all Oxbridge colleges can provide accomodation for the full three and sometimes four year courses, so no need to deal with private landlords. But costs vary. Over the past couple of decades the trend has been towards fancier rooms driven by the conference trade, with students ending up charged higher rents to match. Lovely if you can afford it, not so much if you're poor.

College choice matters. Stats say most colleges are about 50:50 state vs private educated, but there's variation and I think some are a bit posh. Also watch out for dining arrangements - as mentioned, some make paying for cafeteria food mandatory whether or not you eat it! (At mine we only paid for what we had; first year I mostly ate at cafeteria but second year I got a room with a better kitchen so switched to cooking).

I would not recommend colleges like trinity Hall for people who are first generation university attendees. I think the better colleges are those with a higher proportion of state school entrants from a broader range of backgrounds

Old stats but give you an idea of the variation www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/cambridge-university-admissions-statistics-2017-14662218.amp

At Churchill three quarters are from state school. That results in a very different atmosphere to the more independent school populated colleges

"I think the better colleges are those with a higher proportion of state school entrants from a broader range of backgrounds"

Agree with this!

I chose my college because I liked the architecture I was naive and didn't look at state/private school stats or the famous alumni... one of whom is Nick Griffin 😱

It depends what you mean by poor really. My rough impression is that 50% of Oxford entrants come from the socioeconomic top quartile, 49% come from the next two quartiles and 1% come from the bottom 25%. I’ve pulled those numbers out of the air, but you get my drift. People who are from an “ordinary” background will find lots of people like them, even if they’re statistically underrepresented, (especially if their choices of social clubs tend towards Labour politics and Dungeons and Dragons rather than croquet and Wagner), but students from a seriously disadvantaged background may find it a real struggle.

And of course it’s a combination between simple cash and cultural capital. My most impoverished friend at Oxford had a father who was an internationally respected cultural figure in a field which doesn’t make any money. One year he didn’t have any books published and my friend had literally no money to live on, because his grant was assessed on the previous year when his father had had a relatively good year. Now clearly it’s more difficult for anyone being broke, but he didn’t feel remotely socially isolated.

@Hesperida I'm rather partial to a free gin and lemonade at pre-Bop in the JCR... I just don't buy it!

It makes absolutely no difference how others and tutors treat you. Oxford is so international and most non-Brits don't get our class system and couldn't distinguish a Brummie accent from an Etonian accent! But research colleges! Compare accommodation costs and the prices for food in hall. Also ask for burseries and any perks each college offers. As a rule of thumb, the posher, richer colleges have more money to give away and are cheaper (Pembroke used to be the poorest college and hence the most expensive in my time).

No difference to how others treat you.

I also wouldn't make college choice dependent on state school ratios. Look out for the best overall fit, incl. finances. DH (genuinely trailer trash childhood) went to King's in Cambridge because it had the highest ratio of state ed students. He made great friends there but overall didnt like the extreme leftie socialist atmosphere. But most outsiders will probably assume that Kings College, as it is probably the most famous and beautiful Oxbridge College of all, is full of rich kids.

@Bakedpotatoandgin, I see! That makes budgeting a little easier...

Hopefully it's different now but a close friend of mine went to Oxford in the late 90s. The family were just about comfortable by local standards (owned a 4 bed detached house, both parents worked as teachers etc) but there wasn't masses of disposable income. She found herself to be very 'poor' compared to her peers and quite socially isolated. While she worked evenings in a bar to fund her studies, her college mates were out dining and drinking courtesy of Daddy's credit card etc. Holidays - most of the other students would be off skiing, cruising around the Caribbean etc, whereas she had to work most of the holidays and could just about afford a fortnight Inter-Railing in Europe. She didn't regret going to Oxford and did well, but found it very hard going. Her peers just didn't understand what it was like to not have the money that they did.

Concerned I think nowadays (from my perspective anyway) there are a lot more students from "comfortable" middle to low income backgrounds, so we don't stand out. (I'm at a college not particularly known for any class, just as being full of swots ) I'm second generation uni, so middle class really (grandparents definitely working class) and very lucky in terms of parental support for big purchases like laptops, new shoes, but as I said upthread I still have to work holidays. As pps have mentioned, there's lots of free money to stop people having to work in term time. Basically I think it is no longer the "norm" to be jetting off to goodness knows where every vac etc. - again, one of my best friends does, but that doesn't mean he looks down on me in any way. But then, I'm quite confident in my budget and just saying "no" with no shame if I can't afford to e.g. go out for dinner at random. He's learning to cook

Nelly, I’m afraid I don’t think it’s true that everyone is treated the same. A family friend has just graduated from oxbridge telling very similar tales of feeling there was a them and us culture at her oxbridge college.

I think people should apply wherever they want to go, but if an applicant is worried about not fitting in and wants a college where there will be plenty of people like themselves then the colleges with higher state school applicant ratios are a safer bet.