Bath, not a Russell group uni, is this a problem for employers?

[tropicalfish]

Hi,
DD has an offer for biochemistry at Bath but is probably going to find a job outside the science sector once she graduates, probably in a well paid City/tech job. She feels that alot of employers, or rather people in charge of recruiting for their department are biased towards recruiting from Russell groups and hence going to Bath would place her at a disadvantage. This is probably due to the significant competition for jobs. What has been the experience of people on the forum with respect to Russell and non Russell Group universities? I'm certainly not saying that Bath is not a great university, just that people show bias towards Russell group graduates.
Many thanks,
TF

Which is often out of date (Bristol, Exeter and Durham seem consistently over-valued on here

doesn't Durham have the highest graduate employment stats at 98% though quit2dis? Hardly seems out of date if so!

Agree - Bath is a very highly regarded university especially in maths - DD went there and all her friends have done very well since graduating - many with great jobs in the city often with employers they did their sandwich year with.

Oh fuck, some employers are so damn stupid they will happily give a Duffer who went to an RG over a fucking genius who went elsewhere, and think that because they have done so they have the most effective workforce..

That aside, it's science.. You can be an outstanding scientist from Bath easily, and get into a research group at Oxford or mit afterwards.. RGs are more biased towards public schools and wealthy, but do not recruit by ability, as wealth is a better predictor of intake than ability or results. . You can see this acutely in globally significant research groups.. Oxbridge or English public school graduates are so rare as to be almost non-existent. What matters in science is the second degree, and with a good first degree from Bath Oxbridge or RG for PhD is pretty much in the bag.

Don't think Bradford have an English Department do they Rhodabull? The university evolved from a technical college and is very much science dominated with very little humanities.

That said I have a first class BSc from Bradford and now work at a Russell Group university in a department that is in the top 5 in the world - a degree from Bradford has never held me back and nobody has ever implied it is not a real first - it was a highly regarded course in my discipline.

As a graduate Russell Group is more of an issue on Mumsnet! Its the subject that is studied that is more important!

elisa, it depends. For something ilke law it is not the subjec that is studied that counts. there are so many applicants that the firms recruit from the better universities otherwise they would literally not have enough time to go through the thousands of applicants.

The "genius from elsewhere" is probably a needle in a haystack and usually applies to the young person who doesn't want to leave home. Genius at a subject doesn't translate to work necessarily. I think lower end RG is not great for some subjects and Bath is excellent for science and business but not brilliant for MFL. Their year in industry definitely gets students jobs with those employers but city jobs will be hugely competitive. Bath will not disadvantage anyone from that goal. However, internships and vac schemes with targeted employers will be a good thing to do because no-one can rely on degree alone these days.

I also think working at a university is very different to applying to a city firm. A niche area of teaching does not have the same number of applicants as city law firms or management accountants get. So for these jobs, university and degree will matter far more than in academia where subject studied and direct expertise in research is the determining factor. The genius from any university could stay there forever more!

There are, I think, a lot of misconceptions about how big firms engage in graduate recruitment.
It is true, of course, that big firms get large numbers of applications which need filtering. They filter them down in different ways, but most will have some automatic filtering system which has no human input (or minimal human input intended to identify special cases). Typically the first filter in big law firms is by A level results, and sometimes even GCSEs (they're usually looking for AAB or ABB, which will of course lead to over representation of RG and similarly competitive universties). Some firms also require online tests, such as situational judgment tests, or numeracy tests and applicants can get automatic rejections from them - i.e. an automatic email without a person even looking at it. Some firms may also have a 'cut off' regarding first year marks - either as a general average or a mark in a particular subject (usually contract law). All of this is done without any human involvement and takes no time at all.
Much of the traditional prejudice about universities within employers comes from the human factor -i.e. preferences of individual interviewers, which comes in much later in the process. This is why recent moves to CV blind recruitment are interesting - Clifford Chance was the biggest firm to do this, but others are following suit. Other firms, such as Linklaters, take a different approach and are trying deliberately to widen the range of places they recruit from. Whether the efforts are wholly effective is a whole other question - but it's very outdated to suggest that law firms, and by extension other big graduate employers, do not at the very least pay significant lipservice/ attention to diversity and equal opps in recruitment and are not interested in finding talented employees wherever they have been educated.

I agree with all that Gannet says. The grades cut off can amount to a better/worse universities cut off however as most teenagers with higher grades tend to go to the harder to get into universities.

My daughter's friend's sister by the way went to Bath and is now at a good law firm.

I don't think teenagers should however be lulled into too much of a false sense of security that the institution doesn't matter. In the 10 years after they graduate people will be looking at where they went and making some kind of judgment on that so probably best to avoid the less academic universities for these kinds of careers.

Some Employers who consider themselves 'top' employers focus almost entirely on the top ten, because they buy into the myth, usually because they can't think properly.

It's very easy to find geniuses from lower ranked unis. I've done it over and over. You simply need to not be lazy, and think properly. If RGs were as amazing s they make out, their whole business model wouldn't need to be dependent on incoming grades/wealth. If they truly were delivering the best teaching, you would not need a skewed intake. If they are not adding value, and a lot of research suggests this is the case (Eg some University of Warwick data that suggests state school low graded applicants are more likely to get a first than private school students with A grades, or some Liverpool John Moore research into application bias)

The problem with 'the system' that assumes that a graduate from an RG is good, so recruits as preference. In this group there is an artificial under supply because a. Employers all compete for a pool they falsely believe is elite and b. If all those employers offer to the same top candidates in each who typically have applied for ten or more companies each candidate can only take one. This is how salaries inflate artificially for RGs simply because these employers can't think properly. One of the reasons they can't think properly is that their recruitment teams are usually humanities graduates from RGs instead of numerically or statistically competent people from the rest of the highly educated recruitment pool.

Also for employers it is about money and the business so they will recruit from other places where that does the business good and makes economic sense.

No they don't though, that's the point, they think they do, as they believe they are paying a premium for the best, but because of the reasons above that premium is false

Bath is well-renowned, no need to be RG.

DS2 went to a non-RG university and walked into a very well-paid job in The City.

DD has an offer for biochemistry at Bath but is probably going to find a job outside the science sector once she graduates, probably in a well paid City/tech job

That's a bit of an assumption, regardless of which university she attends.

The Russell Group is a fluke named after a hotel.
It has no real basis in quality.
THIS list on the other hand
www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2017/world-ranking
is the important one.

Bath are not in the top 200 but not far outside it

Yes, I saw that list recently. It has a lot of international ones on. I think it's best students think about what career they want and then see where most people are recruited from to get the best feel; bit like using a mentor - that is the person I want to be - how did she get there.

My ds is apparently going to a RG university. I had no idea.

Howeve let us not get too carried away. The status of the institution does matter for lots of purposes so we need to scotch that myth out there that all universities are equal.

The status of the institution does matter for lots of purposes so we need to scotch that myth out there that all universities are equal

I totally agree.

However, Bath is very highly regarded, Probably not for all subjects. But my dh went to Oxford to do history and although he enjoyed the experience of studying there, he did not rate the course and has often said that he would have been better taking up either of the other two offers he had, which were Southampton and Hull, in terms of the actual course.

You have to weigh up reputation, subject and the city itself.

crispsheets
The University I went to is in the RG, but as the group formed a long time after I graduated, I don't really care

oldie2017
Absolutely agree
which is why I linked to the list of ranked universities
that does not depend on who was at a free lunch many years ago

So employers don't consider the university awarding the degree...?

www.chambersstudent.co.uk/where-to-start/newsletter/what-universities-do-most-trainees-come-from

Seemingly law firms do. Perhaps one or two of them do now have a "blind" admission policy but I suspect there will still be a very close correlation with those firms who do look at the university attended.

It is plainly ridiculous to try to compare an Oxbridge (or any higher tarrif entry degree) with a lower one. The raw capability of the undergraduates entering those (lower tarrif) courses is clearly vastly different even allowing for development in the three years of the course.

It depends more on the ranking of the individual faculty. For example law degrees from Russell groups tend to be more highly valued and better ranked so if she were studying law with the intention of working in law it would make a difference. But if she is not even going to use her degree I doubt employers would really care. They will be more interested in her postgraduate qualifications (whether she sits the bar exam, does aGDL, undergoes brokers exams, does a masters etc).

Well my uni wasn't Russel group but it's the 8th best uni in the Uk ... Russel status does not define all worth

may, yes that list is one I think I've linnked to before. My daughter by the way was the only non Oxbridge on her assessment day for training contracts at a law firm (she went to Bristol, got an offer and is still there at the firm). I am not saying they are almost almost 100% Oxbridge in every year of course and they have a friend who did very well at Bath and is a lawyer in London. Bath is good.

What parents need is information. Now a shorthand like you cannot go far wrong with Oxbridge for employment (which is of course true) nor the the top end of the RG is very helpful. So you could also produce a list of the better universities. In my day it was Oxbridge where my siblings went, then Durham where my parents (just about) went. Durham was third to Oxbridge. The better London ones always do well. In fact those that have very high entry grades tend to be the better ones, don't they? I know when my boys were choosing last year they were looking at that too.

Tttb, in law where you sit the post grad is not usually relevant as it is just 2 years of passing specific law exams often paid for by the law firm which has a contract with that institution. It is often the A level subnjects and grades and the original university iuncluding marks on each module including in the first year that are looked at as I have tried to make clear to my 2 about to go - if you slack off in your first year it can make careers harder. Mind you their brother set a very low bar. His third class degree has been no problem with his career so far as a post man and now supermarket food delivery driver. People have different aims.

I couldn't care less. I hope ds has 3 years of fun, works hard and gets a good degree. What he does after that is up to him.