laairventte I have no wish to be blunt, so please take this in a kind spirit - turning down an offer to go to Oxford because your daughter doesn't like the look of the place would be a mistake. At least attend for the first term and get a feel for the place before deciding it's not for you (ideally I would give it a year, I found my first term a bit tough in terms of making friends, as I felt everyone else seemed to have gelled nicely, but by the end of the year I was incredibly well settled. I loved the course from the start, so it was only the social side that was a bit hard.)
Birmingham is a fantastic university, but in terms of how recruiters view the world (and this of course should not be the only deciding factor in life) it is no Oxford.
In terms of your question about High-pressured, Posh, Conservative colleges:
High-pressured:
All of them. None of them.
It's all on you. No college is going to say to an undergraduate 'You're making us look bad by threatening to get a 2:1, buck your ideas up.' You may find yourself surrounded by some super high-achieving people, who may set the tone a little, but really, come crunch time everyone is in the library working harder than they ever have before. Any pressure that is felt, is going to come from within.
Posh:
Eh, every college is going to have some posh people, and some not so posh people. I don't think many colleges would be defined (as in, first thing that comes to mind, as posh.) Christ Church slightly, I guess? Plenty of colleges have reputations for being sporty, or musical, or a bit alternative, or Welsh (Jesus College, promise I'm not throwing shade Verbrithien!).
Conservative:
Hmmm, trying to think. Easier to think of the more lefty ones: Balliol and Wadham. But again, each college will have a mix of people. And also, unless you're wearing gang colours, you probably won't know people's affiliations anyway - a friend of mine, who has known me more than 10 years, was surprised when I told her how I voted - 'I assumed as you're posh, you'd be a Tory' - our political preferences had never come up in all that time.
To be honest, and I've spoken about this on previous threads, please, please, please, don't go with preconceptions. University is the time to get exposed to different people. Yes, it may be uncomfortable at first, but you'll find your own tribe, as well as rubbing shoulders with someone who is a bit different to yourself, and your background. There's really nothing wrong with being posh and conservative. There's nothing right with it either. It just is. Some people live it down, some people play it up. I've met lots of posh twats. I've met lots of lovely posh people. I've met, in about the same proportion, lots of not posh twats, and lots of not posh lovely people.
I went to University College. It's (your daughter will not approve) the oldest Oxford college. Currently, there are 3 sitting Conservative MPs who were educated there, two of them who were the year below me. Equally, Owen Jones, darling (where's my sarcastic face?) of Mumsnet, very much not a Conservative was in my year. It was a super laidback place. Seriously. I liked the place for not having an overt identity. Everyone 'knows' Christ Church is just like Brideshead Revisited, and 'knows' St Edmund's Hall is full of rugger buggers (both these assertions are slightly true, slightly not), but I didn't think of Univ as being much of anything. Just students and tutors, muddling along, getting on with things.
Au79, I'll be back in a few hours to answer your questions as best I can (as a quick gimme though, there are 33 colleges that accept undergraduates. They vary in size... I'll be back later, although someone else may come along to give some other concrete details.)