Elitism at Oxford

[piso]

I thought I would post this, not to put people off, but rather to make them aware that Oxford isn't the bastion of egalitarianism that it claims to now be.

My Dd is in her first year at a well known Oxford college. It is an old prestigious one, that has a reputation for being particular pro state school.

In her year group, there is a clear clique of London schoolers, think St Pauls and Westminster. They tend to bother with one another only. "Do you have a place in London?" "I'm from London, smugly the middle bit" "Oh you're so South Ken"

Then there are the old Eton boys, Radley boys etc who seem to also stick to one another.

Private dining societies are still a big thing in Oxford. Whilst apparently they are open to non private school kids, you have to be invited and considered suitable. Ergo, those who come from certain families, went to certain schools.

Favourite activities are skiing and horses. Where are you going skiing this vac? Oh you don't ski? "Our family have known each other forever, we always ski together at Klosters"

DD's neighbour for example is a third generation Oxonian. She proudly caresses her signet ring when talking down to others. She said in freshers week that she'd only consider dating someone from Eton, or Harrow if she had to as she wants a husband like her dad. This girl didn't even get the entry requirements for her course, but after some negotiation got in.

My point being, far from reverse snobbery, is that there still is clearly a large group of hugely entitled people at Oxford. Being born wealthy is certainly none of their faults (nor is it a problem!). DH is from the boarding school type of family, but there seems to be a high preponderance of rich, London type who are keen on being exclusionary.

Never have I been asked in a snobbish way where I went to school, but dd has numerous times, and not in an interested way; a way to see if you are suitable for friendship.

Some friendship groups at her college this year were very much decided based on appropriate background. You get a tick if you're from London. A tick if you went to a select few schools. A tick if your parents know of one another. Another tick if you have a lodge somewhere too.

Oh come on, some teenage girls never stop talking about boys just a few years older than them. Obsessively.

Isn't it 1am in France, Maria? We should both retire.

I’m travelling so sadly not in bed or anywhere near it.

Ah, I see.

Incidentally I have just googled and I got my previous claim about Aristotle a bit wrong. Women are COLD and wet whereas men are hot and dry. Very embarrassing! That's what comes of doing MN after midnight

Yes, well I’m not sure I place any more faith in Aristotle’s opinions of women than I do in, say, Freud’s. I do place quite a lot of faith in my own observations however, being quite old, and boy-crazed teenage girls are definitely a segment

This is the last time I will try to say this, because I've said it above in an absurdly high number of different ways, but I don't believe female students, at Oxbridge or any other uni, are any more boy-crazed than the male students are girl-crazed. Nor do I think this exclusively heteronormative framework is useful. Plenty of students are gay or bi and discover that identity for the first time.

I met the love of my life at Oxbridge 20+ years ago - I had no idea at the time that we would last this long.

On the other hand, going back to the topic of elitism, I learned a lot of other stuff at Oxbridge as well. I learned that I had much less money and cultural capital than a lot of other students, but that I could still hold my own in conversations with peers and tutors, who pressed me to defend my ideas and push them further even when I didn't particularly want to. I learned that cultural capital can gradually be acquired, by reading books and seeing films and talking to other students in conversations that sometimes lasted till the wee hours of the morning. I felt like a bit of an outsider I never went to any college balls or ski trips, for instance but the college gave me a summer travel grant and I went to Europe with it. I had a bout of severe depression (untreated prior to university) and the university counselling service gave me excellent therapy to help me sort myself out. I made friends and I found out that plenty of people who seemed very privileged on the surface weren't in other ways -- they had troubled family backgrounds or eating disorders, for example. I was awkward and naive in many ways, but loads of people were kind. Those years weren't always easy years but looking back I realise how fortunate I was to have had that opportunity (perhaps going to any good uni would have produced a similar result, but Oxbridge colleges are better funded than a lot of other unis, and I definitely benefited from that). In short I would be very sorry if anyone decided to avoid Oxbridge on the grounds that it's too elitist.

I could still hold my own in conversations with peers and tutors, who pressed me to defend my ideas and push them further even when I didn't particularly want to. I learned that cultural capital can gradually be acquired, by reading books and seeing films and talking to other students in conversations that sometimes lasted till the wee hours of the morning
And that encapsulates IMO what a good university education should be about and hopefully can be a foundation for similar in the future.

Cultural capital acquired before going to university (whether from privilege or self education) is just one strand of exchange of ideas and experiences between students who like to listen and talk to each other, whether it is about their subject or the wider world.

The proverb about wealth not being sustained for more than three generations has quite a lot of truth in it IME so students should n’t be overawed by those brought up in high income families. They may be the generation on the way down rather than up and that could be even more likely to happen if they are insular.

Of course some students may be insular for different reasons. The type who are very focussed on acquiring an education for technical career reasons ie hardworking, ambitious but rather tunnel visioned and because of that don’t really like to waste time in conversations especially if it does n’t advance their career aims.

@marfisa "In short I would be very sorry if anyone decided to avoid Oxbridge on the grounds that it's too elitist. "

Well said. ( & that goes for other good universities as well IMHO)

Lovely post marfisa

marfisa - that’s a lovely post. However, please don’t claim I said that girls at Cambridge are more sex crazed than boys because I didn’t! My point was that our DC’s experience was that it was very easy, as a postgrad, to mix with undergrads (a point robustly refuted by some posters who seem to think undergrads are failing themselves by definition if they talk to anyone who didn’t do their undergraduate degree at Oxbridge) and that there are all sorts of reasons for that - some really quite basic human instinctual ones as well as the higher reasons that you describe and that people like to ascribe to Oxbridge and other leading universities.

People’s motives for associating or not with others are not always as pure as they would like to believe and that is, IMO, an important life lesson.

Really strong post at 1.02am marfisa.

Maria my DC are unfettered to do exactly what they want. It's their life. With eight DC it's a little hard to monitor each life too closely besides which I've never wanted to. I'm quite sure they've got up to no good in Oxford - they'd be a bit dull if they hadn't; what I don't know doesn't hurt me is my motto :)

marifsa I'm going to print out your post and give it to my daughter.

And sorry for misspelling your name.

In response to your post about mixing Maria, it's not snobbishness about institutions. Post grads will mix with each other regardless of their uni or country of origin, very obviously. But undergrads, esp those starting out as freshers, need to find a friendship group among their peers, and its blindingly obvious that an older student, newly arrived without a group of his own, and there for only a year, isn't a good bet on the social front - rather the opposite. Visiting students tend to keep to themselves for the same reason. It's nothing to do with where they went to uni at all it's how groups there work.

I’m sure your DC are more broad minded than their mother, goodbyestranger, and sometimes manage to have conversations with foreigners and people who have been to other universities . Maybe, indeed, they even have sex with them!

Yes to the foreign partner thing Maria (even more foreign than us) but I'm going to have to disappoint you on the university partner thing :)

By which I mean the different university thing but I expect you got that.

Why are you interested in who your dc are having sex with Maria? It’s very weird.

howwudufeel she seems interested in who my DCs are having sex with too which is even dodgier.

This thread is getting weird again. My mind is boggling at 8 children though. Imagine if they each have 8 children. That's 64 grandchildren

I have to admit that I am truly shocked by some of the values you profess to espouse on this thread, goodbyestranger. Our DC found Cambridge a truly welcoming experience and made a lot of friends from all sorts of backgrounds, friends he sees every week. He certainly didn’t encounter the undergrad/postgrad divisions you seem to believe are essential and inevitable - nothing of the sort. Yes, there is always a residual state/private school thing going on in the UK and it does pop up from time to time. DC’s response is always that he went to a private school latterly but that the state/private split in France is not analogous with the state/private divide in the UK. Postgrads do not arrive at universities with no friends - on the contrary, being a bit older their personal networks are broader and deeper and they are inevitably going to have friends’ little brothers or sisters in First Year as well as their own contemporaries and friends from other life experiences. Our DSS2 at UCL had friends there from all over the world from various residential activities he’d done in his teens and he knows dozens of people at Cambridge where he is going next year, both already there and arriving in September. As DSS2 is a lot more sociable than even DSS1 I am fully confident that he will be even more of a duck to water than his brother!

8 children only allowed to talk to and mate with other people who have been to Oxford as undergraduates

Maria since a lot of people on this thread share the same view perhaps suspend the shock.

Tapas don't go there :)

Maria haha I'd like to see anyone tell my DC what to do and succeed. They're mules, the lot of them.