No, I didn’t think they were. But in case anyone else was reading this thread, and saw the very clear steer towards Oxbridge, I did want to add some balance!
This thread has made me think about exactly what challenged me in my undergraduate years and I think ultimately it was being surrounded by (a) people who undeniably had a lot more financial privilege than I did, which went quite outside what sort of school they’d attended, but meant they had very different life experiences to me which I found tricky and (b) confident people, which I think private schooling often engenders. So to me, ‘normal people’ were those who had to work in holidays and count pennies, and who had evident self doubt! I was desperate to go to a uni with a union, with cheap booze and ways of meeting different people all the time, like my friends at other universities had. I actually found living in college for three years, rather than sharing a house, hard work and a bit isolating. I absolutely loathed the drinking societies, which felt like the manifestation of the worst of upper class privilege.
I was basically a square peg in a round hole. I would guess that some of those issues would still be a problem, but they didn’t rest on what sort of school my fellow students had gone to. I would guess that some other universities might have alleviated some of them but had far more of the horrible drinking society culture that felt like the most obvious manifestation of ‘poshness’.
I went on to a job which was in some ways a continuation of Oxbridge (a mistake!), but it does mean that I spent of my post-18 life around people from vastly different backgrounds to my own. I’m perfectly friendly with, and enjoy the company of adults who went to public and private school, but none of them would ever (or did ever) been part of the conspicuously rah element anywhere.