Do people find it hard to adjust to life after Oxbridge?

[TsaritsaAlexandrinaPapanicholous]

Do you think it’s harder than normal to adjust to life after university if you want to Oxbridge?

The system and way of life is very different to other places. The bubble amongst very bright and driven people isn’t found elsewhere (other universities sure). Getting to live in beautiful buildings and go for dinners etc.

Unless you graduate and move into a high paying job, it seems hard to come down from especially if you’re not from a rich/posh family.

I completely agree with you. I don't know anyone who found it especially hard except in the sense that they were no longer students and had to manage their time in a more regimented way.

Nope, didn't find it hard. Cracked on with getting on with a career like everyone else knows, regardless of which uni they were at.

Another one to say no, I didn’t find it hard. If anything the fact that almost every single friend I’d made at university just upped sticks and went to live in London was a fantastic advantage getting settled into adult/professional life.

I'm not British, I know only two people who went to Cambridge, but in my own country I recognise that very privileged students land in the workplace and for the first time, getting 100% isn't the be and end all. Attributes like social skills not just pure confidence matter, empathy and the ability to connect suddenly matter and this type of posh clever kid that exists in other countries too feels a sense of "wait, I came second to her?", "wait my boss went to Birmingham University".

Anyway, how would anyone know if they would have found it more or less difficult to adjust to life after university if they'd gone to a different university? Life after university can be a big adjustment - no long summer holidays, not necessarily living close to all your good friends, trying to get a job or working in an unfamiliar job, paying rent, trying to afford things....

I can't say I noticed a difference between the kids I know who went to Oxbridge and those who went to other universities, either in my generation or in my sons' generation. Some of them knew exactly what they wanted to do afterwards and set about trying to do it (law college, engineering, medicine conversion, finance, teaching, NGO, civil service) and others had no idea and bimbled about in a variety of part time or low paid jobs or travelled a bit until something came up.

I can relate to this. My Dad also went and had the best time of his life there. The goal was always about going to Cambridge. I never thought in terms of what I would do afterwards and have done a few different things none of which you would imagine typical for an Oxbridge graduate. I had a good time there but not as good as I had hoped for (socially I mean). I honestly think the work was very much a case of learning everything they said in the lectures rather than finding things out for ourselves (unlike another degree I did later at a non Russell group uni).

I did enjoy the punting and the formal halls etc but not so that I couldn’t get on with life outside of that. I was excited to live in a student house at another university and have that experience too.

I kind of wish someone (who?) had talked to me about graduate opportunities and the earning potential that I had but I just wasn’t interested in that sort of work (maybe accountancy would have been a good fit for me) and I didn’t get involved in milk round events etc.

I think the whole living in college for all three years with three meals a day provided and ‘bedders’ coming to change your sheets, hoover and clean your bathroom is so different from other universities. The college bar and college ‘bops’ are very university centric. It is less of a stepping stone than other places for living independently.

I got a very high first partly because I was in a bad place mentally - studying was a break from thinking about the mess of my real life (awful trauma and bereavement). So I think it's important to realise that academic success isn't a sign you are ok mentally. I think my consistent high grades meant I didn't get the support I undoubtedly needed as no one realised how much I was struggling.

My DS has just left and has gone to another university to do a masters but is living out in a rented house with his partner who he met at Cambridge, he has a grad job. I think they are mainly relieved they have left it behind. Glad they did it but happy to be back in the real world with normal people. There are lotso of knobs at Cambridge.

You always get people on these threads spouting fake news or ancient news.

No one changes your sheets any more! Old colleges are not reserved for public school kids! There are thousands of students traipsing through Oxbridge every year: they cannot possibly all cram into the Oxford&Cambridge Club (as mentioned by a pp) nor all secure investment banking jobs.

otoh if you have enjoyed your time at any university, the real world can be hard. It takes ages to realise that you are not going to “break up” for the holidays ☹️ . Also rarely in life do you ever again get to meet friends like at university (not that I did! Another story.)

I went to Oxford as a fucked-up overachieving intellectual snob with no friends and came out as a fucked-up overachieving intellectual snob with a group of similarly fucked-up overachieving intellectual snob friends - who remain close friends thirty years on. It took me twenty-odd years to learn to value people for being (eg) kind, loyal, generous, reliable, caring, and a huge amount of therapy to accept that being clever wasn’t my only good quality, or perhaps even a good quality at all.

No one changes your sheets anymore

From a college website as of today: ‘The College provides a housekeeping service to all rooms. Bedders will clean your room weekly, empty bins and clean the bathroom and kitchen (but they don't do the washing up). They will also change your sheets, duvet cover and pillowcases, but you have to strip your bed on the appropriate day.’

Honestly - we were totally spoiled. I guess we were supposed to be concentrating on work.

However - Having had a look at other college websites I do see it is the exception rather than the rule.

i don’t know about struggle on graduation but I do wonder if it does wierd things to your self esteem long term. Maybe as you get older it gets harder to cope with- more obvious who’s ‘made it’ and who hasn’t?

I have a friend who went to Oxford and he is still spending a lot of time on committees running alumni groups etc. Ever since leaving. He doesn’t come from a wealthy background and I get the sense of him still really wanting to be included or adjacent to something wealthy or glamorous. He graduated over 20 years ago! Nobody’s normally so interested in where they went to university or what their peers are doing now for that long in their life ever since graduating, are they?

And a different Cambridge graduate ex boyfriend who I knew very well at one time but then lost touch with, later married up a bit. When we bumped into each other recently he was dropping in about how he went to Oxford to me along with using his new posher accent. I am very happy for him but resented being self-consciously talked to by him in the way I assume he now approaches all his immediate acquaintances dropping in his Oxbridge past, combined with the strange new voice. Of course I know where he went to university. No need to drop it in.

I don't know if it is different today but I definitely knew public school boys who went to Oxbridge and then did their best to recreate the environments they had known by going to the Foreign Office, the Bar or teaching in public schools. I think you can stay in quite a bubble if you like, but I don't think that's the norm, and certainly not today.

I went to Cambridge (an "old" college) from a working class background and really enjoyed it. My DC are now at Russell group universities (not Oxbridge) and it is interesting to compare.
I did not find the move to work particularly hard. I went to a graduate job in London, as did most of my friends so I shared a flat with some of them and continued to socialise with others (plus friends from grad scheme etc).

I think the biggest difference is that you can definitely put off aspects of being a responsible grown up at Cambridge. For example, I had college accommodation all 3 years so did not face the scrum of finding a private rental for second and third years which my DC face, plus we could eat in halls every night so did not have to cook for ourselves unless we wanted to, and of course had "bedders" to clean our rooms and make our beds, and electricity etc was included so no need to organise all that. I
I don't think any of those differences make it harder to adjust to normal life - it just postpones some aspects of normal life for a few years and if anything the adjustment may be easier when you are a bit older than for a second year uni student in a private rental.

I would also say the style of socialising my DCs do (clubs, pubs and flat parties/gatherings with the odd meal out) are more similar to the style of socialising as a young working adult in London than the Cambidge style of college based socialising, but it was an easy adjustment and if anything most people are ready for the change.

you make it sound like harry potter or something. Not all oxbridge students subscribe to this ridiculous pomp and ceremony of balls and dinners. Many are just like any other uni student. go to lectures and eat pasta and sauce in their dorms!

many other universities are the same i went to university of liverpool and was in catered halls that had daily cleaners

This isn't my personal experience OP. I went to one of the "beautiful, old" Cambridge colleges - I came from a private school, but I was on a 100% scholarship there. My group of uni friends was a genuine mixture of state school and private school pupils, which was not the experience of my DH who went to a RG uni and found that the students often split themselves into groups from state / private backgrounds. I don't think anyone I knew struggled particularly with the transition to working life.

The main thing i found was all of a sudden I had so much time! Going from lectures/labs all day to doing tutorial preparation every evening, bar twice a week when we went out (but had to catch up on tute prep the day after) to working a 9-5 was amazing. I had frequent comments about how hard I was working and, but to me it felt so easy! I didn't go into law or banking though obviously.

As pp said, at graduate level, the old boys club has definitely been disbanded somewhat. But I can definitely see it still exists once a certain level of seniority is reached.

Adapting after university is more about personality and luck finding a decent job ,rather than which Uni someone has graduated from 🤷‍♀️

Ability to adapt is a personality trait, not something anyone is being trained for at university. It would take a strangely unadaptable personality, or pre-existing mental health problems, not to be able to cope with the world away from undergraduate life at Oxford or Cambridge.

There are few issues in that first post -

1. I do like working work very clever people (which luckily top law firms and their brighter clients have in spades (so pick your area of work carefully if that matters to you)).

1. If you like nice buildings etc it is not that hard to recreate that kind of thing eg all my children went to feel paying schools from age 4 which had things like chapels and lakes and the kinds of hobbies I have done like singing in Cathedrals reflect my own interests - dead easy to replicate . (I didn't go to Oxbridge but my siblings did).

1. Most of my children made friends for life at university eg my son who finished in 2017 and then did 2 years of law studies has 3 coming to stay this weekend for a dinner at our house who were at university with him (not Oxbridge but Bristol) . In other words you can keep your friends and invite them to things you like eg he had about 10 here at New Year for a black tie dinner hosted at my house.

Depends what you go on to do. Most Oxbridge folk I know went straight into challenging, exciting jobs in London with lots of pressure and decent salaries. Not sure they had time to feel an anticlimax or whatever. Also, the stereotypical lifestyle with ceremonies and dinners isn't everyone's cup of tea - a close family member who just graduated and is already in a very good civil service job - never did any of that stuff and can't wait to start his working life in the real world.

all my children went to feel paying schools from age 4 which had things like chapels and lakes and the kinds of hobbies I have done like singing in Cathedrals reflect my own interests

Another classic Xenia post