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.

Agreed. I have met a lot of distinctly average people who went to Oxbridge and a lot of ferociously intelligent people who didn't.

I had friends who went to public school then Oxbridge who freely admitted they weren't that bright but that their schools knew exactly how to play the game to get them in (eg. Undersubscribed courses and colleges, endless coaching ).

Aside from the DC, I wonder how some parents adjust to life after their DC have left Oxbridge if the level of parental over investment on the MN threads is representative. The ones who have Oxbridge degrees themselves are probably much less giddy than those whose DC have achieved what they couldn't themselves.

Couldn’t agree more re the over invested parents. It’s embarrassing.

This. Although it was nice to no longer be surrounded by pompus twats who could barely string a basic argument together.

Laughing at the idea of overinvested parents. Mine told anyone who showed any admiration for me getting into Oxford to do a DPhil 'oh her brother is much smarter, he got a first in maths'.

My Oxford experience was different from most on here because I went as a post graduate student. The university were very clear that they thought the postgrads weren't as bright as the undergraduates, my college was modern (more beautiful than the Victorian colleges of course) and we didn't live in college for the whole time, I was in Oxford all year round and most importantly my supervisor was an abusive arsehole who would have been dismissed for his behaviour in a corporate environment. As it was the feeling in the lab was keep your head down, don't give up (because it would be perceived as you failing not Oxford failing) and get out as quickly as you can. I did do a lot of punting though, my college had its own punts and we spent the summer punting to the Vicky Arms every nice evening. Bliss.

Was very ready to start real life when I left.

One of my exes from ancient history was obsessed with having been to Oxford. It seemed to be his lifes achievement and now it was over he was floundering.

He was only 24 but still. He was counting down the days until he could say he'd now been out of Oxford as long as he'd been in- 3 years.

It was pathetic.

There was a rather funny segment on this in the Sloane Ranger Handbook, back in the day.

It was all about how being an Oxford rower and becoming Head of the River, then leaping, blind drunk, bonded as one in a brotherly embrace, over the burning boat, would be the single, climactic, greatest moment of your life and that anything afterwards - including waiting for ‘boardroom success in your forties’ - was a complete and utter come-down and disappointment. 😁

This picture shows what I’m talking about:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/aug/08/dafydd-jones-best-photograph-burning-boat-race-rowers-oriel-oxford-university

I went to a university which had a somewhat similar atmosphere to an Oxbridge college and funnily enough there were quite a few young men who seemed to be modelling themselves on Brideshead Revisited. The coats, the scarves, the mannerisms….Young women didn’t seem to take to it in the same way!

Interesting.
While postgrad is generally less competitive than undergrad, especially in a humanities degree. They're also in 2023 cash cows. Universities can charge the sky and do very little, compared to undergraduates who need a fair amount of handholding. Plus, many research academics don't like teaching!

I know many who did various levels of study and they were not very impressed at the quality.

I remember my Oxford Union days with members who were so pompous and important they were like a caricature of Yes Minister. The funny thing is the atmosphere made them think they were sitting on some ministerial position.
I always thought how will these people find real life after uni.

Jacob Rees-Mogg was a contemporary of mine. He was a figure of utter ridicule among the rest of the college, not least for never being seen in anything but a 3-piece suit, but we were all beneath his notice. I don't think he probably had any trouble adjusting to life after Oxford...

Well Oxbridge has the 'brand name' but LSE and Imperial College are on par with it. He didn't exactly turn it down, for, erm the University of Kent did he?

@GoodOldEmmaNess how exactly is 'Oxbridge Exceptionalism' getting worse?
Of course it depends on subject. But all the large graduate employers recruit through standardised tests these days. Video interviews, CV blind interviews, it's a lot more egalitarian than it used to be. Recruiting from a select group of universities is no longer a badge of honour.

The thing is, certain universities attract certain groups of people. I went to LSE , did accounting and finance. Some roles such as investment banking were very hard to get into. You either needed to get a spring week or work experience.

Spring Week applications opened before Fresher's week and was on a rolling basis... guess who applied? The clued-up middle class/rich international students. Didn't get a spring week or summer internship? Many went home to intern in investment banks, using it as leverage to land a graduate role. There was very little chance for someone to break in without any prior knowledge. By the time they applied for graduate roles it's already too late they were likely to be beaten by those with relevant experience.

It was not LSE that gave them the advantage but that those sorts of people chose LSE! Location and proximity to the finance sector helped as well but not really as much as the student demographic.

As a 'poor' international student on scholarship I learnt a lot from the people around me, enabling me to get ahead in my career young. How to network, how to present myself, how to find opportunity. No chance of that if I had been surrounded by people as clueless as I was....

Jacob Rees-Mogg was a contemporary of mine. He was a figure of utter ridicule among the rest of the college,

Nothing has changed then

@BrideToBe2313123 But that's the point isn't it? LSE, Imperial, UCL, a number of medical schools and other courses at other institutions can all be more highly regarded and harder to get into than Oxbridge but don't attract the same obsession / hero worship etc. Would anyone ever start a thread asking if people find it hard to move on from LSE and I've never seen an Imperial etc parents' support thread.

It's only Oxbridge that seems to attract the annual obsession with the percentage of successful state school applicants, something which is irrelevant to the vast majority of students.

I do agree on the Spring Weeks and Internships and I think this is a real scandal. If you're not London based and don't have someone to guide you it's very difficult.

Jacob Rees Mogg was also a contemporary of my DH, the first time I met him in my early 20's at a party I was literally struck dumb, just couldn't believe such a person actually existed.

I remember him too, but he was also a type, the Tory Ex-Public School Ultra Fuddy-Duddies, who more or less lived in the Union and went to Mass at the Oratory, wearing three piece suits and carrying furled umbrellas and a rolled copy of the Times. He was a particularly extreme example of the type, but he wasn’t alone. The first time I went to Mass at the Oratory, I thought I’d fallen into a timeslip.

My child started at a nice old college this October. The so-called bedders are meant to clean her room but haven’t. She is meant to change her own sheets but hasn’t. She will wallow in squalor till December 🙄

Every time I see J R-M on TV I am struck dumb that he's a real person and that anyone would vote for him to be their MP.

I see it with my peers. They are constantly
posting photos of their kids’ colleges on insta and using the ‘lingo’ like collections, gyps etc when talking to other people. It makes me cringe so much. They manage to shoehorn their Oxbridge child into every conversation.

There is real fetishisation of Oxbridge amongst the middle classes.

Anyway my non-Oxbridge student kid is much brighter than my Oxbridge student child. It’s not always that black and white.

I went to Oxbridge years ago first person from my comp and I found it helped with the move to London for work. It was 80% male, 80% public school, at my college, constant parties and black tie dinners and when I got jobs in London they were like that to. And some places were about 50% plus Oxbridge. The LSE in my day was a good university but they had an Oxbridge rejects society but actually were very well placed for jobs in the city. My Dad had a huge issue with LSE (reading the Daily Mail and living rurally) and refused to pay my part of grant if I chose the LSE as he claimed it was full of Marxists undertaking left wing protests - it actually was the complete opposite on the open day public school boys and international students wanting to be rich bankers was most of who I met. My daughter is applying to Oxford and LSE and I would go with Oxford over LSE but that's largely cost of living in London and in terms of career there's not much in it and LSE is probably slightly better if after money / maths based economics jobs. I remember my Mum just telling me to find a good husband there. Thank goodness those days are gone.

@Publication fetishisation is the right word. Also see it with Eton and Winchester parents shoehorning the lingo in the whole time🙈

I agree a lot of parents on here are overinvested but not sure it’s confined to Oxbridge. I still haven’t got over reading a post where someone mentioned they had been looking at something on the student room on behalf of their DC! That is a forum for teens complaining about GCSEs not helicopter parents!

Thank you for this post! I am completely baffled by the support thread but then I am a foreigner married to someone who chose to leave Cambridge behind after Part IIII (upthread), turning them down for a red brick where the research in his specialism was more cutting edge.

I truly don’t get the Oxbridge support thread, which I scan occasionally as part of my social education. A few women I respect very much from other threads post there occasionally, and that seems like keeping your conversational end up at the school gates or in the office lunch room. Fine.

Overall, though, I think it is the most banal thread on Mumsnet - I prefer the Housekeeping thread, and I am not much for cleaning. Is all that snoringly boring crap a British way of showing off? How very pathetic.

BTW I am a Russell Group academic. So I am not coming from a completely naive perspective. Happily my friends and colleagues have more interesting things to talk about than their undergraduate affiliations (also, many scientists at top universities are foreign).

My dd is currently at Oxford. She’s state school educated and having a pretty good time there. I have been on the Oxbridge support thread a bit, because it is a slightly different world that I do not discuss with anyone in real life, as with my background and job, it would definitely be seen as showing off. I’m guessing she’ll be ok in the real world, but she’s enjoying the frills that come with being there. I’m proud of her.

You should be proud @Smallgeranium I am by no means against a healthy amount of pride in our DC! It ‘s fun to share that.
I could name some mums who participate on that thread who share your attitude, but will restrain myself.

I do know there are facets of British society where this could be misunderstood and I am sad about that. You need a community. But I doubt you are one of the crushingly boring contributors to that thread.

I realise I am free to ignore it, and usually do. But I was fascinated and grateful to learn here today that I am not the only person who finds it, overall, weirdly juvenile.

Thanks @poetryandwine. That helps a lot. I’ve had a few reactions to her being there that were deliberately unkind and meant to shame. So I now keep my pride and happiness for her to myself.

I am very sorry about that @Smallgeranium DGM was in your position in my home country, so proud that both of her DC got PhDs when her good friends’ DC began working right out of high school. And learnt to be very quiet about it.