Most young people haven’t had a very broad experience of life. Many have lived all their lives in one place and been to one type of school and do t know many people from different backgrounds to their own.
Going to uni opens up the world and they meet people from regions of the country they’ve never heard of or been to and people from different social and economic backgrounds. They know it’s going to happen and they’ve heard stories about ‘types’ of people and many latch onto stereotypes before they’ve even visited. Some are excited about meeting different types of people and embrace it, but others are less confident and feel a bit threatened or challenged by the ideas and on the look-out for people who are different or they perceive as ‘wrong’ and have a disposition to feel critical about them or to see those other groups as treating them differently. It seems such a common theme.
After Open Days, lots of MN posters speak of their kids referring to a vibe that they didn’t like in certain places - they seem hyper-sensitive to noticing there are people different to them. And many of them seem to have a sense they can only feel comfortable when people are like them.
Clearly the majority if people going to uni are from state schools. This is the case even in the unis that have more privately educated students. Lots of young people seem to see privately educated students as to be avoided. They have a stereo-type in mind of ‘rash’ and if by chance they do meet one, it really sticks in their minds. But often they forget that most uni students are just bright teens and after meeting one and seeing them and chatting to them, it could often be impossible to tell what kind of school they came feom, if it wasn’t explicitly discussed. Most privately educated students are from middling private schools with middle class parents, who often do jobs very similar to the large numbers who go to unis from the state grammars and comps in fairly affluent areas. But in their minds, these middle class state school kids often seem to think that places like Exeter or Durham will be rammed with people behaving in a stereotypical way. It won’t be the case. As parents, I think some also don’t help in perpetuating the idea that the kids might feel uncomfortable with different people.
I suppose a lot if teens are ore-disposed to be fairly conservative and leans towards what they know. Going off to uni is already a big step into the unknown and for lots, going very far or the prospect of people who in their minds might be quite different is bad. Different = bad. It’s funny because kids today are always on about diversity. They are taught constantly not to be racist or classist and to embrace diversity, but actually most find it pretty hard in reality and aren’t confident enough to do it. It’s a real shame.
And on these threads where people are talking about who has got offers and who hasn’t, and contextual offers and universities looking to broaden participation etc etc, it seems to make parents become defensive too and a bit divided. Private school parents often seem to feel under attack and as if their kids are being discriminated against in admissions…and perhaps this defensiveness deepensthe sense some people have about entitled families and what privately educated teens might be like. I suppose at Open Days everyone is having a little look at what the other families (and the potential competition for places) might look like - are they like them or somehow do they seem ‘different’.
And given the young people have to reduce their application list to 5 and then to 2 after offers, when lots of courses are pretty similar and it’s hard to choose, they need some criteria for reducing their lists of options. It seems ‘I saw people who didn’t seem to be like me’ is a big deciding factor for lots. They have to use some kind of criteria to decide in the end, but it’s a shame when they do it based on this, and when sometimes they don’t even visit but discount places because ‘it’s too posh for me’ or ‘people there wouldn’t like people like me’.