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Higher education

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Original poster

Do you ever wonder how different your life would have been if you went to a different university?

65 replies

tarnishedmetal · 07/05/2024 16:26

I often think about how your university choice has a huge impact on your life trajectory.

I went to Oxford as a swotty comp girl. Didn’t have the most amazing time but it has shaped who I am. I wouldn’t have had the career I have now if I’d taken the Bristol offer.

But if I had taken the Bristol offer, I might be living in Bristol today? I would definitely have been a lot “edgier” and normal! Maybe that would have been a better choice.

I am so glad I didn’t take one of my other offers, even if it is a terrific uni.

OP posts:
HewasH2O · 07/05/2024 18:43

I wouldn't be married to the chap I met on my first day, I wouldn't have continued a friendship with my best friend who I met on the way to our interviews and I wouldn't have my daughter.

TiredandKnackeredand · 07/05/2024 18:45

Yes I do think this. Or even if you’d have started a year earlier or later. You’d have a whole different life, different friends. And the people you happen to meet shape so massively who you become. It is a super weird thought, all these different permutations of who you might have been and the life you might have lived

TizerorFizz · 07/05/2024 18:47

How can you say you would not have the same career? Bristol is hardly shabby and no doors closed off by Bristol. What career is 100% Oxford? I didn’t go to uni so just tagged onto someone who had!

EmmyPankhurst · 07/05/2024 18:48

It's very sliding doors isn't it!

I often wonder about it. I would have different friends. Suspect I would still be living in Scotland. Probably not doing the same job as I do now. Might have got married / had kids.

oldestboy · 07/05/2024 18:51

I think about this all the time, I met my DH at uni and stayed in my university city which definitely restricted my career options

TempsPerdu · 07/05/2024 18:56

While I did enjoy my time at Bristol, I think I might have had made more long-standing friendships had I gone elsewhere. In hindsight Bristol in the ‘90s was too posh for me, especially studying the course I did (Modern Languages). I did meet some nice people, but the vast majority of them came from backgrounds so far removed from my own that I struggled to maintain the friendships I made there beyond the university bubble.

If I had my time again I think I’d either pick somewhere a bit more down to Earth, or aim for Oxbridge (as I suspect genuinely studious/geeky and posh would have suited me better than trendy/edgy and posh!)

FlameTulip · 07/05/2024 18:58

Not just uni, I also think this about my first job which is where I met DH (we both started on the graduate scheme straight out of uni). We both had other job offers that we were considering, it's funny to think how different things would have been.

aerkfjherf · 07/05/2024 18:59

yes, I think my best friends for life are all from uni, so if I'd gone somewhere else, then I'd have totally different friends, but I like the ones I've got, so I am glad I didn't.

I don't think it would have made any difference to my career, I would have applied for the same jobs, etc

PermanentTemporary · 07/05/2024 18:59

It definitely would. I might have understood a bit more of my subject. Different friends, probably different pastimes. I'm not sure my professional career or romantic history would have been any different though.

LaurieFairyCake · 07/05/2024 19:04

Yes it definitely would have been different and I suspect life wouldn't have been so hard

I got into a top university but was prevented from going by my parents. They refused to pay for me to go.

So I went where they told me to go, half way through my second year they still stopped paying for me so I was homeless

I suspect if that had happened at Oxford they'd have provided financial support to keep me there as they have a generous bursary system

Unfortunately this decision to make me homeless plagued my 20's and it took me a while to get back on my feet

VillageLite · 07/05/2024 19:10

Any decision you make could change your life.

I met DH at uni - so I wouldn’t have met him, wouldn’t have had my children, wouldn’t be living where I am.

But equally, if I hadn’t gone to the school I did, I wouldn’t have ended up studying the subject I did at uni, because they didn’t teach it at the other high school. So I probably would have gone to a different uni, wouldn’t have met DH, etc.

But would I have ended up in the same career? I don’t know that one, maybe I would still have ended up in the same job. I feel I chose my career rather than falling into it. So another version of me in another life might still have chosen it.

shortsaint · 07/05/2024 19:12

Yes, but I am so happy at how it turned out. I was a bit complacent and got not great grades at A level, went to what is considered a low league uni (it was a college of HE then). Had THE BEST time, because it was small I had loads of opportunities, made so many friends (and have connections with many 30 years later), oh and met my lovely OH - though not til final year.

I remember adamantly not wanting to go there but also insistent I needed to leave home and make my way in the world. I sometimes shudder to think had it not happened the way it did.

Oh, and I've had a nice career out of it too. I consider myself very lucky.

drawnfrommemory · 07/05/2024 19:18

Yes, I wonder this as well. I totally ballsed up my A Levels and missed my grades for both my first choice and my insurance offer (Cambridge and Edinburgh). I got a place through clearing somewhere else and did fine and made great friends as it was a campus uni which really suited me. I also met my DH there.

But I do wonder where I would be now if I'd have gone to Cambridge.

LMMuffet · 07/05/2024 19:21

Yes, I sometimes wonder. I turned down Oxford (my parents have never forgiven me!) for a red brick. I have never regretted it. Funnily enough my DH went to Oxford and we would have been in the same college. I actually think if we’d met there at that age though, we wouldn’t be married now. We only met in our late twenties.

HandyDandyNotebookWanker · 07/05/2024 19:35

The uni I went to was probably the best decision I've ever made in my entire life. It has shaped everything I've done since then and it was an utterly joyful time of my life. I'm so happy every day that 17 year old me sniffed the clean air in that city and just fell in love!

Toodleoodleooh · 07/05/2024 19:38

Literally never occurred to me. I haven’t even thought about university since the day I left. I loved it but it was just one of those things I did as part of life and other than the fact I have a degree I’ve never given my uni time a moments thought

OnehundredStars · 07/05/2024 19:42

I loved my university and I got in through clearing. I made great friends. It was down to earth and friendly. Not campus but we all lived in halls for the three years. I used to live in the ghetto on free school meals (but like Summerhill on Netflix) so I am very very grateful

AllProperTeaIsTheft · 07/05/2024 19:46

Yes, definitely. I went to Oxford too, had an absolutely idyllic time and later ended up moving back to the area for quite a while. University days seem almost like a dream looking back, but I wouldn't trade those memories, and I still have a very nostalgic love for the city.

aldpiahvge · 07/05/2024 19:47

I doubt you'd be "edgier" just because you didn't go to Oxford, if you got into Oxford I'm sure being a swot is engrained and you'd have been the same anywhere! (That isn't an insult!)

I regret where I chose for studying abroad, would pick somewhere completely different now.

Desecratedcoconut · 07/05/2024 19:54

Surely everyone has hundreds of sliding doors moments? I wouldn't say where I went to uni was bigger than all the others.

Sprogonthetyne · 07/05/2024 19:55

I choose a uni half hour away from were bf of the time went, and half hour in the other direction from home. Comuted first year from home, second year from bf uni town, and never really integrated into uni social scene and didn't make any close friends.

On the plus side then bf is now DH, which is lovely, but I do feel I probably missed out on that stage of my life, and probably on contacts & soft skills, which might have helped establishing a career.

aldpiahvge · 07/05/2024 19:58

Surely everyone has hundreds of sliding doors moments? I wouldn't say where I went to uni was bigger than all the others.

It's one of the most impactful and obvious though. My parents moved across the country when I was little, I often wonder how different my life would be (and me considering I was so young) if we'd lived somewhere different. Missing a tube isn't usually quite so obvious.

QueenOfHiraeth · 07/05/2024 20:02

I have wondered this too but, for me, it is more about schools.
At 11 I won a scholarship to a really good school but parents wouldn't let me go and sent me to the local high school which was OK but I was academic and think I could have done better and aimed higher with more support.
I have done well, went to a redbrick uni, have friends I am still in touch with 40+ years later, met DH, have lovely adult children, now have gorgeous grandchildren and had a steady, if boring, career. I have always felt a pang of regret though that I never tried for something like medicine or law and a bigger career but I guess you can't have it all

FeistyFrankie · 07/05/2024 20:06

I suspect that choice of uni doesn’t actually create as much of an impact as we’d like to think it does. I think it’s a bit of myth that where you go shapes you. I think the university experience shapes you regardless of which specific institution you attend.

Desecratedcoconut · 07/05/2024 20:10

aldpiahvge · 07/05/2024 19:58

Surely everyone has hundreds of sliding doors moments? I wouldn't say where I went to uni was bigger than all the others.

It's one of the most impactful and obvious though. My parents moved across the country when I was little, I often wonder how different my life would be (and me considering I was so young) if we'd lived somewhere different. Missing a tube isn't usually quite so obvious.

Maybe, but sometimes life is crafted in the margins. I'd have never have met dh if I had been able to read an A-Z map when I was fresh off the train to London at 21. Thank God technology came to the party because I still find paper maps a hot mess of information overload but that incompetence has led to a 22yrs and counting marriage and three awesome kids.

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