University snobbery

[nysw]

Just wondering if anyone has come across this from adults/parents?

That is all

I don’t think you can compare eg Peter Symonds - a massive 6th form in Hampshire with a huge number of Oxbridge destinations as a normal comp!!!!! There’s state schools and there’s state schools….

@SplendidRhododendronsDeirdre Are DC all brighter in Hampshire then? There are several big colleges there. They have huge numbers on roll so of course some go to Oxbridge. How does a big school ensure dc are confident? Or successful over and above a grammar? They are still state schools despite their size.

And they are comprehensive but just very big. Should other areas reorganize on giant 6th form centres to pull up results? Maybe q critical mass of bright dc would serve those dc better? Also why can a normal comp not have success? All should aim high if possible.

It’s the people you mix with and the way the teachers in school treat you and speak to you. Picking a “huge sixth form college in Hampshire” as a typical example of a British comp is naive at best, and disingenuous. We all know that eg Peter Symonds is not representative of the rest of the country’s state comprehensives.

It’s like saying all private schools are the same and I’m sure you’d never do that.

My DC went to state grammars and one was amazing at building the confidence of the pupils and the other meh.

Re parental support - DD has had oodles of love and support, and a stable home background, but she has always been unconfident, even at primary school.

However, working in retail during her gap year, and more recently in a pharmacy between graduate and post grad study has done masses for her self confidence. Her soft skills, especially her people skills are astonishing when I think back to how she was.

I'm sorry if I have derailed this thread, but I appreciate the input from @poetryandwine and a couple of others on here.

I believe Hants is comprehensive! It was just an example. I don't agree all dc there are privileged! Other schools are good. Of course they are. Other schools don't encourage DC to go to better unis and they could do better. Other schools do virtually nothing to help dc get confidence and become articulate. Some dc refuse to engage too. It's a very mixed picture.

It's not really the point, but Peter Symonds has something like 2000 students per year. I don't think the numbers of Oxbridge offers are as much to write home about as they would have you think. Cohort size matters when comparing these numbers. And if you look at offers vs applicants, a rather different picture emerges.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of this, but it's very interesting:
https://www.keystonetutors.com/news/oxbridge-which-schools-get-the-most-offers#

Delphigirl makes good points about this - I was quite shy as a teenager. My parents sent me to a very small school where I ended up getting the top A levels. I felt so confident internally (even if I also crossed the street to avoid having to speak to a neighbour!) I put myself in for 3 x 3 hour university entrance scholarship exams and won one and then was top of my year at university, got another scholarship, prizes in 2 finals subjects and applied to good London law firms. By the age of 23 I was qualified as a solicitor, married with a child, house,daily nanny and moved to one of the best law firms in London. That all stemmed from y internal confidence that I was pretty good. What caused that? Chicken and egg situation really - do I believe it because it is indeed so as the facts who? Did I achieve well because of how my parents and school treated me? I still even now I am a grandmother and still working full time feel very internally content and sure things will always work out.

Some of it will be inherent too - I have 5 children, they have the same home, they hare not 5 little clones of each other or me. In a way that is the wonderful thing about having children - you don't put X into them and get Y. You put X in and God knows what will come out as they are their own people in a sense.

How on earth did you get married and have a child by 23? That's so not what most people with high educational and career aspirations do.

Did you ever feel like it was too young?

It’s more ‘why on earth?’ for me. But @Xenia thinks that early marriage, house nanny and ALL CHILDREN IN PRIVATE SCHOOLS FROM THE MOMENT OF BIRTH is some kind of acme of achievement.

I thought it took much longer to qualify as a solicitor...especially if maternity leave - however short - was included.....but that's slightly off topic!

I just set goals when I was 14. However I have never said to anyone everyone should be like I am. Differences are great. It would be very boring if everyone were the same.

I was a year young at school so went to university aged 17 and graduated in law aged 20. I finished post graduate law exams aged 21 and started my 2 year training contract aged 21. The year I qualified as a solicitor only 15 people were as young as 23. Those doing a law degree would be 24 and those who had to do a law conversion 25. 3 of my solicitor children qualified aged 25 and the 4th was 26.,

I took 2 weeks of annual leave to have baby no. 1 and returned to work after the 2 weeks (not two months) break. Although that is not for all women I do worry that women are not told that is also a legitimate choice if they wish - most won't wish it but it is possible. I expressed breast milk and breastfed every few hours all night. We got married just before I started my training contract after my post grad exams and bought a house in about July of the following year. The baby was born 11 months after we married - we spent our first wedding anniversary touring the maternity ward (where by the way my 4th grandchild was born 3 weeks ago!)..... My husband was 7 years older and had a house to sell in NW England so we actually married life living in a school flat provided by his school (as house prices were too high for teachers in London in those days and now - nothing changes so it was only by offering school flats they could attract teachers down here at all).

That sounds very impressive, well done!

Things are different today..

I’m guessing after living in the free school accommodation, your husband paid for the house with the sale of his house up North (house price gap still existed but not as huge?). You had no uni debts as no fees etc then. You worked as an entry level solicitor so low pay. But still - How on earth did you pay for a FT nanny? Did you ever regret only spending 2 weeks with your brand new baby?

We knew loads of people who married 2 years after leaving uni and had DC soon after. Wasn't unusual 40-50 years ago. Even highly educated women only worked for a couple of years full time. Some who did carry on full time used nurseries or a nanny pretty quickly and used a lot of their salary to pay for it. They then picked up work again as dc got older. I've known women go back to work full time in 4 weeks.

"I’m guessing after living in the free school accommodation,"... we were there about 6 months and I think he paid about 10% of a normal rent on it but we didn't want to get locked into the ease of a school flat and it was pretty dire - mattress on floor whilst I was pregnant etc.

Sale of the house up North sold for just under £20k (that house sells for about £150k today - it is not in a great area). I am not sure how big the mortgage was now so I don't know what capital came out of that. The house we bought out here in zone 5 London cost £40k. They cost about £450k today for the same house. So we did both have a little bit of savings for the deposit. Whereas normal inflation over that period would be £105k today. On the other hand salaries after inflation of trainee solicitors are double in real terms what they were (presumably as people have to pay student loan repayments and very high rents) so my £6250 a year salary (20k in today's money) then would be about £50k today. And we were paying up to about 17% interest rates at one point - for our 1990 house we borrowed 4x my salary and could only manage with not just an interest only mortgage but a deferred one so part of the interest was added to the capital so it was not some straight easy ride.
You would 5% of 450k deposit which divided by 2 full time workers would be £11,250 each today.

When I qualified in 1985 our daughter was 1 and my salary rose to about £10k as I changed firms. We had baby no. 2 and I changed firms again for baby no. 3 so I was NEVER entitled to the 6 weeks at 90% pay of today as you needed 2 years of service to get it then. Then when later I had our twins I was working for myself so no SMP at all and was back taking work calls the next day.

Only 15% of people got to university in those days and my parents got for me the very tiny minimum grant but made it up to the full grant (and there were no university fees as you say but rents seemed quite high). This is one reason I have paid for 5 children 's university fees and rent as I wanted them to be as I was (I have also helped all 5 buy a first property which is why I will work until I die and have no savings or pension (other than state if I get to that age) but am content with that.

We also bought 2 buy to let properties in the 80s and sold them for about 50% losses in the 90s property crash and our then house too at a loss. My property ownership in a sense has been a veil of tears rather than making a lot of money, not helped by my divorce either as a higher earner. I paid off the mortgage last year in my 60s.

The full time nanny cost 50% of our net wages (for trainee solicitor and head of department teacher) in our first year as parents. I suppose things people might have now we couldn't like orange juice, hair conditioner, It was a different time and it is not easy to compare. I have drawn up details of my expenses and income almost every year since about 1989 so I know exactly what we spent on what in every year since then...I can see I have some calculations saved from 1985 too. Anyway we managed and we knew I would get pay rises although I was not kept on after my training so it was never an easy ride of job security for life. We also at times did a second job too.

On the baby I was fine about it. None of my babies every slept much so I felt I had hours and hours and hours with her - 1 - 4am with a baby awake breastfeeding would not be surprising for many new mothers . I didn't work late. on most days, baby latching on as soon as you get in the door, feeding almost all weekend from me - I just felt loads and loads of contact with her 365 days a year even though in working hours in the week a daily nanny was feeding her my milk from a bottle. I used to joke I went to work for a rest and it is much easier to sit at a desk being treated like a God (well not quite a God) at work than being a domestic servant - particularly once we had 3 under 4 when most of the time you are clearing up sick.

I feel I have had a very lovely balanced life although it is certainly very easy now the youngest 2 only are at home and they are 25.

Thank you for going through that. Looking at your expenses from 40yrs ago must be interesting, and also scary looking at the price increases since then.

Interesting you say that about paying your children’s uni fees / rent . I agree it’s tough for the students these days to start life after uni 50,000 in debt, or whatever it is. I’d like to pay for my now young teen children too. Easier said than done though!

Well since you have 5 children - they might help you out when you’re older, if you need as you helped them when they were younger.

I agree work is easier than looking after newborns and toddlers, 24hrs per day. It was a break just sitting on the tube. Though I loved being at home with them, I made it last as long as I could (18mths) till I had to return to work. Self employed so didn’t get any maternity pay.

When talking about this. My initial thought was about comparing a "super" university to a good university. Like "on average" is someone studying economics from Cambridge going to have better career prospects than someone doing the same degree at Bristol?

St Andrews

Definitely not.
LSE, Imperial, Edinburgh, UCL, Manchester maybe but not St. Andrews...

One of my children is in a similar position! Will hopefully attend an Exeter Open Day to check it out, the teaching there plus resources look amazing. May I ask, has your daughter studied Arabic? Mine is teaching herself, and is a gifted linguist who paradoxically decided to avoid languages at both GCSE and A Level!!!

In 2024 UK - probably not. But internationally, Cambridge has a brand name recognition on par with the Ivy League universities. So, the Cambridge graduate would still have a leg up.

The difference, IMO between Oxbridge and other universities is that the brand name outweighs the subject choice, which is very important for degrees which don't lead to an obvious profession. You can study anything there, even subjects with very high acceptance rates (like Theology) and people will still think you're not only very academic but generally capable. The same subject at other universities would raise a few eyebrows (why did you choose that??) but Oxbridge needs no explanation.
Most other universities have their strengths in specific areas but no brand name recognition 'across the board'.

😱

Also @nysw the other thing to note is research output. Cambridge has the 2nd highest number of Nobel Prize winners (former students/staff) I believe, Harvard being the first.

The 'superior' universities academically have a reputation for advances in pure research, and accompanying academic awards. They also attract a lot of funding allowing said researchers to work in peace...

This isn't always the same as preparing students for employment, or good teaching. In fact a lot of 'star' researchers are terrible teachers because they don't make allowances for the slower students or provide a lot of structure.

Personally I found the 'teaching-focused' lecturers far better than the Nobel Prize/Fields Medal/<insert award here> winners in terms of delivering module content. But the latter were of course more interesting to talk to, one-on-one regarding big ideas and their research.

@nysw Not necessarily. Bristol students like high paying jobs in London too and all might be competing against LSE grads. It's not just uni attended that employers look at either. Best fit for role and company make a difference. Not every student wants a high paying job either. Some don't want the hours. Or the move to London which is probably necessary. Some will stay as academics.

The IFS did research on degrees and unis. They actually looked at Economics. The LSE grads got into higher paying jobs. Wolverhampton economics grads trailed in last.

The difference between Cambridge and Bristol could be down to percentages in higher paid roles (which has fewer grads?) but almost certainly depends on individual choices and the individuals themselves. What do they actually want? Do they have the range of skills and attributes the employer wants? A first from Bristol is still a fantastic achievement and who can judge if that's not as good as a 2:1 from Cambridge? Most employers look at far more than that.