Daughter about to start Uni, having a wobble and thinking she should have gone to a higher Ranked Russell Group Uni!

[WhatsTheStoryRory]

My daughter did her A levels in the summer and got all A*s in 4 STEM subjects.
She accepted an offer to study a STEM subject in a non Russell group uni because that's the one she liked the best when we visited.
The Uni she liked is very well rated and is a couple of hours drive from the city we live in.
She's gone through the whole process of applying for Student loan and choosing accomodation.

She's now having a wobble and thinking she should have accepted an offer she had from a Russell Group Uni in the city we live in.
The main reason seems to be, that she thinks future employers will give preference to those who went to higher ranked Uni's.

She's even mentioned taking a year out and re-applying for next year.
We've said we'll support her whatever she decides.

Is it even possible to change Uni's at this late stage?

But doesn't have a medical school, which was the feature upon which the originator of the assessment of the merits or otherwise of that specific part of ARU was basing their opinion of the superiority of Kimpton Fitzroy London - sorry, Russell- Group - universities over those outside of that particular club in general.

The fact that 'Russell Group' excludes a top university like Bath shows just what a rubbish barometer of university quality it is.

My DD is in her final year at Bath. Honestly, your DD won't be so special at Bath. Many Oxbridge applicants have Bath as their next choice or insurance and many students with 3 or 4 A stars in STEM subjects.

We know someone going this year with all 9s at GCSE and 4 A stars who didn't get an interview for Cambridge. They're not disappointed to be going to Bath.

I suspect, like others have suggested, your DD is having wobbles about leaving home or being too far away. Or she's listening to ill-informed friends. Can you have a chat with her and see if you can get get to the bottom of it?

RG Is a marketing ploy! Self selected set of unis. Now w huge joining costs for others.
look at the uni not the club the mgt decided to join a couple of decades back…

Bath is ranked higher than lots of RG unis. Your DS will be fine.

My son went to Lancaster, another highly ranked non RG Uni. He got a job in one of the UKs largest insurers and a few of the other graduates have come from Bath and Lancaster.

Bath is my DD's back up 1st choice should she not get an offer from her current first choice. It ranks much higher than most RGs for her stem subject (maths). She's also doing 4 and predicted 4A stars. I had no idea until we started looking at unis just how great Bath is (in general and for her subject). I think she should give it a go.

Recruiting blind stops candidates being shortlisted just because they went to a particular university. Where I work, the recruitment process is skills based, so any questions and tests are designed to identify the best person for the job, not the person who's been to the RG university.

Recruiting in this way ensures a fair and inclusive process and ultimately a more diverse workforce. I'm incredibly proud to work for an organisation that recruits in this way. The culture is fantastic and our diverse workforce ensures well-rounded ways of working are brought to the table.

I really wouldn't hesitate with Bath, its highly regarded and is one of those that is thought of as 'should be a RG' (like St Andrews)

I can definitely say that as an employer I genuinely do not give two hoots which university candidates went to. What I do care about is how (or whether!) they respond to emails, how professionally they present at interview and their general work ethic / ability to fit in the team. We have graduates from RG universities and non-RG universities working with us and I can tell you that there is no correlation at all between success in the job and which university they attended.

As previous poster said, RG universities are self-selected and the criteria is largely research rather than subject based. I say this as someone who studied one subject at a RG university (appalling experience) and another at a non-RG university (brilliant experience). Don’t be fooled into thinking that something with a RG label is going to be a better deal - choose your university based on the programme, the location and its accommodation offer, not on a label.

I'm not sure the Op doesn't know Bath is up there in terms of prestige. It's obvious from all the ranking tables, it's a " nice" city in its own right and features a high number of private school pupils ( why would you spend a fortune on education and then favour lesser Unis).
Many Unis have some courses that are specialisms and STEM courses are easily identified and ranked as they have clearer, trackable outcomes as opposed to something like Philosophy where graduates might work in many fields.

I'm interested in blind recruitment. What's the point of having contextual offers if employers are only see non contextual results? A string of average GCSE's, A levels and first from an average Uni is a different candidate from one that had to demonstrate extra skills and potential to get into a top Uni.

There are many reasons someone may not go to an elite university that don’t mean they won’t be great at a job. Increasingly the cost of university means children applying to local universities to live at home. They may have gone to a poor school and their exam grades reflect that but absolutely flourished at university. They may have some excellent skills for the workplace that are more relevant than academic skills. They may have just not thought of themselves as a candidate for a top university when in fact they would have been very able.

My response would be along the lines of ‘ok, you need to ring round today, see what’s possible, and make the arrangements.’
My DD wanted to change Uni at the last minute, and this is what I told her. (I really wanted to tell her it was too late and not to be so daft!). She did ring round, was told that it was too late to change courses this year but could defer her place for the following year. I pointed out that she would have to work for a year, bank of M+D wouldn't subsidise a year out. She opted to go to the uni she’d got a place at, thrived, got a good degree and now, 8 years on, laughs about her ‘September wobble’ as she calls it.

How do you know this?

Where I work, the recruitment process is skills based, so any questions and tests are designed to identify the best person for the job, not the person who's been to the RG university.

I do think an awful lot of the narrative around universities misses that the thing about competitive and "aspirational" people all heading off the same places is that those places become full of....very competitive people.

It's unquestionably more prestigious to run the Student Newspaper at Oxford than to run the Student Newspaper at Reading but you can probably sell yourself better to an employer if you ran the SN at Reading than if your role at the SN at Oxford was making cups of tea for the Editor.

I certainly marked people higher who could give me excellent examples from a Saturday job in Tesco than someone who told me how well they’d organised a debate for an Oxbridge society and had obviously been told that sort of thing would be great for getting a job. If the Tesco example was more relevant and thought-through. (Blind recruitment has its limits once you get to that point).

RG definitely has gravitas and if your daughter wants to change I wouldn’t stop her.

You've had multiple recruiters on here telling you otherwise. I worked for one of the major STEM employers globally and it made absolutely no difference which uni someone attended.

I'd go as far as saying that it wasn't unusual for applicants from some of the most prestigious unis not to make it past the first hurdle as their applications read like 'I'm at a top university, so I don't really need to complete the application form the way you asked us to'. (If you have a child at a top uni - take note! )

I also had someone in a grad interview cut me off before I'd started by saying 'I'm in the top x% of graduates. Now you sell me on why I should work for you.'

Edinburgh and Glasgow are RG

OP,

We haven’r really discussed that for STEM many admissions tutors have concerns about a gap year. The worry is that Maths will be lost. I never shared it and it seems ti be changing slowly. But STEM applicants who wish to do a gap year need a plan for keeping up their Maths (and should be prepared for a refusal)

@OMGitsnotgood But to be fair many application forms are a load of old bollocks.

I recently filled one in and the first written question was " why do want to work for us". I explained how extensive work experience demonstrated I could the job and why they would be a better fit.
The second question was "how do you match the person specification" so I again matched my ( many years) experience specifically to the PS.
The third question was again " what skills would you bring to the role". Ok so if you haven't worked if I'm going to be good at the job by now your HR department is too clunky for me.
It was paying £21K, They wanted creative, flexible thinkers. These are not the people to fill out repetitive forms for the sake of it.

Knowing your worth is important.

Where I work, the name of the candidate's university is redacted. We neither know (nor care) where candidates got their degree. Even in previous jobs when we saw non-redacted applications, I've never once been on a recruitment panel where anyone has ever mentioned the location of a candidate's university as a factor in selecting them for an interview.

"how do you match the person specification"
" what skills would you bring to the role"

Sounds like the sort of questions from a HR department who has no idea about the role.

Worked for a company who had a HR rep who could not undersatnd why the churn of professionally qualaified staff was not as high as the call center staff. That was the limit of her experience so we had enlighten her.

The most important thing is that she is happy and comfortable where she is. My heart was set on a non-Russell uni, but I chose a Russell group uni under my 6th form tutor’s advice due to prestige etc. I hated it and always regretted it. I know I would have been much happier and probably got a much better degree had I gone with my heart and not my head.

Exactly!! He may well be saying to people that that is the reason but it seems hugely unlikely.

Quite why @LadyGabriella is banging on about medicine and judicial applications when she knows nothing of Bath’s reputation is quite beyond me.

And what a sensible university Bath is for not paying £millions to join (looking at you Exeter, and a few others...)