Talking down Oxbridge after getting rejected

[Dddsfea]

Does anyone know anyone else that does this? I know a parent who tries to talk down Oxford and Cambridge after her DC didn't get in.

Saying the students there aren't that better than anyone else and that they only worked hard in 6th form. And that they study less at university compared to those at other unis.

SOAS used to be the jewel in the London University crown years ago (80s/ 90s). Such a shame it has tanked.

Goldsmiths was always a bit on the fringes and Royal Holloway just too far away to count as "London"

But this attitude is crap and juvenile whether it’s a job or university or a relationship.
‘she said no to a date, she’s a slag anyway’
🙄
it’s often what well meaning but stupid people say when someone’s relationship failed
‘he was a dick anyway’

no. No he wasn’t. He just wasn’t feeling it. And that’s ok. And it doesn’t make the dumped person any less worthy.

this deflection be it relationship or job or uni prevents people from moving on in a healthy way. It trues to turn sadness into something else. And that creates a person with unresolved anger, bitterness and resentment.

far more important to learn to understand and live with the experience of sadness and disappointment without turning it into something else that ultimately makes people feel worse.

in this case there will be residual disappointment and bitterness of not getting into oxbridge. I know people in their 50s and 60s who carry this.

By being honest with your feeling you process them and can move on. Failing to get into oxbridge doesn’t change who someone is. They are still phenomenally bright and will thrive elsewhere and will have experiences that they would not have had at oxbridge. Different experiences. Some will be better. They may meet their life partner. That would not have happened had they got into oxbridge.

I’ve never agreed with the notion that it actually makes someone feel better to tell them their aspirations were crap in the first place.

If so, then KCL is even worse than I thought. My DC who is at another London university has a very dim view indeed of KCL...

The SOAS niche is not on trend. Specialist institutions are always going to be subject to fashion.

Is your DC a student or a member of staff at their other London uni?

I'm referring to the views of those in the two professions as opposed to the views of students.

A student. I understood the position you are talking from.

I only picked up on Law and Medicine because I know something about both and what you said wasn't correct in terms of general reputation. But King's also has some courses which are habitually ranked second or so in the world.

This is absolutely true. I've met so many now, and it honestly come ups very early in conversations, even when not expected due to the topic!

I know Oxbridge graduates who admit it tends to be something many (if not most) Oxbridge grads do.

On medicine, KCL struggled a bit in the past but this should have changed. Kings now spans three major hospitals (Kings, St Thomas' and Guys) all previously well respected teaching hospitals. The merger caused real teething problems and at the time student satisfaction sank through the floor.

UCL and Imperial also offer six year degrees as standard whilst QMUL and KCL have five year degrees with scope for an extra intercalation year which may alter perceptions. UCL and Imperial also used to use BMAT rather than UCAT for entry, which may have caused those who felt BMAT was the more academic qualification to see them as better. They will also have been able to consider Oxbridge near misses, as if you were going to the effort of sitting BMAT you probably listed a couple in the hope you got a strong score.

Certainly from what I know of London applicants, Kings is seen as a strong academic option. The alternative, SGUL, is considered slightly gentler.

You are much closer to NHS thinking, but I would argue that this view may be slightly historic as the admission changes come into effect.

.I also know lawyers (magic circle) who trained at Kings, and who seem proud of their degrees. Is it partly that each degree will have a slightly different focus. For example the LSE law degree is really well considered in some places. The United Nations rather than a family law practice in Dorchester.

No Needmoresleep it's absolutely current, not in the least historic although it may be that as well.

Thanks.

Odd though. DD came across several Kings medics during her intercalation and they were (irritatingly) proud of being at Kings, clearly seeing it as far superior to, say, Bristol indeed the equivalent to Imperial.

Similarly I know Kings educated lawyers with good City careers who are very proud of their alma mater.

I appreciate you sharing your inside knowledge around medical careers. What should prospective medical students use in order to select the "best" medical schools. And how much does it matter is they decide, say, that Oxbridge with its traditional structure and essay writing is not for them, and that London isn't either.

Needmoresleep may I suggest that you read back over the various recent medical threads. A hard core of people with what you term 'inside knowledge' have expressed their opinions about the various issues relating to career progression. I can't see that it's of any value to perpetuate this particular MN Groundhog Day.

Aside from the fact that each of these contributors strongly disagree with another poster that you appear to be close to, and who gives much advice to the parents of DC wanting an offer of a place at medical school, I can't offer up much more myself. If you prefer the advice of this poster (any medic school will do/ it makes no difference) over the medics themselves, then you might do well to clarify the many internal inconsistencies across their huge number of posts. For my part I've stopped even trying - too many inconsistencies to be bothered.

It does strike me as slightly odd that people would tell others that they were 'proud' of their alma mater. But maybe that's just me.

It's probably worth re-iterating that in the scheme of things there will always be outliers at each institution. And that a huge amount of this is simply common sense: prior attainment or if you prefer aptitude and potential as identified by the harder to get into medical schools. It really should be no surprise that certain students will get through the bottleneck and equally no surprise that others won't.

You've read all the many comments about the potential folly of insisting on a work life balance too early on and this again this isn't rocket science when it's common knowledge that there's a big old squeeze of training places at the moment.

I'm not sure that there's anything new to say. It's been done to death on these boards.

Exactly this

Mind you I find the Oxbridge fetishism on here very strange

What I meant by being proud of having gone to Kings is no different to those who seem to feel the need to mention that they went to Oxford. And it is strange. From my memory of random groups, eg my NCT group, we all knew who had been to Oxbridge, but other Universities were not mentioned. (Equally people seem to need to tell you they went to St Paul's Girls School.)

I was responding to your categoric statement about Kings. My observation is different. I appreciate I don't have inside knowledge, and indeed as someone who went to the rival institution across the road it rather pains me to say it, but I don't agree.

This is not a fight. I very much have my own views. If these happen to align with others on a particular issue so be it. I continue to disagree with them on others. I personally think that the "big old squeeze of training places" needs fixing. It is bad enough that there are only places for one in five coming off the UK foundation scheme, but the fact that over 50% of these places then go to overseas applicants is bonkers. As is the fact that many then holding training numbers choose not to apply to the less popular regions, leaving vacancies in areas under the greatest stress. I don't think it should be solved Foundation doctors cutting further into their work life balance and joining the arms race to load their CVs with super-curricular and dedicate scarce time off to exam revision. I accept that you and other professionals seem to feel that those, including those in London, who are on the revised (2015?) contract with shorter hours, fewer nights and time off for personal development are negligent in not making more effort to beat the odds in order to build a career in the UK. But I don't think that is the case for those still on the old 2002 contract. There is enough work at work.

DD has just received her rota for the next four months. A really busy placement with lots of longs and nights. Despite it being in theory a challenging and prestigious rotation they are already down from six to three - Foundation seems to be a process of attrition. This is not helped by the fact that given current immigration policy offering no priority for those in the UK, four out of five do not expect jobs or training at the end. As a result there is little incentive, despite training for seven or eight years, to see it through to the end. It will be tough with some very sick patients, to the extent that DD spent a weekend batch cooking in preparation. As a parent I completely agree with her then using time off to see friends or play sport and to make make the most of what remains of her work life balance. You have long hinted you are not just some bored housewife/Mumsnet mean-girl who has nothing better to do than use the internet to take pops at others, but have some role that is close NHS policy making. It worries me that you do not seem to understand that people are different, and that for some good clinical physicians maintaining a social and physical hinterland is vital. The system at the moment, with its extreme selectivity seems to produce very focussed professionals who don't seem to want to stray far from research centres. Yet patients live across the country and need those doctors that are de facto being forced to emigrate. I think you/the NHS are getting it very wrong.

Off topic, but I am sure Auchencar will also confirm that they believe that Oxford/Cambridge medical degrees are superior. I despair.

Agreed. In day to day life, the only times I’ve encountered it has been around people who know very little about universities in general, probably didn’t go themselves, and then it’s only in the sense of a kind of brand recognition. ‘Oxford’ (for some reason more than Cambridge, in my experience?) is just a go-to term for ‘prestigious university’ or ‘you must be clever’, the way people use ‘rocket science’ as a graball term for ‘something really difficult to understand’ or ‘Louboutins’ for ‘expensive footwear’.

The only time it got weird is when a long-lost distant cousin of my mother’s (who’d left rural Ireland, changed her name and accent, married an Englishman and reinvented herself as a pearl-necklaced Home Counties matron who dressed like Thatcher, with children called Geoffrey and Malcolm) got wind of me being at Oxford and started writing to me, desperate to meet me, and underlining what a ‘prestigious college’ I was at, compared to her Geoffrey (a perfectly nice, spoddy geographer at Teddy Hall). That admittedly got deeply weird. I think she couldn’t quite get past that her hick country cousin’s hick child was doing ‘better’ by her social-climbing metrics.

Most people do that as a way of making themselves feel better about something.

It's common. It happens in relationships too. When there's been a relationship breakup, for whatever reason, a lot of partners talk down the party who left and say he or she was rubbish.Anyway, i'm better off without them, blah blah blah.

Then everybody moves on and forgets all about it. The same with this there ll be disappointment that didn't get into one of these universities, and then they'll move on.

It's not necessarily a good thing to do, but it is common.

Needmoresleep give it a rest.

Seriously, move back to your several other medical threads if you want to complain about the status quo yet again. This is an entirely different focus and law and medicine were only mentioned in passing.

From my memory of random groups, eg my NCT group, we all knew who had been to Oxbridge, but other Universities were not mentioned.

Biased sampling, surely? You only found out about the ones who had both been to Oxbridge and mentioned it. I do remember it came up for the first time in a conversation with one friend after I'd known her 25 years.

Get mentioning some other universities, maybe, to balance things out?

It's probably even more that others have mentioned their uni, but because she doesn't have a preconceived notion about what everyone who went there is like, she's forgotten.
A bit like you remember A's birthday because it's the day before your Mum's, but don't remember B, C and D who told you in the same conversation because it didn't strike a chord.

For certain subjects particularly stem Oxbridge doesn't offer degrees with placement years in industry which a lot of employers regard highly.

Because it shows previous work experience?

But then again, afaik oxbridge stem grads don’t typically have employability problems. For sciences the high fliers are likely to want to do a PhD so year in industry isn’t such a great idea.