Russell Group Universities percentage of state, private, foreign students

[Witwatersrand1970]

DS is applying for universities and I was looking for some stats on Russell Group - I managed to compile these 3 graphs:

Excellent post.

Also, international students are more likely to want to live in certain places, and to study certain types of course. London is top choice for many international students and LSE offers almost exclusively the type of course that attracts students from countries where there is still a big market for study in the UK. So LSE having more international students than, say, Coventry, doesn’t tell us that LSE admissions is more prejudiced in favour of international students than Coventry’s. It just tells us that a lot more international students want to study there.

QU Belfast has a high “state educated” proportion but there are still grammar schools in NI and a large proportion of QUB students are Northern Irish. So that statistic doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about admissions policies as opposed to the impact on private education in an area where there is a state funded selective alternative available.

Basically all this raw data needs to be taken in context and analysed carefully. The headline figures aren’t very useful.

Also, do these figures refer just to undergraduate students or to the whole student body, including Masters and PhD students? Because if it is just all students then the data is going to be quite misleading if what you are interested in is the makeup of the undergraduate cohort.

My sums were incorrect - it is more nuanced. i.e. when Durham say that 1/3 of their students are privately educated it is 1/3 of the total UK cohort not including international students - that means 2/3 of the UK cohort are state educated - which makes me feel slightly more comfortable. ...but ...a very large proportion of UK 'non domiciled' (International) students have gone to UK Independent schools - they are not classed as independently educated but as international students ...so ...does this mean it is better to be an international student in an independent school when it comes to access to elite universities as they are not subject to the same social mobility scrutiny as the UK Students in independent schools?

@Witwatersrand1970 Why is it important for you to be “comfortable”? All dc deserve a chance to get a place at the best universities. All dc with the predicted grades can apply to Durham and others. They might choose not to of course because people like you appear to demonise privately educated dc and international dc, most of whom would be privately educated (or rich to afford the fees). It’s a very divisive attitude. Take as you find is often a good policy and don’t let your prejudices cloud your judgement.

I stand corrected and apologise for my silliness

Your charts are for all students OP. You need to filter by UG degree only - the proportion of international postgrads is skewing your data.

@titchy thank you I'll change this

I have one applying to uni next autumn. We are not at all focussed on what percentage is international or private school or state school. Focus is on the right course for DD, employability long term and likely total debt (so we are very focussed on cost of accommodation and travel to come home).
So for us as Londoners, LSE would be a good prospect as presumably if there are not that many state school students, they will bend over backwards to take more, as long as they get the grades and pass the tests. And we could do commuting if we wanted to save. There are thousands of high achieving state school students in London potentially. As cost of living bites, more may stay here so who knows what stats will do in the next few years.
DD is in a selective state school currently with most kids focussed on Russell Group and straight A stars perhaps an A or two. Nobody cares about how many private school kids or international kids are going. They just want the best opportunities for jobs long term and mitigate their student debt.

@Witwatersrand1970 if you go to table 59 at www.hesa.ac.uk you'll see the figures for every uni in a nice downloadable csv with filters that as @titchy says can used be used to show undergrads or post grads or both; full time , part time etc and by most recent and past academic years as well.

You'll need to filter out manually the non university institututions that the HESA data captures if you want just universities, or a subset for a specific marketing group.

My state school DD got the grades, past the test and had an interview for Oxford - wasn’t successful but did get to Durham and she and her fellow state school housemate had the highest grades among her wide social group, most of whom wen to grammar or private school.

and if @foxglovetree is sitting down 😁you'd see in terms of full time undergrads in terms of international %s.

1. UCL 53.1%
2. LSE 47.3%an
3. Arts, London 47.3%
4. Imperial 43.5%
5. St. Andrews 42.9%
6. Buckingham 42.0%
7. KCL 36.2%
8. Coventry 34.9%
9. Edinburgh 31.7%
10. Uni of Manchester 31.7%

Go a but further and you'd find Hertfordshire at 26.6% just ahead of Warwick with 25.7%

Durham 24.6%

Just outside top 30 Cambridge with 19.9%, and just outside the top 40 Oxford with 17.5%

If you added them all up you'd get just past 15%

and find 50 unis with less than 10% international UGs.

And I am fairly sure also that you would find a good proportion of those ten listed universities with high % of UG international students in the top 100 world universities.

My DD went to Nottingham (state school education). None of her friends there were state-educated.

Wow well done OP, that’s really helpful x

It was only on Mumsnet that I found out I went to a RG uni!!

@greengreyblue Do you actually believe all these students compare marks and log where they all went to school? Doing that seems very odd and insecure to me and my DDs simply didn’t engage with anything like that. Simply didn’t care. It’s so self congratulatory to tell everyone you are better than another group of dc who probably didn’t know this was the ultimate one-upmanship game. Who knows whether comp, grammar or privately educated dc get a higher % of firsts within each group? And frankly, who cares? Except your dd and you.

Yes this happens, so much in fact that the chancellor of Edinburgh released a video encouraging students not to do it, to ask "what interests you and where are you hoping to go" rather than "what school did you attend and grades did you get"

I think someone linked it on a thread a while ago.Sorry I don't have a link!

Edinburgh didn’t comment on comparing marks on the course beteeen students of various backgrounds! The comment was more about ice breaking conversations and surely taking it much further wasn’t what the VC thought was happening? Who takes it beyond an opening remark and logs the marks different students get and what background they are from? Thats surely going too far? What would be the comment on MN if Eton boys did this? It’s a poor attitude.

OP, ultimately, unis can only deal with those who actually apply to them. What matters more than percentages of this sector or that sector are the offer rates for individual unis and courses. As long as these are consistent for applications across all education sectors, then nobody is at a disadvantage.

Cambridge did a lot of widening participation initiatives in recent years. They used to publish their results in the format of offer ratios to the 'independent sector, ''maintained sector,' 'other' and 'overseas.' It became very evident that most of the offers within the maintained sector were going to those at high performing grammars, other selective state schools or super-selective state schools like Brampton Manor. So now, you will see the stats for 'maintained sector' includes a breakdown for grammars, comprehensives, sixth form colleges snd FE colleges. Offer ratios for grammars and independent schools are quite similar. Offer ratios for comprehensives are slightly lower and FE colleges lower still.

They are trying to attract more applications from under-represented parts of the country, eg. the NE or Scotland. But they can only deal with those who actually apply.

I remember seeing some statistics that if all A stars at A level (in the U.K.), just under 30% are achieved in the independent sector. Top unis admissions should reflect this (and now do). I think at Cambridge now, 75% of students are from the state sector (albeit mostly gramnars, etc).

Once they get to uni nobody cares who went to whatever school anyway.

Just as an anecdote, DC (independent school educated) was at Cambridge and nearly all his friends were from state schools (gramnars) though they rarely discussed schools beyond the first week. Now at Imperial for a Masters and says it's full of international elite types from all over the world.

My dc was state grammar and had private school friends at uni

Presumably Queens has so many state school kids because NI has grammar schools.

Every “comprehensive” in my London borough that has a sixth form has selective sixth forms, some with more stringent academic requirements than some of the local private schools.

Those are very interesting charts. I knew LSE had a very high proportion of international students which makes sense given it's reputation and easiness to fly abroad from but didn't realise it took so few state students.

I am not sure it's true Economics at LSE is highest earning Economics course, though stats vary each year but on Discover Uni at 15 months it's Cambridge at £54k, then E&M at Oxford at £52k then LSE at £50k but all are very high. E&M DD is the only state one at her college, she is fine with that, some are from incredibly wealthy backgrounds.

Me too 😂

My kids RG London course was about 75% overseas students, some barely speaking English.