Oxbridge: one student explodes the myths

Students have less than a month to get in their applications for Oxford and Cambridge . The fact that the two universities, generally seen as the "top" places to study in the UK, have a different application deadline from other universities, just adds to the aura around them.

Costas Pitas is studying History and French at Balliol College, Oxford. As someone from a grammar school, and the first in his family to go to university, he says he didn't know what to expect when he applied. Because of this, he's keen to help others to, as he says, "explode the myths". In fact, he says that Oxbridge should be "at the top of every working class child's UCAS form."

Over to Costas....

"There are many misunderstandings surrounding Oxford and Cambridge. You don’t need to be a Lord, or the son or daughter of one, you don’t have to live in a gold-encrusted palace or have a double-barrelled name. In fact, in my view, Oxbridge should be at the top of every working class child’s UCAS form, and not at the bottom. It’s the best place to study if you're worried about finances and fancy the shortest term times of any universities. If you’re predicted the necessary grades, or even just short, here are some myth-busting facts to prove why you shouldn’t think twice about applying.

Myth one: the fees are more expensive

FALSE: For most people Oxbridge is actually the best value-for-money choice you could make. On tuition fees, 99 per cent of courses across the country at every uni will charge £3, 225 for this coming academic year. Oxford and Cambridge charge the same. When you consider that the pair continually top The Times Good University Guide, and are among the best-performing institutions in the world, it’s surely a bargain price for the best education money can buy.

Myth two: it’ll cost you more to study

FALSE:

Oxford and Cambridge have the best libraries of any universities in the country. The Bodleian in Oxford, for example, is a copyright library which means that it has the right to every book published in the UK. With central libraries, faculty libraries and college libraries, Oxbridge has got to be the place where the need to buy your own reading materials is at its minimum. Plus, many of the colleges and faculties offer book-buying grants to students.

Myth three: it’ll cost more to live

FALSE: Research conducted by the National Union of Students shows that students in London will face living expenses of  £8,375 per year, whilst those out of the capital save a cool £1,300 a year, down to £7,011. Furthermore, a combination of generous benefactors, rich alumni and a social guilty conscience means that Oxford and Cambridge offer the most generous financial support anywhere in the country. With a household income of up to £25,000, Cambridge will award a bursary of £3,250 per year, whilst Oxford will splash out the same each year plus a potential £875 in your first year to the poorest students. Any household income under £50,000 will entitle you to hundreds or thousands of pounds worth of non-repayable grant.

Myth four: all the students are snobby

FALSE: OK, of course you’ll find some people who believe God reports to them. However, that applies to all walks of life and my experience of Oxford has been entirely positive. Many people at my college come from schools such as Eton, which you might consider to be the crème de la crème of toff towers, but are anything but. In fact many worry that other students will have a whole truckload of preconceptions about them. Roughly 55 per cent of students at both universities come from state schools, so even if you consider snobby synonymous with independent schools that accusation doesn’t stand up either. My experience shows it to be untrue anyway. Ultimately, everyone’s in the same boat on day one of freshers’ week. It took me the week to find my friends, but the vast majority of people do fit in just fine.

Myth five: they’re all…boring 

FALSE: There does seem to be a concern that Oxbridge types are, to quote My Big Fat Greek Wedding, ‘toast. No honey No jam just toast, dry toast’. (I wish I could convey the thick Greek accent in text). A small minority may prefer the lecture theatre to the dance floor but in general that is far from the truth. The parties are some of the most extravagant you’ll find anywhere in the world. College balls are renowned for their grandeur and almost every society, of which there are dozens, will throw in a free chocolate fountain here or free drinks there, as a matter of course. Not that I’ve done this with friends, but the sheer amount of corporate sponsorship, means you can pull up to some amazing events, feign interest in corporate law and enjoy a boat party or drinks event with no charge.

Myth six: they’re all right-wingers...or left-wingers

FALSE:

Bizarrely, I’ve heard both stereotypes, which is probably the best proof that they’re wrong. Whether you’ve got a photo of Margaret Thatcher on your wall or in your furnace, Oxford is home to a wide range of political viewpoints. The major political parties have their own groups, the Oxford Union sustains debate, and gossip, uni-wide and the Student’s Union takes on welfare and pastoral issues. Each college’s students have their own committee and, in all, if you’re a lefty or a righty, there’s wide scope to get involved. Equally, if you decide that your free time is for fun and games and not more brain power, then you can easily avoid the whole lot of them!

With the most generous bursaries, the best value-for-money tuition fees and great parties, students shouldn’t be on the look out for largely unfounded stereotypes on why not to apply. Instead they should be fighting to print off the application form."

Read School Gate: 

Which is better, Oxford or Cambridge?

Is Oxbridge really starting to discriminate against pupils from private schools?

Do Cambridge students have rich parents?

Would you rather be a poem or a novel? Oxbridge interview questions and how to answer them...

Is studying at Oxford and Cambridge more expensive than other universities?

Comments

[Rae]

With all due respect to Costas, I assume that as a grammar school student he is still from a relatively well-off background (there are very few grammar schools in working-class areas, after all). Would it be possible to find someone to provide a genuinely working-class perspective, instead of pretending (as Oxbridge do) that grammar and comprehensive schools are the same? There are several students at my school who aren't planning on applying to Oxbridge, despite having the ability, not because of finances but because they don't feel they 'fit in', and no amount of 'myth-busting' from someone they still feel is posher than they are will help with that.

[Teapot]

Rae: I'm a bit less middle class - went to the local comp (which was pretty average in terms of results) and parents on income support etc. Neither of my parents went to university, and I didn't know anyone who had gone to uni until I was 17. On the other hand we did have lots of books in the house and watch the BBC, so we were probably closet middle class....

I'm a scientist now, and have been to various other universities since Oxford. I found there were a lot more 'toffs' at other 'top 10' universities. At Oxbridge even the richest kids have to be bright, so everyone is there on merit, and there is not so much snobbery. At my current 'top 10' uni there seems to be an overdose of rich kids who scraped two C's and arrive at freshers week with a brand new car and an attitude problem.

I would echo Costas' point about the subsidies. The college I went to had all rooms in hall at the same (relatively low) price, so everyone was together rather than the richer kids being in a posher block.

The shorter terms do mean less time to party, but they also mean you get home first and can nab the best holiday jobs.

On the other hand there are pockets of poshness that you can avoid. There's a big difference between colleges, so to avoid cries of 'Daddy used to have this room' I'd advise a newer college, or one that used to be all girls. You get the same education, just a bit less history. There was a similar difference between subjects - most of my friends were scientists or linguists (mostly from state schools), and there seemed to be a lot more rich kids doing classics or history.

Hope this helps. Oxbridge has posh parts, but there are ways to fit in and it isn't any worse than some other places. Please encourage your students to apply, and remember that it is mostly a lottery, so don't get upset if they don't win a place.

Oh, also the tutors at the interview are looking for potential not knowledge (or should be). I got loads of questions wrong, but got through because when I talked with them I could see where my mistake was and wasn't too proud to correct it.

[Helene]

This is a quibble about semantics, not about Oxbridge: why is it that university applicants are now termed children, surely for the first time in history, and secondary school pupils are called students? Is there no resistance to this?

[Harriet]

It is extremely disheartening to see this student characterise the Students' union as being purely for pastoral issues and the Oxford union as the political body. The students' union will be dealing with highly political, national issues such as tuition fees, whilst if you're lucky the Oxford union might fix you a G&T.

[edmond]

I think Oxford is a good university to attend. Those who graduate do rather well.

[Diana]

Rae - get some real students in from Oxbridge to talk to your students. They do need to know that living in a door onto pavement terraced house, going to an inner city comprehensive and growing up in a single parent family does not stop you being the student that Oxbridge want. I'm describing a real live example there - he did have the confidence to apply and now knows that if he faces financial difficulty during his course, Cambridge will ensure he doesn't have to leave.

[Dave]

I went to a comprehensive which has since shut down, it was in the bottom 1%. Also worked on building sites. There are habits you have to get out of such as swearing but otherwise most people were just like me. Bristol and Exeter felt more stuffy. My mate at Robinson Cambridge said he felt more relaxed there. But at St John's, the history and architecture are all part of the experience. Lived in halls all 4 years. It was so beautiful, I could just stand and stare like a cow some days! They flog you with workload though.

[Mark]

I'm sorry, but myth 5 is true. I can tell you from DIRECT experience.

[Real Perspective]

This is all well and good but the reality is that my firm (leading global professional services firm) have found Oxon grads to be less able and less equipped to perform well in the workplace that other grads from "lesser" universities. FACT.

If you want to be a banker, then fine I suppose the Oxon degree will serve you well - we all know it takes little more than the ability to breathe to be a banker.

[Lucy]

Haha REAL PERSPECTIVE. Clearly bitter and twisted about not being good enough to get into Oxbridge. I'd be very interested to know which 'leading global professional services firm' would find Oxbridge (not Oxon - that means from Oxford, sweetheart) graduates less able than the rest. Anyone telling you that is kidding themself.

[Malcolm McLean]

I went to Oxford from an inner city comprehensive in the 1980s, and my father was unemployed.
I did have to deal with arrogant or boorish public school types, and with a sort of gentle rejection from the middle classes (this was far worse). However one's social life is unlikely to be perfect, whatever university one attends, and I certainly had friends.

Choice of college is important, but it is rather silly to go to a downmarket one for that reason alone. Research the field and choose one with a tutor in your subject who has published material that you are interested in. This person will probably teach you on a one-to-one or one-to-two basis for the next three years, so if you are interested in the same things, it should be a very productive time for you both. It will also do you no harm at interview.

[Another mum]

Rae

That's one BIG assumption ... there are still grammar schools in central Birmingham, central Reading, Lancaster ...

[Another mum]

Arthur Van der Lae

There are famously lies, damn lies and statistics.

The league tables present an average, based on the intake in that particular year. It would therefore be unusual for a highly selective school to do worse than a non-selective school in a poor area, where the majority of children do not speak English at home or where the parents are themselves illiterate - although in such schools there will still be any number of "success stories".

If you want your child to go to a higly selective school, then look at the cream at the top of the league tables. If you want your child to go to the local state school, you should ask the Head to break down the figures into more meaningful statistics, to try and see where your child would fit in: how many children are there with "special needs" (who bring down the average as they are all included)? Are children divided into ability groups ("setted") for different subjects and if so when? What were the average results of whatever "set" you think your child might be in? and so on.

IMO the best way for your child to do well is for you to be encouraging from an early age - it's YOUR responsibility to help with reading / spellings / times tables etc when they are very young, and for him/her to be in with a group of friends at school amongst whom it is "cool" to work hard.

Good luck!

[Tom]

If you're clever enough to get into Oxford, you're clever enough to do the minuscule amount of research required to discover none of the "myths" are true.

[Hannah]

I go to Oxford, but live in Edinburgh during the holidays. In my experience, some of the students from Edinburgh that I have encountered at home at times fulfill some of the worst caricatures of posh snobs, while most of the students that I know at Oxford are normal comprehensive and grammar school educated people with a love of their subject and a good sense of fun.

[Comp Kid]

Rae, I'm from a 'proper working class' background and went to a comp. Did I blend in at my (mega posh) Oxbridge college? No, I stood out like a sore thumb and loved every minute of it.

My interviewer asked me if I had fears about fitting in and I told him what you should tell the kids in your class: that you choose your friends on who and not what they are. I now have a loyal, eclectic group of friends for life, and we constantly support and challenge each other's perspectives.

I'm not saying everyone was nice, some were horribly snobby. But as with school, you just ignore the w**k**s in the playground.

The kids in your class shouldn't let their fears stand in the way of what will be an incredible, life altering experience.

But as a school, you should be on the phone to Oxbridge's Access offices asking them to send someone out from a normal background to destroy the myths and to point out how much cash there is in the Oxbridge coffers for 'normal folk' ;)

[ex- state school, now a city type]

Rae

I went to a state school in Blackburn, Lancashire and I went to the same college as Costas at Oxford.

There were some people there who were snobby or just plain odd, but I have to say the most diffcult thing was the work. Oxford is a big change from being spoon fed everything I needed to pass an exam at school and at a-level.

I found preconceptions of people back home the worst - as soon as they knew which uni I was at people would instantly assume I was some snobby public school type - despite my accent and even when they had been happily chatting to me for some time before the subject of my uni came up. In the end, I didn't tell people where I went and just said I was at "some Southern university".

Now I work in the city doing a job I love and which I would never have got had I not gone to Oxford.

[Michael]

I worry about the state of Oxbridge - that was one of the worst written articles i've seen in a long time.

[Rachel]

I look forward to reading a companion piece: Ex-Poly - One (posh) Student Explodes the Myths.

No, you wouldn't run that, would you? If it's not Oxbridge or some other elite institution you are not really interested.

[Rae]

Thankyou so much everyone, I'll definitely be trying even harder to persuade them now!

[Tony]

It is so refreshing to see so many positive remarks about Oxbridge after the hatchet job undertaken by Brown & Co. If you are lucky enough to win a place, you'll never regret it and whether you will 'fit in' is mainly up to you - there's room for all types.

[The_Lonely_Goatherd]

To Rae, who says: "With all due respect to Costas, I assume that as a grammar school student he is still from a relatively well-off background (there are very few grammar schools in working-class areas, after all). Would it be possible to find someone to provide a genuinely working-class perspective, instead of pretending (as Oxbridge do) that grammar and comprehensive schools are the same?"

I am a working-class student at Oxford and back Costas' comments.

[richard]

I went to Oxford, loved it and it served me very well.

What Costas leaves out is that Oxford (like Cambridge) is a vibrant melting-pot of bright, energetic people with diverse interests. No other unis come close to providing the extra-curricular activities that are enjoyed by Oxbridge students.

"Posh" kid rowing at #3 and "comprehensive" kid rowing at #4 for 3 years will surely break down any barriers that initially may exist.

Oxbridge students tend to become known as the "rowing" "rugby" "thesp" or "music" group rather than the "privately-educated" group.

If you steer clear of that experience in favour of, frankly, lesser universities because of class-based misconceptions, then you are doing more to pigeon-hole yourself than Oxford ever can.

[Pillspills]

I was so unhappy at Cambridge. Sure, the degree was interesting and I still have some good friends from those days. But, boy, was it a boring fuddy-duddy city (for an 18 year old in 1990), there was no talent and all the women were over-achieving anorexics. London is much more fun.

[Helen]

I can assure readers that there are comprehensives which have a much more middle-class intake than some grammar schools. Compare Fleet in Hampshire with some of the grammar schools in Kent for example. Or Torquay in Devon, where there are deprived areas. So no, grammar schools and comprehensives are not the same, but I don't think that was what was meant by the comment.

[monica]

Rachel sweetie would you like some salt and vinegar for that chip on your shoulder??!
I didn't go to Oxbridge either, but really hun this is The Times, what did you expect?!!

[Anon]

It's so disappointing to hear people still asking about 'snobby posh kids' and worrying about whether or not someone from a comprehensive school background would fit in. I've attended a public school and am in the process of applying to universities (including Oxford) and, although there are obviously those who give public school students a bad name, in general nobody could care less where you came from - in fact it's a nice breath of fresh air to meet people from slightly more diverse areas. If anything, it's 'positive' discrimination against those from public schools which seems to have become more prevelent in recent years.

[Jenni Wren]

In my experience it's not just Oxford and Cambridge that have a lot of wealthy students. I went to Royal Holloway in Surrey, which is, to be honest, a middle-achieving kind of institution. Although it wasn't the rah infested throwback of the TV series Trinity (which was filmed there), there were a lot of kids obviously from wealthy backgrounds, whose parents owned half of Berkshire or something. This wouldn't have been a problem, but they did tend to go around in little groups and not socialise much with everyone else. I think in the Oxbridge institutions there is a distinct advantage, because you are organised by college, and socialise with people in your college, so boundaries break down more easily than if everyone is left to themselves.

That said, I know a few people who did become incredibly boring while at Cambridge. For three years, every conversation was about what they'd done there. Thankfully that rubbed off when they were released back into the real world of 9-5ers.

[Phoebe]

I attended the Oxford Uni open day last week and aswell as going to the English faculty for a mini-lecture, I had a look round some of the colleges (including Baliol-renowned by some for being the preserve of the hoorah Henrys)where I spoke to some students, and I can honestly say that I did not come across anyone who wasn't intelligent/dynamic/interesting.

None of the students I spoke to were presuming or overtly etonian in the slightest, but helpful and modest.

I attend a state school in the middle of nowhere (I am planning to apply to Oxford to study English next year) and I'd say that inverted snobbery is a huge issue when it comes to things like this.

Sure I cam across a few plummy voices here and there but what would England be without a little diversity (and incessant moaning)?

[Malcolm McLean]

Pillspills: Oxford is much more fun.

[Malcolm McLean]

I look forward to reading a companion piece: Ex-Poly - One (posh) Student Explodes the Myths.

No, you wouldn't run that, would you? If it's not Oxbridge or some other elite institution you are not really interested.

Why not write it? Or get a pash friend at an ex-Poly to write it. If the editor is a sport, he'll print it.