What's honestly so good about Oxbridge?

Yes. Don't blame the university, blame the course

It doesn't matter that much for medicine anyway, as long as you're at another top uni

Don't go to Oxbridge for the money. You should go three because you love learning your subject and want to study it in an environment that gives you great teaching hours opportunity to learn alongside other talented people. Oxbridge itself isn't automatically proffered by employers compared to the other top universities (LSE, UCL, Imperial etc...) and you will be chosen based on your extracurricular achievements and your work experience, not because of the Oxbridge brand.

I would enjoy the subject, yes.

But for what I want to go into, (Law) Oxbridge really is a huge advantage. The figures speak for themselves.

It may be true that for other subjects, having gone to Oxbridge may not be such a huge advantage, but for Law, it certainly is.

I just don't understand what job people expect to do with history/arts degrees...

Yeah definitely. I mean, unless you're very wealthy and have great links with people to get jobs, it looks a bit blurry to me

The people you meet. Not the arrogant types but the interesting ones. You'll meet people like this any where though, but I think the chances are higher in certain places.

One third of all practising barristers graduated from Oxbridge.

Because they're more prestigious than any other universities in Britain. Other universities just don't instantly impress family and friends like Oxbridge. Also, a lot of people want to part of a university that has such a rich history of sending students to the highest positions in society- numerous Prime Minsters and people in powerful positions have studied at Oxbridge- I'd even say that studying at Oxbridge gives you a higher chance of landing these political positions (especially PPE at Oxford). Also, Oxbridge has better teaching than any other university and people would want the best for their money. In addition to this, the experience of studying at Oxbridge is completely different from other universities because of the unusual traditions- this creates a sense of uniqueness that is not matched by any other university.

Well, there are several reasons people might choose Oxbridge:

- Money: I definitely remember reading an article recently about graduate salaries and Oxbridge was right up there

- Prestige/ general bragging rights: some people just like showing off that they had the grades/ luck to get into such a prestigious uni

- Teaching quality: we generally have a lot of contact hours and very small group supervisions/ tutorials, something other unis don't offer

- Surroundings: most colleges or departments are in old, famous buildings, both cities are very historical and English places, they are both very nice cities to live in

- Extracurriculars: OK, it's generally known that the nightlife is terrible, but the range and accessibility of clubs and societies for students to get involved in is unbelievable. Every college has their own version of important societies (sports teams, subject groups, etc) which complete novices can join, plus there are a crazily huge range of university wide societies, some of them very famous such as the Union (debating society) and Footlights (comedy).

- Pressure: schools/ parents undeniably put a fair amount of pressure on some top achieving students to go to Oxbridge, probably most motivated by prestige

My sisters friend who went to study history at Oxford still hasn't found a job since graduation last November

If that were true then why not just move to Oxbridge and mingle in the pub with future nobel prize winning students?

There's like 4 decent history person jobs in the entire country fam, of course they haven't.

Good lord. Most people with academic degrees don't get jobs in their fields... That's Maths, Physics, History, English, Law (yes, only like a 1/5 to a third of law degree holders end up with a training contract), Anthropology, Chemistry, Biology etc. Pretty poor argument to say 'there's like 4 decent history person jobs'.

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