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How many people actually know the what the 'Russell Group' is?

As a non-brit who was once considering studying in the UK, I'm rather curious as to how many people in the UK itself have heard of the Russell Group. The American 'Ivy League' is extremely well known worldwide (not really comparable though since it's just a sports conference that is popular because the 8 institutions participating in it are all top-tier), but to be honest, I've never come across someone outside of the UK who's heard of the RG, and I personally hadn't heard of them before joining TSR. Which leads to my question, how well known are they within the UK?

I'm referring more to the general public and the average employer here, top firms and academics will obviously be familiar with it. Just trying to get a gauge of how well known they really are in the UK compared to the obsession TSR seems to have with them.
50/50 they know about it or not
Original post by justinawe
As a non-brit who was once considering studying in the UK, I'm rather curious as to how many people in the UK itself have heard of the Russell Group. The American 'Ivy League' is extremely well known worldwide (not really comparable though since it's just a sports conference that is popular because the 8 institutions participating in it are all top-tier), but to be honest, I've never come across someone outside of the UK who's heard of the RG, and I personally hadn't heard of them before joining TSR. Which leads to my question, how well known are they within the UK?

I'm referring more to the general public and the average employer here, top firms and academics will obviously be familiar with it. Just trying to get a gauge of how well known they really are in the UK compared to the obsession TSR seems to have with them.


The name has become more widely known because because the 2010-15 Education Secretary used to refer to it quite a lot.

The interesting thing is that exact membership is very poorly known so other similar quality universities that weren't members of the Russell Group were not prejudiced by his bias in favour of the Russell Group.

You might have expected say St Andrews or Bath to be very annoyed that this politician was going on and on about the Russell Group of which they were not members but it made no difference because the public assumed that Russell Group was a synonym for pre-1992 university. Other universities kept quiet because they enjoyed the Russell Group tag without paying the membership subscription. Only by complaining would people realise they weren't in the Russell Group.
On here you can't escape the words 'Russell Group'.
It's a pressure group set up to lobby for the interests of most of the research intensive universities.

However most people seem to regard it as a very lazy way to refer to the best universities in the country and that attending a RG university somehow carries extra prestige over a non-RG university.
I saw it on TSR so often that I looked it up; before that, I hadn't ever heard of the term.
I'd never heard of it until my teachers started going on about Russell group universities
I heard about it years ago. I think the minute you start looking into unis with good reputations in the UK you hear the term being used.
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17lina
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Same but I feel like the world is so Americanised if you know what I mean so that everything is so focused on America; when i look at the world university rankings its basically the us ivyleagues and uk oxbridge+russel groups that dominate the top rankings so feel like they are both really good unis just not well known as much as ivy leauges

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