[T-o dore]

(Original post by Jacob :))
Is Cambridge elitist? Is there any sort of prejudice to state school pupils?
Is it full of 'toffs'? Or people who 'are spending the weekend on daddy's boat'?
I don't mean to offend anyone just want to know what it's like.

Cambridge is absolutely not prejudice to state schoolers. In fact, Cambridge tries to counter-act the perceived bias by spending lots and lots of money on schemes to get more state schoolers to apply. When state school people DO apply, moreover, the scores of their exam results are increased if their school was especially low-achieving.

It is not full of toffs, although there are some here (as there are in most universities - particularly the 'top' universities and others, such as the royal agricultural college, and a few famous music/drama/art colleges). People tend, at the very least, to be self-aware about fitting any expected character-types. The most toff i've seen is in a post-ironic kind of way.

[gagaslilmonsteruk]

Not at all. I think that it's just a stereotype of Cambridge students which isn't true. I know people studying there now that definetely are not elitist in any way. If anything it's a very friendly city, but not somewhere I would have wanted to end up - just wasn't my cup of tea.

[zara55]

(Original post by T-o dore)
Cambridge is absolutely not prejudice to state schoolers. In fact, Cambridge tries to counter-act the perceived bias by spending lots and lots of money on schemes to get more state schoolers to apply. When state school people DO apply, moreover, the scores of their exam results are increased if their school was especially low-achieving.

It is not full of toffs, although there are some here (as there are in most universities - particularly the 'top' universities and others, such as the royal agricultural college, and a few famous music/drama/art colleges). People tend, at the very least, to be self-aware about fitting any expected character-types. The most toff i've seen is in a post-ironic kind of way.

Would you agree though that there are a preponderance of "posh Southern" accents at Cambridge? I think I noticed that on a visit and at the interview. Maybe not hugely more than at other top universities, but a little more. Depends what you mean by "toff" - one person's toff is another persons normal.

[wibletg]

(Original post by zara55)
Would you agree though that there are a preponderance of "posh Southern" accents at Cambridge? I think I noticed that on a visit and at the interview. Maybe not hugely more than at other top universities, but a little more. Depends what you mean by "toff" - one person's toff is another persons normal.

I'll be honest, on my interview there was quite a wide range of people there.

Sure, there were some people who'd obviously attended a private school but there were a few of people who'd gone to a state comp/college. There was a couple of French people, a German and a Spaniard. It seemed pretty diverse.

[ben-smith]

(Original post by wibletg)
I'll be honest, on my interview there was quite a wide range of people there.

Sure, there were some people who'd obviously attended a private school but there were a few of people who'd gone to a state comp/college. There was a couple of French people, a German and a Spaniard. It seemed pretty diverse.

Yeah, I had the same experience. We had people from Eton and people like myself from State comps. There were also people from all over the world.
(oh yeah, and some mathematicians who were obviously in a class of their own)

[milienhaus]

(Original post by zara55)
Would you agree though that there are a preponderance of "posh Southern" accents at Cambridge? I think I noticed that on a visit and at the interview. Maybe not hugely more than at other top universities, but a little more. Depends what you mean by "toff" - one person's toff is another persons normal.

Most people at university together seem to let their accents merge into a standard southern-ish drawl with slang from all over the place by the end of term. Not just Cambridge, everywhere.

[wibletg]

(Original post by ben-smith)
Yeah, I had the same experience. We had people from Eton and people like myself from State comps. There were also people from all over the world.
(oh yeah, and some mathematicians who were obviously in a class of their own)

I didn't run into any mathmos
Just engineers and natscis.

(Original post by milienhaus)
Most people at university together seem to let their accents merge into a standard southern-ish drawl with slang from all over the place by the end of term. Not just Cambridge, everywhere.

I agree with this - a friends' sister I know lost her mackem accent when she went down to Cambridge.

[zara55]

(Original post by milienhaus)
Most people at university together seem to let their accents merge into a standard southern-ish drawl with slang from all over the place by the end of term. Not just Cambridge, everywhere.

I know what you are thinking of, but I thought a good % of Cambridge students sounded more posh and affected that the neo-BBC-Southern-drawly-RP to which you refer. It's all in the ear.

[The Polymath]

(Original post by Jacob :))
Is Cambridge elitist? Is there any sort of prejudice to state school pupils?
Is it full of 'toffs'? Or people who 'are spending the weekend on daddy's boat'?
I don't mean to offend anyone just want to know what it's like.

Of course they're elitist. They take the best.

Oxbridge used to be very high and mighty and ignore state school pupils. In fact one of our school's alumni was asked what school he went to, and the interviewer asked "well, that *is* a Public school, right?" and he replied "yes, anyone can go."
But this has gradually faded out over the last fifty years or so, and now with regard to state school pupils, they do take them. My guess is that in twenty years' time, the school you went to will not in itself (dis)advantage you *at all*, other than in the way I will describe:

The problem with the statistics is that private schools are just.. better. Let's say intelligence is ranked 1-100. State schools produce, say, 100 people of > 90 intelligence. Private schools will produce loads, probably about 1000 in comparison.

Cambridge decide to filter and take those above 90 intelligence, and so they take 1000 private school kids, and 100 state school kids. It's not that they're filtering by school, just that they're taking bright kids.

The idea of nurturing says that going to private schools or having tuition from a young age *can* actually make you more intelligent.

Private schools give you more attention, more facilities, often better teachers, they get you interested, and as a result they produce better students. State school pupils *are* disadvantaged in going to Cambridge - not because of the school, but because of the impact the school has had on them.

If the school you went to was hidden from Cambridge, there would still be a huge proportion of private school pupils.

[wibletg]

(Original post by Junaid96)
If the school you went to was hidden from Cambridge, there would still be a huge proportion of private school pupils.

The proportion of private school pupils would actually increase due to the way that they positively discriminate towards state school pupils - if the school was hidden they wouldn't be able to do this!

[T-o dore]

(Original post by zara55)
Would you agree though that there are a preponderance of "posh Southern" accents at Cambridge? I think I noticed that on a visit and at the interview. Maybe not hugely more than at other top universities, but a little more. Depends what you mean by "toff" - one person's toff is another persons normal.

Exactly. What is a toff? And why does it matter?

[Fat-Love]

I'm speaking from my year here as someone from a less privileged background.

I imagine that if you checked the background of the people who study here around half of them are well off and often went to good schools (though I suppose this is unsurprising and easily explained away). In terms of the attitude of the people however, they are generally nice people and I like it here. Made some great friends.

EDIT: I don't think I've really met a proper full on toff. It's more likely you'll see students pretending to be one to take the mickey out of trinity/st johns (not that trinity and st johns is full toffs, but every university has its 'target' group for banter).

[The Polymath]

(Original post by zara55)
Would you agree though that there are a preponderance of "posh Southern" accents at Cambridge? I think I noticed that on a visit and at the interview. Maybe not hugely more than at other top universities, but a little more. Depends what you mean by "toff" - one person's toff is another persons normal.

Of course - the south has more of the top private schools. Places like Eton and Oxford are down south. Bradford is not known for its academics

[zara55]

(Original post by Fat-Love)
I'm speaking from my year here as someone from a less privileged background.

I imagine that if you checked the background of the people who study here around half of them are well off and often went to good schools (though I suppose this is unsurprising and easily explained away). In terms of the attitude of the people however, they are generally nice people and I like it here. Made some great friends.

EDIT: I don't think I've really met a proper full on toff. It's more likely you'll see students pretending to be one to take the mickey out of trinity/st johns (not that trinity and st johns is full toffs, but every university has its 'target' group for banter).

I always get the impression that there's a sort of not particularly precise dividing line between the "regular middle class" student, a lot of whom went to state schools (and some to private schools) who have kind of "middle-middle" accents - they can be found in large numbers at places like Birmingham, Manchester, Warwick - and "decidedly upper-middles", with much posher accents, who mainly went to a good private school and occur in larger numbers at Oxbridge, Exeter, Durham, Bristol, Edinburgh (wave!) and UCL/Kings/RHC, etc. The latter do have a different accent.

[Rainingshame]

(Original post by Spaz Man)
Of course not. Oxbridge in general are actually the most open of all the Russell Group because they are scrutinised so much. Prejudice towards them will remain though.

I noticed that warwick and inperial are much more elitist but because they're not oxbridge they get away scott free

[Rainingshame]

(Original post by martin jol)
translated - she didn't laugh at you because of the degree, but she laughed at you cause of the degree.

She laughed at the 2:2 part not the "Brunel" part. If it was a 1st i'm sure she would have taken the conversation further.

[Alex3591]

The majority of people on this site are fairly middle class and well off so you will no doubt get the same answers and opinions.

[Rainingshame]

(Original post by wibletg)
To be honest, this doesn't reflect badly on Cambridge or Oxford, more on the state education system

I was never really encouraged to apply there, and the state secondary comprehensive I went to spent more time concentrating on getting people from D grades to C grades for the league tables, rather than pushing people on A's, B's and C's to achieve higher. It's a similar story at the sixth form too.

My school needs to do the same, they get less funding from getting a child who was predicted 4A's to 4A*s than they do from a child who's predicted 2Cs and 2Ds 4Cs. There's something wrong with that.

[wibletg]

(Original post by Rainingshame)
My school needs to do the same, they get less funding from getting a child who was predicted 4A's to 4A*s than they do from a child who's predicted 2Cs and 2Ds 4Cs. There's something wrong with that.

Yeah, unfortunately that's the system that we have in place in the UK - pushing for mediocrity. Even worse, no-one seems to want to do anything about it.

[Rainingshame]

(Original post by wibletg)
Yeah, unfortunately that's the system that we have in place in the UK - pushing for mediocrity. Even worse, no-one seems to want to do anything about it.

I think the worst thing is no one important seems to realise it's there.