"remus, you do know that exeter has closed several of its faculties due to finance problems and may even be looking at closure don't you?"
Ahhh im going to exeter, BlackHawk how do you know that??
Ok, in response to a lot of the earlier comments -
Firstly, You cannot remove the school off the ucas form as universities have to know whether the candidate is public/private in order to meet the governments targets. Also the background of a pupil is quite essential - if you get two candidates with the same grades but one comes from a school with really poor records of achievement and the other is from say, Eton - then you know which one is more worthy of a place.
However, going to a private school myself, i do feel that this line of - oh the education here is so much better is a bit of a generalisation. I know a lot of good state schools in my area which people have actually left my school to go to. And hence, you cannot just assume that a state school pupil is 'dissadvantaged' because in some cases, the gap between these two sectors is very slim.
Also, it is so easy to say - yes we get good grades because we pay. But that is not entirely accurate. We get drop outs just like all the other schools. the truth is, a lot of private school people do better because of the attitude they have rather than the teaching. Taking myself as an example, my parents have put me through private education since i was 8, and so i am going to work my ass off to make sure i put their money to good use.