Original post by TwilightKnight3 People I knew last year applied to Oxford [1] and Cambridge [2]. All 3 of them also applied to Durham.
By Christmas, they had all been rejected from Oxbridge and were awaiting a decision from Durham. Their attitude seemed to change overnight. One minute, they were praising Oxbridge as the best thing ever, so super shiny and fantabulous that nothing could ever compare; the next day, it's a ****hole that only posh kids get into and is massively overrated.
A year later, I'm still in contact with all of them, and when I asked how it compares to Oxbridge, their response hasn't changed "SO MUCH BETTER" etc. They've also changed into d-bags, but that's another story.
Now, here's the thing. Durham isn't a bad University at all. It's a great university. But it, along with universities like Imperial/UCL are 80% of the time under the name "Oxford" "Cambridge" on someones UCAS. They're backups in-case those people don't get into Oxbridge, whereas the other 20% apply to Durham, Imperial, UCL etc knowing that they are great Unis to begin with.
I hate hypocrites. If you applied to Oxbridge, you wanted to go there. There's a lot of self delusion on this forum that once you're rejected from Oxbridge, you never wanted to go there, it was bad anyway, etc. XXXX University is so much better...
I got rejected like a bitch. That doesn't change my opinion that they're fantastic universities. Once you get that rejection, you should really realise that it isn't the end of the world, and make the best of the opportunity you have, without deluding
yourself. I still have hopes that I will get to do some sort of Postgraduate study there.
That was a bit of a tangent, but it's been something that's been bugging me for a long time on TSR.