I envy Oxford students so much!

Scroll to see replies

Reply 20

im so academic

Original post by Abbadon27

People who go to Oxbridge are by no means special.

Define "special", as, generally speaking, Oxbridge students are the crème de la crème.

Reply 21

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Original post by *pitseleh*

Hard-wired into the what, now? Speak for yourself - I know heaps of middle-class people who didn't give a **** about Oxford or Cambridge, who were very happy going to other universities (top-notch or otherwise) and lots of whom have been very successful as a result.

As for "intimidatingly bright peers"... the only people I've met in my three years here who were "intimidatingly" bright have been some (not all) of my tutors. Most of the students are intellectually sharp, sure, but not "intimidatingly" so. And most tend to find the whole "oh my God you must be so clever to go to Oxford" thing a little bit weird, in my experience.

You should be happy that you got to go to what sounds like it was a very good university, judging by your "80-90%" statistic, and forget about Oxford.

Alas, I have repped too many people today :frown:

Quoted for emphasis, as it makes very good points :yes:

Reply 22

street.lovin'

Original post by im so academic

Define "special", as, generally speaking, Oxbridge students are the crème de la crème.

They are no better than any of us. Of course they are intelligent, but intelligence =/= being special.
Well, if they have another leg coming out off their bum, then I would say they are special - or rather strange.
They are just extremely clever, that is all.

PS* To be honest, I live in Cambridge and I am working at a restaurant where majority of customers are the cambridge students, I even got to know many of them, I am yet to see a person that can be classed as 'special'.

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 23

Mick Travis

Original post by street.lovin'

They are no better than any of us. Of course they are intelligence, but intelligence =/= being special.
Well, if they have another leg coming out off their bum, then I would say they are special - or rather strange.
They are just extremely clever, that is all.

PS* To be honest, I live in Cambridge and I am working at a restaurant where majority of customers are the cambridge students, I even got to know many of them, I am yet to see a person that can be classed as 'special'.

Well I have heard stories that Oxbridge are in decline, that the students nowadays are pretty shallow. Perhaps the grass isn't always greener.....

Reply 24

street.lovin'

Original post by Mick Travis

Well I have heard stories that Oxbridge are in decline, that the students nowadays are pretty shallow. Perhaps the grass isn't always greener.....

I dont know if that's true. I hope it is not because personally they are ones of the best place to study in the world. I would say those people who applied to Oxbridge for the sake of the name and reputation are the ones that are shallow. Not all of them are like that, but as far I know, there are quite a few. They are very clever though, I wouldn't deny.

Reply 25

*pitseleh*

Original post by The_Lonely_Goatherd

Alas, I have repped too many people today :frown:

Quoted for emphasis, as it makes very good points :yes:

Heh, thanks. :biggrin:

Just went to rep you, but alas I have also repped too many people today! Curses.

Reply 26

Mask Of Sanity

There's always postgraduate.

Reply 27

plastercaster

Just popping in to feel smug.

:wavey:

Reply 28

SteveCrain

Original post by im so academic

How could you not have heard about Cambridge?

Because knowing about Cambridge was never, and is still not, imperative. I rarely read newspapers, watch the news, and the first time I heard of it was when my sister applied there.
In short, I don't care about it.

Reply 29

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Original post by Mick Travis

Well I have heard stories that Oxbridge are in decline, that the students nowadays are pretty shallow. Perhaps the grass isn't always greener.....

Well if that is the case, no need to envy us then :biggrin:

Reply 30

im so academic

Original post by street.lovin'

Depends what you mean by "special", but I presume that the majority of Cambridge students are intelligent at the very least.

Reply 31

SteveCrain

Original post by kerily

Really?

I hadn't heard of UCL until about a year ago and I didn't know that ICL was really good until about a year ago. But it's kind of hard to read a paper/turn on the news on results day/etc without hearing that Oxford and Cambridge are 'good'. Out of interest, how did you manage not to have heard of Cambridge?

I don't tend to read about other people unless it in some way benefits me. I think it's abit naive to assume Cambridge is known universally by everyone who takes an interest in the news.

Reply 32

username607202

Watch Junior Doctors on BBC3 and you'll realise that going to Oxbridge doesn't count for s***. :smile:

The worst doctor on the show by far, is the chick who went to Oxbridge.

Reply 33

AP1989

Just go to Oxford Brookes instead.

Reply 34

bluesky42

Original post by im so academic

Depends what you mean by "special", but I presume that the majority of Cambridge students are intelligent at the very least.

Loads of people are intelligent. It's hardly special.

Christ, get over it.

Must Oxbridge students are hard working, whilst some are intelligent. :smile:

There is a difference being smart and intelligent.

Reply 37

Picnic1

Mick, you have bought in to the fantasy of what Oxford is supposed to be like. Have you even visited it? You don't see C S Lewis and Tolkien sipping ale in a smoke filled pub you know. And you see mostly nondescript students - they don't try hard to look nice during the day. They probably feel that they don't need to - their potential partners are Oxford students. They think that they have it made. They mostly lack even that loosely entertaining sense of 'rahness' that might make going to those universities like Durham a little bit interesting.

And the buildings... photos make Oxford look like it is dominated by honey coloured, ivy crept colleges. But Oxford doesn't actually feel like that at all. Most of the colleges have a very similar appearance to them which makes it a duller experience than visiting Cambridge colleges. Basically, a typical Oxford college looks like a blueprint for every redbrick university that came along perhaps centuries later - except for the Bodelian library and the Hertford Bridge which looks like some badly fitting pastiche of Vienna. (By comparison, a typical Cambridge college might look like a castle, stately home or cathedral with some exceptional exterior detail). To be fair, Oxford may have some good INTERIOR detail in places. But one of ist 'highlights is Christ Church Meadow. visit it- it's a park. No, Lewis Carroll isn't holding a Mad Hatter's Tea Party (although there are plenty of dull middle class people frequenting the Lewis Carroll shop). It's just a park. The stone that Oxford colleges are made from and the busier environment (they are mostly on non pedestrianised roads) results in some colleges having crumbled in places.

Basically the students at Oxford seem are probably just slightly more of a workshorse than other people, potentially (but not always) at the expense of a personality. Personally, I would find their quiet reticance (which I am capable of but rely on people to draw me out) to be depressing and the city itself to be as well. I'm someone who'd want to strike up a conversation about the merits of The Doors over The Beatles and I think that it could be like looking for a needle in a haystack- particularly when the said university wouldn't be interested in studying popular music as an art in its own right - and I would unfairly be looked upon as a working class person with ideas above their station unless I fit in to the cliques and academic cliches that being an 'Oxbridge mind' requires.

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 38

SophiaKeuning

Original post by Mick Travis

Sorry, but I do. Maybe I wasn't clever enough to get in. Or maybe I just didn't work hard enough. However I would love to have gone to Oxford rather than to some mediocre institution. Yes, I know by mediocre I'm referring to a university that 80-90% of people aren't able to go to, but so what? It isn't the best. Oxford is for the elite and I wasn't there.

It's hard-wired into British culture - particularly amongst the middle classes - that only Oxbridge matters - other Universities are nothing special. That's not really an intellectual point (the British aren't that keen on brains) it's more about the beauty, history and cultivation that Oxford is supposed to possess. It's also about our perfectionism, we are quite hard on ourselves. Anything less than the best(?) is a bit pointless.

I reckon I would have been happy at Oxford, although the workload and some intimidatingly bright peers might have tested me to the limit. I'm easily infuriated by the very cerebral. Still at the time I wanted to go to some big city and have a crazy party for three years. A bit embarrassing now I think about it and a waste of three years. But you live and learn I guess.