Places which people claim are good or elite but are hardly prestigious beyond UK shores and are nowhere near the level of Oxbridge or the big 5.
They're pretentious and exist just massage the ego of so-called "Oxbridge Rejects". I detest that title because it somehow suggests those students were good enough to gain admission to Oxbridge but the reality is they weren't, they never were. They were simply "Oxbridge Applicants". Many people can be Oxbridge rejects.
But yeah such universities which seem to have inflated their own self-worth but let's be honest, nobody considers them prestigious or selective or exclusive or as a breeding ground for future leaders in their field:
- St Andrew's
- Manchester
- Exeter
- Durham
- York
- Leeds
- Sheffield
- Birmingham
- Newcastle
- Southampton
- Sussex
- Bath
- Loughborough
- Surrey
All incredibly overrated moronic institutions which anyone with half a brain cell i.e. AAB-ABB could gain entry to. Not exactly an exclusive society that lives and breathes academia, steeped in history or inspirational for the next batch of corporate, academic, political, scientific leaders.
Apart from Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, LSE, Imperial, King's College London, and possibly Edinburgh, Bristol and Nottingham (and the odd specialist college or institution like LSHTM), the rest are a bit rubbish aren't they?