How important is it to graduate Oxbridge if you're British and want literary lifestyle?

How important is it to graduate Oxbridge if you're British and want literary lifestyle?

Reminder: Orwell never went to college.

Like you?

But he did go to Eton.

I literally can't express how much better my life has been since I attended Oxford. I went to a state school and gradually became the stereotypical moody, withdrawn sensitive type who both despises the quality of his immediate culture and feels a weird pride for having been raised in a sort of anti-intellectual and brutal environment. I was all set to take my Russell Group humanities BA and spend my life working as an anonymous, insecure wageslave forever thankful of being offered a job and forever too insecure to pursue my creative ambitions. The chip on my shoulder had become something of a wedge, and I felt too out of place regardless of my environment, too resentful and bitter to even attempt to make it in the artistic world. Then I finally applied for Oxford and got in to study an English MA, with reassurance that should I work hard enough a career in academia or within one of Oxford's affiliated companies would be almost guaranteed. I turned up as apprehensive as usual, and the first few days were spent regretting my decision and desperately feigning a cultured personality. But then I realized that the people there were just interesting and that the snobbery and exclusivity I had anticipated was just a myth borne out of my working class upbringing. I've since graduated, having spend the year dining in grand halls with groups of interesting people, dating several girls (one of whom, a petite Russian whose family traces back to the aristocracy, is now my fiancee). I work four days a week at a publishing company and earn £38k a year. I regularly meet up with friends from my college and visit Oxford for nights out and for meetings with my professors. The Martin Eden-esque novel I have been writing for two years has been selected for publication at a major British publishing house and, honestly, I could not have imagined a few years ago how great life could be. I come on Veeky Forums and see how pathetic you all are and just shake my head and chuckle. If I saw you guys on the street I would of course throw you a penny or discuss Bukowski or whatever "realist" writers you enjoy, but ultimately I would be able to tell within ten seconds if you're an Oxbridge grad and would dismiss you as a potential source of good company if you are not. I never thought I'd know what it was like to be objectively better than somebody else, for the value of my existence to be superior to the value of a stranger's, but now I do and I've never been happier. People are awed by power and prestige. All I need to do is mention the university I attended (if only for a year) and they immediately begin to hunch and look at their feet because they know they are in the presence of greatness.

He went to Eton and had a wide network of normie contacts. It's easy to "slum it" when you can return to London at the end and live with your rich aunts.

If this is satire then its a solid 9/10
If not then kys

Epic pasta, dork

It's much easier to cross over to France and live the truly patrician lifestyle

>one of whom, a petite Russian whose family traces back to the aristocracy, is now my fiancee
This was the part of this pasta which annoyed me the most the first time I read it. Petite is such an ugly worthless word.

aren't french universities shit apart from the grandes écoles

I don't know how to break it to you user, but France isn't patrician anymore. If you want the patrician lifestyle, you have to move to a small town in italy.

I studied history and philosophy at Oxford university (MSt programme). And to be honest, it's overrated. I didn't experience a noticeable difference between Oxford and my previous universities (Groningen and Ghent)

Question: can you be posh and high class if you aren't British? Or is it a requirement?

jealous much?

where did you go? st andrews? kek

One of the greatest pasta satires of our time

Im an american, for every decent school in england there are 10 of the same qaulity here. Do you really only have two good universities in England?
Also, don't you realize the irony of your post, you went from thinking people from oxford were condescending and snobby about they're education to then become condescending and snobby about your education.

You're responding to a German pretending to be British because mainland Europe's universities are so embarrassing.

Don't be foolish, you don't have an Oxford or Cambridge. The Ivy league institutions are probably providing as good an education and even better research, but that doesnt matter - these places are just prestige and privelege and oxbridge is 1000 years old and more prestigious, end of story.

yes we only have two good universities in england. there are also only two good universities in the entire world. i'll leave you to fill out the rest (that is, if your state school education has equipped you with the tools to do so; if you need help just ask)

Fucking a, an education where only prestige matters in England, and an education only to acquire the abilities to perform skilled labor in the US. Its not much better anywhere else, is it. We need a reform people, and no one seems to have the austere, balls, and assidiousness to do it. Whats with you? People can mount campaigns for civic reforms from universities, but not campaigns to fix the universities themselves?

Is it odd for an American to apply to Cambridge?

Thinking about it, I'm a junior in HS. Ivies aren't exactly the environment I've been seeking

There are plenty of American undergrads there. I think it's harder for overseas students to get in though. And way more expensive than it is for British people.

If you can't get into Balliol, just go to an American uni. Princeton and Stanford are the classiest. Harvard is never a bad choice.

If you're really tapped, check out Brown/Dartmouth, I guess.

Replace the dude in kimono with a dude in an oxford uniform and this is gold

MIT, Stanford, and Harvard are all more prestigious than Oxbridge. Maybe 1000 years ago the finishing school for inbred upper class Brits was considered an intelligent place to be, but now that admissions officers can actually compare stats between students and admit people from outside a rapidly narrowing gene pool it's pretty clear that those shitholes can't compete with American geniuses

I never understood this inbred meme, how can a nation of mongrels be inbred at the same time?

Dunno, but somehow the British figured out a way to do it

PG Wodehouse didn't either :o

I want to kill myself guys.

I wasn't born to upper middle class parents so I can't get a decent liberal arts education and now I'm just living with a sugar daddy so I can study what I want instead of working.

kekekeke

My friend's parents were both honour students from Oxford

The dad was literally caught balls deep in some 25 year old he met at the pub by the wife.

The stupid fuck thought he could bring her home and fuck her in the spare room while the wife slept in the room next door.

If you aren't British, you're just pretending.

Thats pretty ballsy m8

This desu

>£38k/year
>has an MA from objectively the best school in the world

Fuck.

Even if this is a pasta, it's all too realistic. Someone please reassure me that there's hope for an English major graduating out of Berkeley.

Love this pasta

I'm also a lit major and the more I go on the less graduate studies seem worth it. Higher level academia is one big circle jerk full of lonely and arrogant intellectuals on the peripheral of society. In the years to come, para-academic institutions will rise even more than they have now, given the advent of the Internet. For all we talk about the literary life, it isn't about cafes or comfy professorships that are not comfy at all - in the end, it's just you and the book in your hands.

It's all about the credentials, man. You're definitely going to need graduate school if you want to be comfortable.

What are you going to do with your literature degree?

What are those rankings? Everyone uses QS or Times Higher Education

Who else /attending an Oxbridge-reject-tier university/ ?

Do you mean like LSE, King's Imperial, etc.?

Or for actual rejects like basically all other schools in England kek

Shit like Durham, Leicester, shit like that?

Actually only British people and people who like to pretend they're British use those self-deluding and hilariously biased rankings. The post you're replying to is the Academic Ranking of World Universities or Shanghai rankings, which are commissioned by the Chinese government and widely regarded as the most objective university ranking on the planet

>Attending mid-tier ivy league
>Set for life

Feels pretty good man. Oxford, from the fact that my ex-gf went there, seems like a degenerate cesspool

Am I the only person on this board who didn't get into a prestigious university and probably never will?

0. Get good at writing, you don't need a school to do so. Just inspiration and a dedication to reading constantly and broadly.

>tfw attending a small university in Northern Canada in some town in the middle of nowhere
Whats the chance of getting into a good grad school in Europe when you attended a university that no ones heard of before?

I sort of wish the cult of personality which surrounds Oxbridge would die already, they don't deserve to exist any more than any other university. And it's reaching the stage where they're actively harming the student body as a whole since other unis are so underfunded they resort to price gouging their own students for money.

>b-b-b-b-but muh prestige
>b-b-b-b-but muh parents and muh school said oxbridge was really important

I dont give a fuck faggot

You're joking, right? At least in the sciences, German and Scandinavian universities are frequently much better than those in the uk for undergrad, at least, excluding Oxbridge.

>enter a thread about ego-stroking universities
>surprised when everyone in the thread is preoccupied with "prestige"
most people don't go to schools like this, user. and most people who do are rich kids who aren't actually that much different from others but got in because they resume-loaded with BS activities in high school and have rich parents. going to oxbridge doesn't determine much beyond giving you a pedigree.

The former. Basically the upper echelons of the Russell group, minus Oxbridge

I'm at Oxford it's great sorry you guys didn't get in

Studentry*

...

I don't attend Imperial, but how is it an Oxbridge reject Uni? It is far harder to get into many courses with a much greater scientific reputation?

I study at Imperial, and I don't know a single British student here that didn't get rejected by Oxbridge

What degree?