That's about right. Think candlelit dinners with lots of claret, terribly clever undergraduates writing terribly clever 1500-word essays on their PPE course, the gentleman amateur.... Things that were great in the 19th century and have now become parodies of themselves.

I think that's an accurate portrayal of the "ivy league" type unis in the UK. They may not be what they once were, but they have a particular romanticism about them that people aspire to attend them.