Ah, but you see, that's my point.

It's not inferiority, or lack of confidence. I didn't 'feel' out of place. I was out of place - the whole thing was out of place.

The article seems to focus on the 'bad', as if there's an injustice perpetrated against poor students.

But it doesn't work like that. The people just inhabit different worlds, the mutual understanding is limited, it requires effort rather than being automatic.

I would draw an analogy with being an immigrant. There's no real conspiracy, you're just different. Learning the local language, the customs, etc, will help you succeed. But in performing this act of assimilation, you lose a part of what was there before. The ones you left behind are different now.

I agree that not asking for professor time is just odd. I had no problem at all competing intellectually in my chosen field. It was just everything surrounding that.

SO, its natural and right that schools should be tailored for the rich? That's not an injustice? Remember, these are tax-exempt institutions.

The injustice is wealth inequality in general.

UK elite universities are constantly railed on for not admitting more poor students, but part of the issue is that we simply have lower levels of attainment. Equality there is not possible without negative discrimination.

How do we fix wealth inequality? Well, we probably can't. But I do think we could go further towards providing necessities to all, which would solve a lot of the issues.

Simplified, some people have to worry about making the rent. Others own property outright. That's a massive gulf.

This reminds me of stories from the old USSR. There would be students of an ethnicity which excelled at math and sciences, so were overrepresented. In turn the system in no uncertain discriminatory terms would simply fail them in their entrance exams --even when they got everything correct and went above and beyond in providing proofs. "yes, its all correct, exceptional, but I have to fail you" would be the consolation in confidence.

That's probably not true. Poorer students may in general have lower attainment, true. But there are so many, many more of them - even a 1% rate of rich-student attainment means there are still an order of magnitude MORE qualified poor students wanting to attend college. No discrimination necessary to address the current imbalance - just blind admission.

Even if you accept that premise (I don't, because private schools in the UK are ridiculously far ahead of state schools), the poor kids don't even apply.

I didn't even know what University was. Oxford or Cambridge especially - it's like Hollywood, celebrities, it's a thing that exists that you're just not a part of.

I kind of grow tired of these discussions and just pop in every now and then because I feel like the gap in understanding is just so massive that it's fruitless.

The information asymmetry is enormous. A middle class person has friends and family that work in high status fields. They can directly see that you do A, B and C and end up with D.

Hyperbolic extreme analogy - imagine that you walk up to a remote tribe with an iPhone and tell them they could make a bunch of money making apps for it.

They don't have a clue, right? That was me at age 18. I didn't know how people became doctors or lawyers or computer programmers or whatever. That was for 'other people'..... everyone I knew worked in retail.

Really? No way to know what college was about. No media in the UK, no radio, no access to the internet for the poor? Ok, that's a culture gap I'm going to just have to take your word for.

The article was about posh universities going after poor students, and making education work for them. Like minorities, its important to seek out Qualified candidates (not just some quota system that allows anybody). So the 'no poor kids apply' hurdle is moot. The Uni is supposed to be looking for them.

And they do exist. There's absolutely no monopoly on brains among the upper class.

And about how far ahead 'private schools' are - some of that is true; some of that is mythology, perpetrated by TV. In the end, its the students that make the reputation - and by definition, public schools have poor students, and poor students underrepresent achievers.

Anyway, I'm glad to hear your experience, its not all that different from mine.

I don't think that it's easy to explain; there almost aren't words for it. Whenever I discuss this in person I tend to ramble and hope enough meaning gets across.

In the US do you have the notion of 'poshness'? For example, making fun of someone who speaks a certain way, or turns their nose up at e.g. fast food? That's a massive thing. We live in tribes... pronouncing words correctly is a thing that results in ostracization here.

It pains me to say this, but here we are:

I am wealthier than my parents and hometown friends because at some point I realised what was going on, and took an active decision to take a different path.

I had to internalize the notion that I am better than them. I will work harder and smarter and I will beat them. Do you see that?

I had to beat them in order to win. I have to compete against my fellow human beings.

I have to reject their customs and use the customs that winners use.

Do you get that? That it's not just 'do A B C'? That the actions I took and continue to take have the effect of further seperating me from my friends and family? Every time I pronounce an 'a' or an 'h' in their presence it's effectively me grandstanding the fact that I'm not 'one of them' now.

Reading this post makes me seem like a colossal dick, right? But it's just a written description of social 'mobility'.

I am not better or more deserving than them. I just play a game. A game of emulation. I was born with talents, arbitrarily, and somehow that means I win and they lose. Meh. I think you just have to live it.

Hm. In Iowa folks say 'aint' and pronounce 'washington' as 'warshington'. When I'm with locals, I do that too. When I'm at work, I don't.

Its just adaptation, not betrayal. Maybe the worst thing is feeling ashamed of it? I'm rather proud of where I came from, and like to introduce my colleagues to the phrases and pronunciations of my hometown. But in the American Midwest, everybody plays the game "where are your people from" and there are no winners. Just interesting background.

State university will have a lot more middle class people. And this whole issue isn't just money but also class. A broke middle class person fits in better than a child of a the lower class.

I imagine it is even worse in the UK where there is a much more rigid social structure.

This is about connections later in life that can have huge economic benefits. Connections to someone who's starting a business and needs a co-founder is much more "economically" valuable than someone who's going in as a regular software developer. Same person, same skillset, different connections, very very different economic outcomes.

The Chinese are fascinating in this regard. To some extent they can thinking term and are willing to sacrifice the present generation so that the future generation have an advantage. That's to say they are willing to toil and thole in this generation to step up one more rung and have next generation one run closer to the top.

Parents will live in penury in order that they afford their progeny a better future. This is not u heard of in the west, but it's less common. Culture has a lot to do with it.