Years ago, when I was a student, I used to post on The Student Room and I was always amazed by the number of young people who were completely obsessed with certain universities and very snobbish about others, irrespective of whether those universities specialised in what they wanted to study or not. OK, to a certain extent a degree is about transferable skills and your undergrad degree subject and location is pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things so it doesn’t necessarily matter too much where you go, but if you know you want to study X and a university is known for their specialism in that, I never really understood why you’d choose a ‘more prestigious’ university over and above one that might suit you better and might give you a leg-up in terms of getting onto a post-grad course?
Also I think you do have to be realistic about whether a specific university is actually going to suit you - if you’re not great with exams for example, or you know that you’re probably going to need a higher degree of pastoral support, or if you prefer a smaller campus or no campus at all then some universities are just not going to work for you as well as others might. I understand prestige and the power of a name in certain circles but for most people, it probably isn’t as important as they think it is. It‘s not like you can keep redoing your degree (well, most of us can’t …) and I just don’t see the point of compromising so much just for a name.
