Everything you will experience at uni coming from a state school

You’ll sound a lot posher when you go back home


Whether your school was known for throwing the most lit socials, getting kicked out of the most venues or doing the most drugs, it’s probably very different from the environment at university.

Warwick may only have roughly 25% private school students, but every single one of us still feels the effects of going to a state comprehensive.

People will ask you how you ‘got here from state school’

Yep, I was shocked the first time too. People just simply don’t seem to understand that just because you don’t pay thousands of pounds to go to school, doesn’t mean you’re not getting a decent education out of it. We may not need certain grades to get in and may be able to fail as much as we like and not get kicked out, but in fact most of us don’t do that.

Through hard work, or sheer intelligence for the lucky few, state school is just as good a route to a decent university as private school is, but don’t be alarmed if you have to explain this to a few people during the course of your time at uni.

You won’t have a Fiat 500, but at least you can catch a bus

I won’t hide it, of course I want to be cruising around campus in a Fiat 500, but I can always take pride in the fact that it’s not my first time on public transport. Admittedly, the 11 on a Friday night is a scary place; drunk students chanting, with the dark streets of Coventry gliding past. But it always helps if you’ve caught a bus before, an experience many non-state school kids don’t seem to have had. You’ve got to feel sorry for them really.

The majority of people at uni are so entitled and it’s pretty shocking

Seats in the library, the whole hour of a tutor’s office hour, even a first in their degree; we’ve all met those students that feel entitled to everything in this world.

Coming from a background where you are taught that hard work gets you what you want, it can be a bit of a shock when you hear somebody complaining that their tutor gave them a 2:1 rather than a first on their last assignment, or that they got to the library at 1:30 and all the seats had been taken by those people who got out of bed and got theirs at 9 in the morning.

You’re probably a lot better at budgeting

It may be annoying when you have to turn down nights out because you’ve already blown your whole budget for the week on POP!. Or, more likely, when you have to eat a bag of crisps for your dinner because you didn’t turn down that night out and now you’ve blown your budget for the month.

But there’s no doubt about it, you’re probably not in this situation as often as most non-state school kids. You already thought this through and realised that there was no way you’d turn down that night out at Smack and shopped at Aldi rather than Tesco last week.

You’ll sound a lot posher when you go back home

Don’t be freaked out when you realise that everybody here is southern, probably from London, or at least sounds incredibly posh. It can feel pretty weird when you’re surrounded by people saying “golly gosh the weather’s simply splendid on this fine day” rather than just “it’s quite sunny; shall I wear my short shorts or my really short shorts?”

The old state school kid sayings go out of the window here and, much to your dismay, you’ll go home at Christmas to everyone saying how posh you’ve become and how you’re losing your state school accent. There’s no point fighting it, just let it happen; you will come out of this uni sounding like a boarding school southerner and there’s nothing you can do.