Russell Group unis are meant to be the smartest in the UK, but these grads can’t get jobs

Russell Group unis are supposedly the most reputable in the UK. You’d think that having a degree from one would give your CV a serious edge. But grads from prestigious Russell Group unis are still struggling to get their foot in the door for jobs.

An Edinburgh grad with three degrees got 200 rejections

Sarah at her graduation (Image via SWNS)

Sarah Dallas graduated from the University of Edinburgh in July 2024. She has three degrees – a PhD and a Master’s in bioengineering, and an undergrad degree in animal sciences.

Over 16 months, Sarah was rejected or aired for over 200 roles. Hiring managers kept telling her she was “overqualified” for entry-level jobs, but “lacked the industry experience” for more senior roles.

Sarah finally landed a full-time job as an entry-level lab technician in November 2025. She has carried on doing freelance gigs on the side, as the £28,500 salary doesn’t cover her living costs. She has £75,810 in student debts.

A Master’s student at Cardiff got three interviews from 300 applications

21-year-old Karyna Lohvynenko is wrapping up her Master’s degree in governance and devolution at Cardiff University. She has an undergrad degree in business management from Cardiff Metropolitan University, she’s done work experience with the American and British Councils, and she’s an ambassador for The King’s Trust charity. She also restores and sells vintage blazers. Oh, and she’s worked for the First Lady of Ukraine.

After applying for more than 300 jobs, she’s got 30 rejections, and three interviews. She never heard back from the other companies. She told WalesOnline: “At this point, most of us no longer feel we have the privilege to choose roles aligned with our interests … I know that a local café near my house had around 150 applicants for a single barista position.”

Karyna has tried paying for support with her CV and applications. “It adds extra financial pressure while applying for entry-level roles.”

Theo dal Pozzo is 23. He graduated from the University of Exeter in 2024 with a first class Master’s degree in computer science, with a specialisation in machine learning. Theo speaks four languages – English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.

Theo dal Pozzo (Image via SWNS)

Since May 2025, Theo has applied to more than 500 jobs. He’s yet to get an offer. Although he made it to the final stages for a role at a large tech company, the spot apparently went to an applicant with “eight years experience”. Theo even tried handing out his CV to local businesses. “I’ve been pub to pub, restaurant to restaurant, all around my local area. In one day I went to over 50 places to hand in my CV.”

He explained: “I’ve heard from a couple of companies that have had over 1,000 applications for a specific role – they’re using AI to cull the amount of CVs so that their hiring managers have less CVs to read.”

(Image via SWNS)

Although Theo had enough savings to live on for sixth months, he’s now taken out universal credit. He’s found the whole process “very demoralising”. I’m not surprised.

Some Uni of Leeds students got so fed up they started a jobs site

Hemant Smart applied for 85 positions during his second and third year at uni. Freya Owen, a fourth-year modern languages student, was spending seven hours a week on job applications. She told The Leeds Tab: “When you go to a Russell Group university, you’re told by other people that you’ll go far and finding a job will be easy. But in reality, it’s so difficult. At one graduate scheme, they told me at the assessment centre that 1,000 people made it to this stage, and over 8,000 people applied.”

Hemant, Freya and four other Leeds students got so fed up, they made a platform called GradFlow to help others keep track of applications.

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Featured images via SWNS.