Oh Rah-lly?

Leeds Uni has the highest number of privately-educated students in the country


Devonshire Hall must be a lot bigger than it looks – according to new research Leeds is full of posh people.

We rank highest for the total number of young students from independent schools at university in the UK, marking us out clearly as a ‘rah’ uni.

Of 16,315 young people who attended or uni in 2007, 4305 came from private schools – an overall intake of 26.4%.

Interestingly, this survey doesn’t include those that took a gap year (yah?), which suggests the results could be much higher.

While Leeds lags behind the traditionally upper-class universities like Oxford and Cambridge (46.6% and 42.7%) in terms of percentage, we win the rah rivalry on numbers.

Over at Leeds Met things are less Jack Wills and more Jack the lad: only 6.7% of students at the university were privately educated, more than 3000 less than at Leeds Uni.

Nearer the top results are as you might expect: Oxbridge-reject refuge Durham ranks highly (38.3%) with prestigious universities UCL and Imperial College not far behind (35.6% and 37.2% respectively).

A trio of London Universities (South Bank, East and Met) sandwich Middlesex at the bottom of the table.