By Madison Collier (she/her)

When I made the decision to apply to the University of Oxford back in 2020, I was reassured to find that the sentiment echoed throughout the application process was one of your background doesn’t matter; all we require is that you have a genuine passion for your subject!, which was sometimes rephrased and packaged in the comforting no matter where you’re from, you’ll meet likeminded people at Oxford!

While this is true for the degree itself (to the extent that you’re willing to catch yourself up on the ancient Greek literature that your state school likely didn’t expose you to), socially and culturally it is far from the truth. And while society’s ever-increasing focus on representation and equality is undoubtably a step in the right direction, this rose-tinted impression given by Oxford and other powerful institutions feels not like representation but a rather grim by-product of it: paying lip-service to underrepresented groups when the reality feels far from diverse and accepting.

On one of my first days as an Oxford student, one of my housemates, having never encountered Old English, asked me what the 650-1350 paper entailed. Right as I opened my mouth to respond, the privately educated man in the room took it upon himself to answer on my behalf, speaking loudly enough to literally drown out my voice. He did not study my degree and was nowhere near as qualified as me to answer that question. And yet, nobody batted an eye.

This shocked me at first, but before long this experience became standard. On a more minor level, people mocked the way I spoke, mocked my ‘working class’, ‘unladylike’ interests and made fun of my cheap shopping and eating habits. On a more major level, I was forced into physical contact with socially influential men who entire groups of students tacitly agreed not to hold accountable.

One thing that cropped up repeatedly was that my peers and I had wildly different life experiences. I grew up on a council estate. My family didn’t have much money when I was young, and I had worked a part-time job in retail to earn some money to support myself before going to Oxford. Many of the people around me were privately educated, had never worked any job at all (especially not a job like retail, widely categorised as low-skilled), and had more traditionally ‘upper-class’ interests.

None of these things in themselves are the problem: the problem is that I was consistently the one sacrificing pieces of my personality to identify with others. Nobody was willing to identify with or understand where I was coming from. That sentiment I had faced at the beginning of my Oxford application – No matter where you’re from… Regardless of your background… – revealed itself not as a promise of diversity, but as a suggestion of erasure: you will make friends and fit in so long as you are willing to leave your background at the door.  

Those people around me who were willing to address my class were those who conformed to traditional, and damaging, views of class mobility with the aim of turning me against my background. Best put by Owen Jones in his 2012 work Chavs, this approach maintains that ‘You have “escaped” purely because of your own exceptional talents and abilities […] and those who have not got ahead have only themselves to blame.’ In characterising my friends and my family as lazy and good-for-nothing and myself as hardworking and educated, they attempted to separate me from my identity so that I was free to adopt theirs.

At its heart, this is a class issue, but I can’t help but feel like my male – specifically, traditionally masculine male – counterparts were not expected to sacrifice chunks of their personalities in the way that I was. And, in situations when they were unwilling to conform, like I always was, they were branded as ‘strong-willed’ and ‘passionate’, while I was called ‘stubborn’, ‘bossy’, and told that I should just ‘let it go’.

The experience so far, to put a positive spin on it, has been character-building. I will put myself forward for opportunities, because if I don’t, I know my rich, male counterparts will. I will champion my own ideas instead of the ‘humble’ dismissal that I would have formerly opted for, because I live in a world where I have to advocate for myself. But let’s not get it twisted: this isn’t some fairytale in which Oxford is some incredible baptism of fire, like the family member whose tough love made you a stronger person.

Academically, yes, it is rigorous. Competition is high, and the work culture is unhealthy. All of that is difficult to deal with, but all of it is reasonably expected. The issue at hand is that, on top of the academic adjustment that all students have to undergo, working class students, specifically working-class women, have to undergo an entire additional social and cultural scathing.

Representation is not representation when sacrificing part of your identity is practically a condition for survival. Representation is speaking about your experiences with honesty and authenticity. I hope more working-class students at Russel Group universities reach out to share their experiences, and I hope it shows both current students and future applicants that surrendering to the pressure of suppressing your character is not your only option.

Madison Collier (she/her) is a finalist at the University of Oxford, due to graduate with a BA in English Language and Literature in 2024. Madison’s freelance projects primarily focus on music in the form of reviews and opinion pieces, but she is also a budding identity writer, interested in feminism, class identity and mental health.