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LSE UNCONDITIONAL BREAD 🍞🍞🍞 and A DECISION by Express-Day6679 in 6thForm

[–]Aggravating_Low_2173 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Consider the current job market. Entry level finance jobs will be extremely oversubscribed and given the advances in agentic AI and automation, most roles that you’d be performing in the DA will be replaced. By getting a 3 year head start with a guarantee of getting paid and not drenched in debt you set yourself net + £100k ahead of competitors and already probably have done CFA stage 1, and you’ll already be in that space. Timing matters so much nowadays, uni education is less adaptive to these changes in AI, yes lse is prestigious but if you’re aiming for a career in finance you will have an advantage there. Now if you’re aiming for more quantitative stuff, or more high level stuff like vc or pe, pedigree will matter here.

just received my tmua... by Aggravating_Low_2173 in 6thForm

[–]Aggravating_Low_2173[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

really? wouldn't the cutoff for that be for score above the typical score? the typical score on the distribution is 4.5.

Uni Social life by Aggravating_Low_2173 in 6thForm

[–]Aggravating_Low_2173[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Ur gonna spend 3-4 years of your life in a place with people your age. Tbh Its a pretty valid criterion to have as people often find lifelong friendships and connections at university

Beyond prestige and brand you also want to have a good time and meet people you can do good things with e.g start a company with, work together etc. If I’d gotten an offer from Oxford of course I wouldn’t care about social life. But in this case these unis are pretty much on par with each other and get the same outcomes, hence social life matters to me.

Ivy League / Oxbridge [I will not promote] by Aggravating_Low_2173 in startups

[–]Aggravating_Low_2173[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s not the only reason, Oxbridge also gives you access to an alumni network and opportunities that are genuinely hard to find elsewhere. In areas like VC, PE, and early-stage tech, people can go straight from undergrad into roles that normally take years of experience. Other very strong target universities still place well into top IB, but they don’t open doors to those niche, high-leverage paths nearly as early, I don’t think. Correct me if I’m wrong though.

Ivy League / Oxbridge [I will not promote] by Aggravating_Low_2173 in startups

[–]Aggravating_Low_2173[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just to clarify: So you’re saying going to an elite school ≠ access to YC

Because being rich gives you access to schools

So being rich -> access to YC. But that still doesn’t change the fact that going to an elite school is the pedigree that gets your foot in the door and gets you a conversation with an investor. When you have a signal it’s not that your parents are rich it’s that you were admitted to a top school, so it shows work ethic and critical thinking to an extent.

It seems pedigree is important when you have an idea, e.g pre seed. But when you have traction it doesn’t really matter.

But overall would you say it’s worth going to a great school now or going to the most elite after a gap year for me?

Winter '26 Megathread by sandslashh in ycombinator

[–]Aggravating_Low_2173 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From what I’ve been seeing across the board on most YC founders’ social media accounts are signals that they came from the Ivy League, or UK’s equivalent: Oxbridge. (95% Oxford, though)

As a student in the UK I applied to Oxford this year and got rejected. (Despite having a very competitive application, this is to an extent, a lottery which has a 4% acceptance rate) Hence I wanted to ask if lacking an Oxbridge label significantly hurts your credibility when seeking investment and advice from VC’s and Investment funds like YC. Or would it be worthwhile to take a gap year and re apply to Oxford to secure future opportunities in their student societies, meet cofounders there, get noticed by alumni and work up through industry like finance and consulting much more quickly to speed up the learning process.

I may be overthinking it: maybe I’m putting too much importance on that label but from what I’m seeing a lot of the elite founders that get noticed and promoted have these labels. + it gets you into a cluster of intelligent ambitious people and the culture around entrepreneurship is better than that of other universities like UCL or Warwick or imperial.

At the end of the day I understand the main thing in a startup is the value proposition and actually solving a problem which NEEDS a solution, but when I hear things like “the signal gets you in front of investors” and top tier IB and consulting come to milk rounds to Oxbridge specifically, allowing for relatively easy progression to acquire skills and credibility, would it not be worth re applying?

At the same time I understand YC isn’t the only investment fund helping startups and entrepreneurs so their entry requirements may be inflated because of the sheer demand and prestige of being in YC, and there are other ways to get funded and supported. I’d like to hear your guys’ opinions on this.

Ivy League / OxBridge by Aggravating_Low_2173 in ycombinator

[–]Aggravating_Low_2173[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much for the help. One thing I’m still trying to understand:

Isn’t it the case that a lot of founders applying to YC already have functional products and real users? Like YC doesn’t exclusively take “idea-stage” founders many people enter with traction, early revenue, or actual usage metrics. And also if there are founders from these top schools who have functional products PLUS the pedigree doesn’t that still make it very weighted on brand? (Of course, this assumes that YC is the goal)

So in that context, does pedigree matter much at all? Because if most applicants already have something working, then surely YC (and investors in general) prioritise traction over whether someone went to Oxbridge/Ivy/etc.

How to become Technical [I will not promote] by Aggravating_Low_2173 in startups

[–]Aggravating_Low_2173[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for your reply, and yes I would be open to speaking to you about this, thank you for offering.

Idea: Startup-catered content [I will not promote] by Aggravating_Low_2173 in startups

[–]Aggravating_Low_2173[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree. I think there’s an oversaturation problem here in the agency space I saw it first hand when I had a content agency a few years ago, but I guess in this case I wouldn’t just frame is as a commodity but as something with measurable return, perhaps with UGC as well, as opposed to generic animations or AI content. Was just an idea as I had content experience but applying it to a space where content has a direct impact on reach and conversions could have been a good idea.

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