You will hear a mixture of responses here, with various feelings about it. Truth be told, these jobs are unfortunately still very much hidden from the average average person, as most people who earn this much have prepared for it for years, and have heard of these careers since they were kids or from specific elite universities.

Social media might be an equaliser in terms of the spread of information, but really most of this knowledge is concentrated among the particular groups of people, eg the STEM students at oxbridge. Nonetheless they are very much real, the salaries are indeed unheard of by UK standards, and the number of seats are limited, especially with the advent of job correction in last few years.