mackenzie said:
This definitely happens. My Cousin works in the City earning 100k plus a year and is often asked what school he went to by colleagues etc. When he says 'Manchester Grammar' there's always an atmosphere. He says it's like they can't understand how he infiltrated their world.
I'm sorry, but this really isn't true.
Firstly, the finance world has so many people from all over the world, that a lot of these old grammar don't even register on their radar. Secondly, the banking industry is not as homogeneous as that at all. For a start, European, American and Japanese banks all retain their own culture to an extent; and once again, the school that staff members went to when they were 15/16 has absolutely no bearing on their career. Even in British banks, there are so many different nationalities there it remains an irrelevance.
What probably is more important is the University that an individual went to. Should there be more diversity in students at the top universities? Its hard for me to say, because the University I attended again, was predominantly made up of Europeans, Indians, and Chinese students.
However, the Brits I have met from places like Cambridge, Oxford, St Andrews, etc on the whole do not really fit the mould of Old Etonian. Sure, there are one or two who have shades of Boris about them, but I'd say most of them come from a pretty mixed backgrounds. Some private, some comprehensive.
Anyway, I digress slightly. The differentiating factor these days, for a career in finance at least, is University, not public school.
