Last March, my daughter turned down a place at Oxford University, and at the end of September she will begin her degree at the University of Leeds. After months of research, advice, interviews and stays with friends at both places, Rose* decided that while she would no doubt be happy reading History of Art at Oxford, she’d be even happier studying the same subject at Leeds. Her decision was not easy and caused her far more anxiety than A-levels did – whichever way she jumped, there would be regrets – but, ultimately, she followed her instincts.

Beyond close friends and family who have listened to and understood her reasons, Rose’s rejection of one of life’s great prizes has caused dismay, even outrage. Responses have ranged from the most frequent, a gasped “Oh no!” and “What about the networking, those contacts for life?” to “Don’t you, as her mother, have any say in this at all?” The gut-punch text was: “It’s too late now, but I think she’s made a mistake.” There have been exceptions, including the eminent art critic who boomed, “Let her go to Leeds, it’s a much better course and I hated Cambridge!”

Usually, though, comments revolved around status. I was told that my child was denying herself the opportunity to enter the job market at a higher salary-point than her non-Oxbridge peers. Given its inextricable links to power and class, education is an obsession in the UK – and Oxbridge the ultimate goal. It ensures, in theory at least, incomparable access and a smooth ride to a glittering career.

Our attachment to these assumptions is so entrenched, and competition for places so intense, that if a child has the temerity to say “no, thanks”, they touch a nerve deep in the national psyche.

Weighing up the pros and cons with Rose, I tried to keep a lid on my decade-long conviction that she should go to Oxford. As her head of English put it at our final parent-teacher meeting, “If not Rose, who?”

Given its inextricable links to power and class, education is an obsession in the UK – and Oxbridge the ultimate goal Sophie Hastings

My ambitions for my daughter were compounded by a childhood in which my divorced parents waged a five-year legal battle over my younger brother’s education. My father wanted what he’d had: boarding prep school and Eton; mum wanted him at home, at local schools. As a girl, my education was not the point. Aged 14 when the court case ended, I stopped working. In spite of myself, I scraped some A-levels and got a degree, but underachievement is pernicious. Rose would grow up knowing she is valued. If she went to Oxford, she would be the fourth generation of my paternal family to do so, but the first woman, and the first to be state educated.

At open day, Rose enjoyed the tours and the talks and I could easily imagine her living in those beautiful, reassuringly shabby rooms, being served three meals a day in the Harry Potter dining hall, and flourishing under the tutorial system. She agreed, liking it better than expected, and applied, but I knew she was ambivalent.

Hackney born and bred, she found Oxford’s aura of white privilege off-putting and the lack of a viable music scene cause for concern. “That’s what London’s for,” countered a friend of mine with a First from Christchurch. But Rose is from London and what she was interested in, she realised, was difference: a new city with a vibrant culture of its own, students who aren’t all from the south, sharing a house with eight people, cooking on a shoestring, cheap beer, a part-time job. “The British uni experience is one of the few things we’re good at,” she said. “Oxford is amazing, but it’s not that.” Above all, she went for the course. The history of art degree at Leeds is radical. Taught at the university’s School of Fine Art, alongside cultural theorists and practising artists, its specialisms in feminist and postcolonial histories are up Rose’s street. Given the UK’s child and adolescent mental health crisis and alarming rates of student suicide, it seems wise to prioritise happiness over kudos. And that kudos has begun to pall.

It is not lost on Rose’s generation that the politicians screwing with our democracy and their future are Oxbridge alumni to a man. If our brightest young people have the self-determination to create new value systems and different measures of success from those that have defined us, there is hope.

*Rose is not her real name.