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@plurabelle
I've taught at Cambridge, and I currently teach at a good university in London, in a very 'middle-class' subject. The intake is 60% privately educated kids - in fact it might be more now. Every single academic is aware of the problem. What you are up against is nothing so simple as 'accent', but a sort of middle-classness that, when lacking, is explained away as kids 'not really fitting in', or being 'inarticulate'. At interview, the very attributes you are looking for - articulacy, evidence of wide reading, a certain confidence in the way they speak about the subject - these are hardwired in to kids from privileged backgrounds, kids with books in the house, kids whose parents encourage them from an early age to participate in culture. The academics know this, and struggle really hard with the inbuilt prejudices we all have - what management consultants bang on about in terms of the attraction of sameness. The view that all of this stuff can be reduced to 'accent' is staggeringly simplistic.