I went on a Question and Answer spree over at Quora. The topic? Everything Oxford University. Common questions about studying to get into Oxford University, life at the institution, and life after.
Got a question about the University of Oxford that I haven’t answered? Feel free to leave a comment and I’ll answer you as comprehensively as possible.
Let’s get into the Q&A!
How powerful is an Oxford University degree?
“You’re from the Oxford? Not Oxford Brookes, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, you’re hired.”
That’s happened. But only for low-tier jobs. Wage slave stuff. Not careers.
Going for higher calibre positions and better companies still requires you to impress your potential employers beyond that bit of paper.
That bit of paper still gets you in the door. But I’ve been turned down for jobs despite the employers finding the “Oxford” label sexy.
Outside of careers, everyone knows “Oxford”. It’s the Rolex of the education world.
I’ve met people all over. Asians, Americans, Europeans, Africans. People change their opinion of you when they know you’ve been to Oxford. Often this is a bad thing…
I’m proud to have a little of the Oxford brand’s prestige. But I think it would have been more powerful to skip those three years spent at Oxford and put my focus into building a career right from the start.
Then again, that’s coming from an English student…
I’ve no doubt engineers, computer scientists, lawyers, and doctors graduating from Oxford have an immense amount of power in their fingertips that will see them through the rest of their lives… as long as they put the same effort into the rest of their endeavours as that which got them into the school in the first place.
Is it true that Cambridge and Oxford do not care about extra curricular activities when admitting students?
Oxbridge wants passion. Not ‘well-rounded’.
Seriously. If you are ‘well-rounded’, how much effort have you invested into your subject?
Top universities want top students.
They want world-class experts.
A jack of all trades is a master of none.
In that sense, it was lucky I was applying for Oxford.
When personal statement writing time came around, I remember all of my peers sitting in the common room with their draft statements and stressing about not having included enough extracurriculars.
I didn’t need to include a single one. I knew I had my sights set on Oxford.
So when I got rejected from every university apart from Oxford and Bristol I wasn’t surprised. York even told me in the interview that my lack of extra-curricular activity was a problem.
But Oxford didn’t care that I wasn’t captain of the rugby team, vice chancellor of the chess club, or that I didn’t spend my weekends picking up poo as a volunteer at the puppy pound.
All they cared about is that I lived and breathed my subject.
How did you get into Oxford?
This is a real ‘butterfly effect question’. How far back do you wanna go?
- There’s my nan who introduced me to Shakespeare and Dickens when I was ten years old.
- There’s my dad who took me to see Mamet in the West End and the Bard in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
- There’s the countless school days I’d spend writing stories with my best friend, circulating them, and then making movies after school.
- There’s the teenage nights I stay up until sun break reading and writing.
- There’s my Year Nine Religious Education teacher who told me to apply to Oxford – I never would have even applied if it weren’t for her.
It’s about living and breathing your subject.
That’s what I did all the way up to the Oxford application process. After that, it was just a gamble that they liked me in the interviews and decided to go with me instead of four other potential candidates.
For every student that gets admitted to Oxford, there’s four others that were just as good as you and could have easily taken your place.
Being great at your subject + luck = how to get into Oxford.
How difficult is it to sustain a relationship in Oxford?
Oxford’s a pressure cooker.
Sometimes that brings you closer together.
Sometimes that tears you apart.
If you’re right for each other, and your temperament is conducive to it, you can sustain a relationship easily in Oxford.
I couldn’t.
That’s not Oxford’s fault though. It was a long distance relationship and we weren’t right for each other.
Funnily, a lot of my peers from Oxford are now married to their Oxford gf/bf.
That’s common. I don’t know the percentage, but I remember it was a significant one. You’re very likely to meet the person you marry while studying in Oxford.
What are some things about the University of Oxford that nobody hears about?
Huge drop out rate.
Oxford boasts having one of the lowest drop-out rates of any university. But they’re only able to claim this because of how the system is set up and their deceptive definition of ‘drop-out’.
Oxford students don’t ‘drop-out’. They ‘rusticate’.
What this means is that, instead of leaving the university forever, students take a year off and then return to the university. This is like a mini-expulsion. There are many reasons for why this happens. The biggest reason is due to mental health issues.
I’ve written a whole article on this subject here:
What are the best and worst things about Oxford?
The worst:
Snobbishness.
I was sensitive to it because I didn’t come from a posh background.
People turned their noses up at me, my accent, and my lack of education – funny that, seeing as I managed to get into the university in the first place.
The intense workload is also bad.
The pressure is on all the time.
Oxford has shorter terms than other universities (8 weeks) and this is because people are burnt out by the third week.
The work that other university students get in a year is crammed into one of these terms in Oxford and Cambridge.
We had 3+ tutorials a week (some of them stretching on for hours) and each tutorial resulted in an assignment. Each assignment had a big reading list and we were often expected to turn in at least 2 essays a week. On top of this we had lectures.
We were told in Oxford that people in other universities can have a social circle, a hobby (like a sport or drama), and their studies. But we had to choose two. We couldn’t have all three. We also were forbidden from getting a job during term time and actively discouraged from getting one during the vacation (which sucks for the underdogs from working class backgrounds).
We had all this work but we were also put under a lot of pressure by our tutors, our peers, our parents, and ourselves.
Intellectual insecurity.
There is nowhere else in the world I felt more stupid than in Oxford.
Honestly. If you get into Oxford, you are extremely intelligent in your chosen field of study (and generally). But when you arrive in Oxford, suddenly you don’t feel so smart. Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in his book David and Goliath, and came to the conclusion that students in Harvard would be happier in lower ranked universities. He says that this is due to once being a big fish in a small pond and then entering the big ocean where you are a small fish for the first time in your life.
I questioned my intellect every waking moment in Oxford.
I would have debates with people or listen to my peers contribute to a discussion in a tutorial and I would hate myself. I couldn’t think of anything smart to say. I didn’t want to debate. I couldn’t believe it but I actually missed my hometown where I thought people were more down-to-earth.
I thought I was the only person who felt this way (until I met one of my best friends who also felt the same) but this is incorrect. Pretty much everyone feels like this at some point.
Every single one of my close friends rusticated. They were forced into taking a year off because their minds were not right.
I was close to doing the same. My tutors wanted me to take a year off and prepare fully for my final year. We had endless meetings where they said I had to leave. I told them that if I left for a year, I would not come back.
Obviously if I didn’t return that would count as a ‘drop-out’ and Oxford do not want that negatively impacting their statistics. So they let me stay. They assigned me a mentor. And I worked myself to death for the next year.
By the end of the year I was burned out and didn’t even want to look at a book for a very long time.
The best:
Diversity of intellect, creativity, personality.
You get some really variety in the students at Oxford. You’ll meet some of the most eccentric characters of your life. You’ll also form strong relationships and find people just like you who, who challenge you and make you better.
The tutors.
I hated most of my tutors. But I’ll still put this in the positive because going to Oxford means access to some of the greatest minds in your field anywhere in the world.
The city.
Oxford is almost a perfect city. Not as big and hectic as London. Not as small and quiet as Cambridge. It’s a perfect in-between.
It’s also beautiful. Beautiful buildings and gardens. Plenty of things to do, cool art house cinemas, wonderful museum exhibits, some of the finest restaurants to be found anywhere. You can know Oxford intimately, feel right at home, and never get bored.
What are the A-Level study habits of Oxbridge students?
Here’s what I did:
I broke each subject down into it’s topic parts.
For example: Psychology is broken down into: social influence, memory, attachment, approaches in psychology, psychopathology, research methods, etc.
Then you get yourself a weekly calendar and assign 2-3 study blocks per day.
A study block is 45 minutes where you’re doing nothing except focusing on the material you’re reviewing. Then you take a 5-10 minute break and decompress/chill/walk around/have some fun. After a little break, I’d go back to studying. Here I’d review what I just studied for about five minutes, then I’d transition into another subject altogether. e.g. Switching from Psychology to English Language. Repeat the process. Have a little break. Then when you come back, spend five minutes reviewing what you looked at in the first block and second block, then dive into something new.
I’d have a study partner.
Make sure it’s someone who is equally serious about studying.
Then, when you’re having a break, you can also test each other on what you just covered.
I studied with my gf at the time who was serious about becoming a doctor, so that worked well and it doesn’t feel so isolating when you have someone working alongside you.
I also tried to turn up to every class I was serious about getting an A* for and dossed the classes I knew I wouldn’t be continuing.
On top of that, I took a GCSE course in Latin after school alongside my A-Levels because I didn’t know if my GCSEs would be sufficient.
If you want a SUPER comprehensive answer about my recommended study habits, I have a big article here:
What are some helpful tips for students starting their first year of Oxford?
- Don’t sign up to every club and society at the Fresher’s Fair. You’re email inbox will be a nightmare and you won’t have the time to go to more than 1 or 2 of them (if that) anyway.
- Berocca is good for hangovers. Have a stash handy for when you need to wake up at 7am after a night out that ended at 2am.
- Do the reading. You’ll get a big old reading list before you start. Most people barely look at it. This was one of my biggest regrets. You’ll get a lot more out of the tutorials and feel less lost if you do the reading ahead of the time.
- Don’t be too eager to find your friends in the first couple of weeks. I didn’t find the people I truly clicked with until roughly halfway through first term. It might feel like everyone else has got it figured out, but they haven’t. Everyone has the same feelings of loneliness and it’s completely normally for it to take time to adjust.
- Put yourself out there. This is a really nerve-wracking time of your life. Everything is so new. And you’re probably quite introverted (a lot of Oxbridge students are). But try to turn up to the social stuff that looks interesting and make an effort to talk to everyone you possibly can. Ask questions, listen, and take some time to recharge so you can put your best self forward.
I’ve written more about this here:
What are the best and worst of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges?
Oriel’s the best (and worst) Oxford college.
It’s one of the smallest and most intimate with only 500 students across the years. But with the majority of third years living off sight and never to be seen because they’re too busy studying, it’s more like 200 students at a time.
This means you know everybody.
There’s good and bad things about that. On the one hand, it feels like a family. On the other, everybody knows everyone else’s business. It can be super cliquey and gossip is thick in the air.
It’s great for rowing. Oriel is frequently ‘head of the river’.
The ‘bops’ (college parties) are known as being some of the best out of all the Oxford colleges.
It’s very pretty and has a charming library.
It also has a great alumni base including yours truly.
The formal dinners are sometimes great, sometimes awful, and informal is lacklustre across the board.
Three other colleges I liked the look and feel of included:
- Trinity (great formal hall, pretty college).
- Worcester (Emma Watson’s college, gorgeous grounds)
- Christ Church (huge, impressive and very “Oxford)
How common is it for Oxbridge students to skip classes?
Classes are optional and typically held in the same places as lectures but in smaller rooms with a more intimate gathering. They’re usually addressing a very specific facet of your subject. There’s no requirement to go to them, but it’s heavily encourage if you’re pursuing a specific niche of your topic to make use of them.
I only went to 2-3 classes in my first year (Old English). No classes in my second year. And maybe 10-15 classes on Conrad and and Modernism in my final year.
If you’re talking about tutorials, you can’t skip them.
Tutorials are very intimate. My tutorials only had four students and we sit together with the tutor for 2-3 hours and are required to participate in in-depth discussions around the week’s reading and assignments.
I skipped these way too often in my first year (maybe 15% of my tutorials, which is unusual) and got in a lot of trouble for that.
You also have lectures. Big talks in halls with a ton of students and usually covering a big topic (not always though). Not mandatory but heavily encouraged. I barely went to these in my first two years. But I went to as many as I possibly could in my final year and loved them.
What activities did you do in your childhood that helped you get into Oxford?
Read a lot of books. From every field. Thought about what I was reading. Tried to discuss what I was reading with other people. Wrote a lot. In private and publicly. Went to plays and performed in plays. Exercised my creativity every moment I could.
What are the best Oxford libraries?
I’ve never set foot in it.
All Souls College’s is cloaked in magic and secrecy, open to only a select few pre-ordained by royalty and God.
You gain access to All Souls’ Codrington Library by swearing a secret oath and promising your fidelity to the moon in a complex blood sacrifice.
Maybe some day I’ll step foot inside.
It looks beautiful.
What is the dating culture like in Oxford?
Crew dates are pretty unique.
If you’re part of a sports team, you and your teammates can arrange to go on a big “team date” with a team from another college.
E.g. Oriel rowing team goes on a big group date with Trinity Hockey Club.
This usually involves going to a restaurant with BYOB (bring your own booze), lots of drinking games, then out to a club afterwards or back to someone’s house/flat for after drinks.
Other than that, dating culture is pretty much the same as you’d find in any university or college with a heavy emphasis on meeting people through social circles.
Why would someone reject Oxford and Cambridge?
I wanted to.
I applied to these universities:
- Oxford
- Warwick
- York
- Exeter
- Bristol
Oxford didn’t give me the number one impression.
I much preferred the campus feel of York and Warwick. The Warwick Creative Writing course looked way more interesting and valuable to me. And the people at York seemed more friendly and laid-back.
I had conversations with the closest people in my life about how if I got accepted everywhere I might want to reject Oxford.
No one could understand that.
Ultimately, I resolved to accept Oxford even if I got offers from the other places. That decision was based on what other people wanted + the brand name of Oxford, which I did want attached to my name.
Luckily, I didn’t have to make the difficult decision.
Only Oxford and Bristol accepted me. Everywhere else rejected me first.
What is a normal day for an undergraduate at Oxford University?
Just speaking for me, random day not close to tests:
First/second year:
11am: wake-up if no tutorials
7am: wake-up if tutorials
10am-2pm: laziness, hit the gym, play chess
2pm-6pm: reading
6pm-10pm: socialising, drinking, eating, do some DJ-ing
10pm-3am: writing essays in the library
Third year:
5am: wake up, morning routine, exercise
6am-7pm: study, write coursework switching between coffee shops and library (sometimes working longer if I feel my stamina can keep going)
7pm-9pm: eat, maybe workout
9pm-11pm: unwind, maybe socialise a bit, relax, listen to music
11pm: sleep
What do you get from an Oxford education?
A hardcore schooling in rigorous logical education.
You learn to seriously think through everything. Why is your opinion this? Detail, detail, detail. Reason, reason, reason.
You’re constantly challenged, constantly forced to forge your intellectual arguments tighter, and to make corrections when you’re wrong.
You learn how to write clearly/cleanly and with precision. Don’t just my writing here on that basis. I can be extremely precise when I want. This is more free-form stream-of-consciousness.
You get to be one of the most knowledgeable people in the world in your area. You go so deep into your subject that by the time you emerge from Oxford, you’re easily in the 1% of your subject.
You also get exposure to many other ideas by virtue of the conversations you have with peers from other subjects. English students can talk about Biochemistry and Musical Theory if they want.
You also get a degree in the fine art of “bullshitting”. Sometimes you have an idea and you’re challenged on it but you feel there’s nowhere to go with it. You can sometimes bluff it extremely well. You have to learn that. Funnily enough, sometimes your bluffs actually make sense and sound smart.
What are the best subjects to study at Oxford University?
The best subject is the one you feel most capable of, that resonates with you the most, and can afford you the future you want.
When I studied English Literature at Oxford, Oxford was number one in the world for that subject. It wasn’t number one for Medicine. Despite that a medical degree from Oxford is way more impressive. Ultimately useless for me though as I don’t have strong ambitions to work in that sector.
What questions were you asked in the Oxford/Cambridge entrance interview?
I was told to talk about my favourite books. I shocked them by actually bringing a satchel of the books with me to the interview.
The interviewer, who then went on to be my first year tutor and a thoroughly wonderful man, asked me to flick to a random page of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and analyse a random sentence I liked the look of.
I picked this sentence:
“Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.”
I read it out loud and then found…
I couldn’t analyse it at all.
I floundered, stammered, sat in awkward silence, and defeatedly turned the question back on my tutor.
He couldn’t do it much justice either but together we talked it through and got a real nice conversation going.
I was also asked why I wanted to study at Oxford. Feel free to steal my answers:
My reasons for studying at Oxford were
- The tutorial system which uses Socratic methods of educational discourse.
- The Bodleian Library which has a copy of every book printed in England.
- The prestigious alumni and the people I will meet.
- The fascinating range of extracurricular activities.
- The beauty of Oxford.
You can read more about my in-depth Oxford interview advice here:
What are the day-to-day conversations like?
Intense.
Everything’s a debate.
You’ll talk about Shakespeare with Physics students and find them challenging you and forcing you to defend your claims.
You’ll also get the usual university gossip, but even this feels more “debate-like”, comprehensive, and overly intellectualised.
You’ll get a great brain workout just from kicking back and having informal conversations because you’ll find everyone you talk to has their brain constantly switched on. This can get quite exhausting, but I think it ultimately allows you to carve some pretty deep debating and conversational skills.
Any more questions?
Anything you want to know about getting into Oxford? Life in Oxford? Or just general exam/school tips?
Leave your question in the form of a comment and I’ll answer you.
Great post!
Thanks, Joe! And Happy New Year!