Oxbridge applicants 2018 part 2

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Hopefully this is in time!

DD is desperate to accept her offer but still waiting to hear from one university which could be a possible insurance choice.

Lobster that's not how it works once the interview sessions are underway. One of my DSs was pooled from a popular college to a ridiculously popular college. which turned out to suit him incredibly well. Things do seem to work out!

dds college don't want them to accept anything til exams in march. dd is not one for going against college so there we have it. Mind you, they do seem to know what they are doing so I'll leave her to it.

Very interesting to hear experiences of how the pooling system works. I believe it works slightly differently in Oxford to Cambridge. Colleges often do wax and wane in popularity as well. However for my DD's course at Oxford, over the last 5 or 6 years of stats, it was generally easy to predict which colleges were turning to the pool for their applicants - either because they had fewer direct applicants or because they did not like the quality of applicants they were receiving.

Oxford has been firmed!! OMG

Unconditional has just been accepted. Now just to work and read and read and read and holiday until October! Hoping his college will suit him. But they do say that wherever someone ends up that they'll love their own college?

Best of luck in the decision making and the silly amounts of stress that will endue :( They can do it!

Good to hear Hubble and Vera!

DS wanted to firm Oxford and insurance Imperial so to tick off the final task in his UCAS To Do List. However, has to wait for Oxford's final exemption of English requirement as he's international student but been studying in UK for years before admission. He was given the verbal exemption when he called the department prior to UCAS application. However the clause was still being put into this UCAS offer and therefore he wants to assure that with a formal, written reply! Hope that they will get back to him next week as promised and he can rest assured to firm Oxford finally!

Hi Risotto - did Imperial give a lower offer than Oxford if you don't mind me asking?

Hubble, Imperial's CO is bascially the same as Oxford's which is AAA foe Math, Chem and Phy in any oder, except Oxford requires DS to complete F Math for AL while imperial doesn't.
The COs of his other 3 choices are all AAA! as last year DS had taken all the 6 papers of Math and pocketed an A already, so now all the 5 COs are bascially the same to him, i.e. he has to achieve AA in Chem and Phy.

Risotto good luck with firming soon. Exciting times ahead!!

Does anyone have any experience of history at Oxford?

DD's friend seems to think that he will have an easy ride as he won't have many contact hours and loads of free time. He says that the college he is allocated to (St Catz) has 5 course meals and he will eat like a king, and spend a lot of time in the bar.

Is this true, or is he deluded?

I suspect it will be a case of how disciplined your ds is Lonicera and how much he wants to get out of it.

Yes DD2, DS2 and DS3 have all read (or are reading) History at Oxford. You do have to do some work occasionally.

Your DD's friend also won't get five course meals each day so advise him to take some snack bars etc.

How much work goodbye?

Before DD decided to apply for medicine she looked at biomedical science, and when she and her friend were comparing courses at loads of universities it seemed that the science one was far more work heavy than history.

It can't be quantified exactly since obviously some people are far more efficient than others, some do nothing but work, some wing it initially and get a rude shock. Science course have a completely different timetable but it's naive to assume that relatively low contact hours means that those doing History don't work. It's a how long is a piece of string question. I think your DD's friend is teasing her!

I don't. He is one of those irritatingly clever people who does his homework at school in the free before the lesson that it is due to be handed in, and then gets an A.

Lonicera I had friends reading History at Oxford - they were definitely known as dossers, but they applied themselves when necessary. In terms of workload, as I recall it was pretty gentle: two essays a week.

Your DD’s friend I am confident will be able to coast along if he wants, but as he’s encountering entirely new material each week, he will not get A’s for his essays without a little industry and application.

Compared to science students, arts students have a staggering amount of free time. The transition from a school environment, where most of your hours are accounted for, to university, where you have to manage your own time, can take a little getting used to. The ride can be as easy or hard as you choose really.

I did know that you have a dd and not a ds Lonicera. I clearly didn't read or engage brain properly this morning.

That's OK Kitten. I knew you knew

Thanks for clarifying Hingle. DD's friend will doss as much as he can. It seems unfair that someone can gain a history degree with much less effort than a chemistry or maths degree, but that's life.

It was a spectacular example of posting without thinking

It must be odd to be on a course with very little structured time. I'm not sure I'd have been disciplined enough to be a student nowadays. I did a very contact heavy course and even back ye ancient days still managed to find enough distractions like supermarket sweep to avoid doing my work.

In the handbook for dds course there's a worrying statement about if students find themselves having to do significantly more work than 48 hours a week they should contact their director of studies.

It seems unfair that someone can gain a history degree with much less effort than a chemistry or maths degree, but that's life.

Depends what you count as effort!

Historians could have low contact hours - non-compulsory lectures plus tutorials. They will have to write an essay or two a week, but the reading list for those essays will be long, and you won't learn as much if you don't read a decent selection of the list.

Maths at Oxford was very low contact hours too, without all the reading around the subject, so I don't know why you think it would be more effort than history! History could expand to fill as much time as you have available, at least for maths you have a problem sheet of finite length

Chemistry is a different story time-wise, but is messing about in a lab () more effort than making yourself read 12 chapters giving 12 different opinions on one history topic?

I think it is easy to assume that low contact hours means low work load.Not the case. Yes, arts students have the advantage of flexiblity. If you want to work all night that's up to you, but you do have to do the work or the Oxford tutorial system will very soon catch you out. There is no hiding behind a remotely submitted essay with feedback 3 weeks later (which is what my DS gets a Russell Group uni.)
People saying only 2 essays a week, when I was there it was normally 3 a fortnight and believe me that was plenty! I would expect reading and planning to take at least 3 days and writing 2-3 days per essay. But then I was there pre internet where everything had to be written long hand - right first time!

I definitely wasn't saying "only" two essays a week! For nearly all of my time at Oxford I had one to one tutorials for my essay subject. This meant I was always reading my essay in my tute, which leaves nowhere to hide! At least in my maths tutorials I could just say, oh I was struggling with this question and get he explained

How many contact hours did you have Atia? cambridge seems to be 14 hours now.