History and Politics at Oxbridge?

[Wigeon]

Does anyone have a DC who is currently or recently studied History and Politics at either Oxford or Cambridge? DD, year 12, is not sure about whether to do history, or politics, or joint. She's well aware that you can't do politics as a single honours at Oxford or Cambridge, but as she's considering those places she'd be applying for either history or history and politics.

She says she'd find it really useful to understand why people choose the joint honours. Obviously I can guess (they like both history and politics!), but she'd ideally like to hear from actual students/former students.

Thanks!

Bump

DD did PPE rather than HisPol, as that one wasn't on her radar at the time.

You still have a good choice of options, but if you take joint hons you must take compulsory modules in both history & politics, leaving less scope to explore other optional areas. Worth bearing in mind.

My very hazy memory of Cambridge History is that it was all politics, whatever the ostensible topic. So I wouldn’t see a need for a separate subject. (I have no idea how undergraduate subjects are arranged now.)

Is she interested in Politics as theory, (for which the Constitutional Law section of Law at Cambridge is brilliant) or is she hoping to move into a political career? If the latter, I’d imagine PPE at Oxford would be her best bet.

My dc is in first year at Cambridge studying HSPS which is currently 50% politics and they take the same politics courses as the History & Politics students. At one point Hispol was considered as an option so I know a fair amount about how those degrees work (no knowledge of Oxford).

Things to consider; hispol is more competitive to get in than history on its own so decide how impt politics is. My dc wanted to do a joint hons degree for variety and will continue to do 2 subjects next year as they prefer a mix (currently does 3). Joint hons can work both ways - sometimes you get less flexibility about elective papers and so less chance to focus on a particular area of interest early on, but sometimes it also allows you to avoid less interesting papers that would be compulsory for a single honours student. So it’s really really impt to look at the papers offered in advance for that particular course. For example my dc does a political thought/theory paper (which is quite historical) and an IR paper but there was no flexibility on this. In Yr 2 the political thought paper actually comes from the history dept.

Well you won’t want to hear from me as a former PPEist, but I did recently read a reference from an applicant with a spectacularly high First in HisPol from Oxford, and the referee (their Oxford tutor) said we should be especially impressed because HisPol is a notoriously hard joint honours course to excel in!

Anecdata of course. But I do think it can be hard to juggle joint honours from different faculties. HisPol is also extremely competitive at entry, with about 12% of applicants getting in (similar to PPE) compared to something around 23% for straight History, I think.

I did HisPol at Oxford. A while ago now. Bear in mind that you end up doing about 1.5x the workload of the pure history students.

Politics is quite different from history - it’s a social science. So you need to be comfortable with numbers as a lot of the content is quantitative and closer to economics than to narrative history. It’s not just political history.

If she wants to hear from students, a good place to find them is the forum on The Student Room: www.thestudentroom.co.uk/

Thanks for your reply. I did actually do history at Cambridge myself (20+ years ago...), so I am much clearer about what that element involves! 😄

She has no idea about careers at this stage, isn't at this point an aspiring politician /wanting to get into politics as a career per se. She's ruled out PPE because she doesn't want to do the other P or the E!

Really useful, thank you 👍🏼

Thanks, good points 👍🏼

@Greenbike DD says can you say a bit more about how the workload ends up being 1.5x please? That sounds pretty mad, considering a single honours at Camb (IME) is already full on (DH who went to another Russell Group thinks I had double the workload as him).

She has also clocked that at some places the Politics degree (or Politics and IR, or various other titles) is a BSc and some is BA and at Oxbridge it's a BA. She would also find it really helpful to know more about how full on the numbers element is? She did get an 8 in GCSE maths, so is perfectly numerate at that level, but isn't doing maths A Level and isn't madly keen on the idea of lots of statistics.

My only thought is that joint honours degrees are very very intensive and time consuming. A bit like working two separate part time jobs always ends up being more work than one full time job.

Just to add a different perspective to the poster above about history at Cambridge- my experience was you had to do some political history in the first year but there were lots of options to specialise in social and cultural topics later …

Following on, I would back up what @Greenbike says about the workload. Technically they do the same number of papers whether joint or single hons but for some reason it seems more, perhaps because they do more core papers. Hsps is notorious for this and I think hispol to some extent.

From my dc’s perspective, at Cambridge at least, numbers are not a feature. Quite a lot of it is quite philosophical and whilst IR is obviously different there certainly isn’t any need to do maths or statistics. It’s more like modern political history. My dc is definitely not interested in maths and is choosing to continue politics next year.

@Wigeon well I mostly had to write two essays a week (some lush terms only one) whereas straight historians were normally one essay a week and very, very occasionally two. There were also more seminars and one long, long team project.

As a PP said, just working across two different facilities inherently feels tricky because the core skills are so different.

You don’t need A level maths. But being comfortable working with numbers and stats is certainly helpful for the politics side. If you don’t love numbers you can still get through but you’ll have to pick your optional papers carefully.

The quantitative element features a data module called Q Step. The programme is adopted by a number of top universities for quantitative analysis. It doesn't contribute to your degree classification, but you're expected to pass. It gives valuable employability skills.

All humanities degrees are BAs at Oxford. The maths in the economics degrees is hard regardless of the degree awarded. It wouldn't impact on HisPol though.

Thanks so much for further replies, DD is finding it all really helpful!