Anyone studied/studying at Oxford ? Wondering about workload.

[TheodoresMummy]

Have made the decision to go to Uni !!!

Whilst looking at some prospectus', I thought I would have a look at Oxford (because it's fairly close to us and it was a dream of mine to go when I was younger).

Well it looks as fab as it always did (although being a married student with kids would not allow the level of involvement that I could have had years ago).

All of the colleges accept mature student applications. One college is exclusively for mature students.

The workload looks full on, but the terms are only 8 weeks each. So with family support (which I am lucky in having) could I do it ? Am I crazy ? I looked over a sample entrance exam for the course I am particularly interested in and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it might be.

Anyone got any thoughts ?

Just about everything depends on your tutors - they can do whatever they want, pretty much. The University does prelims and finals, which everyone has to do, but that's it.

I think collections are just set by the tutors, but we didn't have them so I'm not sure!

The issue of being acommodating or not is down to the individual tutor. Otoh, if your fellow students are mature students they may be more understanding and willing to help out (by sharing lecture notes for lectures you miss, or being willing to swap tutorial times, for example)

at christ church we had collections at the start of every term.

Re laving to go home to the kids (totaly understandable)

When I was there you were expected to 'keep terms' If you wished to leave oxford during term time you had to apply to the senior censor. If your time was over the limit you would be told not to go.

Not sure what the rules were for family illness etc. Not even sure if this rule still stands.

I only ever went home once in term time in 4 years!

I recently went back as my tutor retired, and was treated to a lecture on 40 years of maths at Oxford. There have been changes to some courses as the undergrads simply don't have the level of maths to keep up. The maths course has changed - you now take an MMaths for 4 years which is pretty much the old BA (Hons) course. Or you can take a 3 year BA (Hons) which would take you to the end of the 2nd year syllabus from the old days. Was slightly shocked to see that even an Oxbridge degree is a year behind what it used to be.

Mind you I can see one possible reason: Of the cohrt who graduated pre-1985 I would say 50% went into teaching. The fellow who has replaced my tutor specialises in financial mathematics, and it seems to be that at most one or two have gone into teaching each year with the majority going into hedge funds...

PPE is a popular course, and if you have free choice of Alevel subjects then I would think that showing you are up to a suitable standard in maths would do no harm for the economics piece. I have no idea when the A* grade for A levels is coming in, but be aware that when it does the requirements for courses will increase.

I think I would investigate my old college St Hugh's.Even in my time they were good at taking people who didn't quite fit the standard model so to speak including mature students. Worth contacting them anyway or going to an open day.

As for taking time off when kids are ill- would depend very much on individual tutors I would think. Many would be understanding, some would not.

re the interview process. Something that has come home to me over the last few years of working with sixthformers is that all universities seem to want to know why you want to study a subject. And for high demand subjects like medicine, vet science and law they are also expected to show their comitment via relevant work experience.

Now when I went I just did my A levels and applied. Nowerdays Universities seem to want to want much more comitment from their students before they even take them on.

I wonder with all the pressure on to get as many people into tertiary edcuation as possible universities are finding people arriving who really don't have enough interest in the curse to sustain them for 3 years.

Mind you I have no idea what answer I would have given. Seemed like less work than law?!

I thought all colleges did collections but obviously not.

I think the most important thing is the college you choose for the course you want to do. Mine (Lincoln) was crap so don't go there! Crap, uninterested tutors. Tutors failing to organise teaching for the courses I wanted to do. Tutors giving back marked essays 8 weeks after they were submitted, AFTER I had finished my finals .

Probably the whole experience was summed up in the fact that I got details of my degree results over the phone from the exam schools and that was the last I ever heard from Oxford. Most colleges send out a letter to their graduates with their results, formally, and a congratulations and thank you and good luck or something. Lincoln? Nothing. Absolutely sums up their attitude.

However, since I was there the Said Business School has opened and that has given the whole of the PPE community a bit of a kick up the backside. If I was going again I would definitely do economics and something in order to get the benefit of the facilities of the Said Business School. Economics at Oxford used to be a bit dead but it's really improving. I do have a bit of knowledge of the business school and from what I can see, it's excellent.

about the going home thing - exactly how close to Oxford do you live? It always was the case that undergraduates had to reside within 3 miles of Carfax - is that still the case? It seems to me that could be a deal breaker if it is.

We always had collections, although they were not always taken very seriously and not neccesarily done under exam conditions - and they do only go to the tutor - the university neither knows nor cares if you have done them. Other people in the same college had either none or very serious ones - it is (as others have said, as is everything) down to your tutor.

I would go and talk to the admissions office in their swanky new offices in Little Clarendon Street about all these things - they are in the fairly unique position of being tied neither to a department nor to a college and might well be able to advise you on a lot of your questions. Also if you wanted to know about access courses, the Department of Continuing Education just round the corner in Wellington Square would be a good place to start.

Have to confess that I did almost nothing (work-related) at Oxford for my first three years.
Worked like stink for Finals, though.
And that's the beauty of it, I think - it's up to you how and when to put the effort in over the time you have. You can either plod along nicely, walk then jog or (like me) laze about and then run like the clappers!

I was never sure whether the 3 miles from Carfax was a college or a university rule, but if the latter then I guess it would be a dealbreaker unless you were willing to move your family. House prices certainly used to be expensive...

these are the residence rules of somerville

'6. Undergraduates in their first year are expected to live in College during Full Term. Any exception to this must have the approval of the undergraduate's Tutor and of the Principal. 7. The Essential Information for Students (Proctors and Assessors Memorandum) requires, amongst other things, that all undergraduates be in residence during Full Term for a minimum of 42 nights. Undergraduates in their first year are required by the College to obtain prior consent of their Tutors for absence from Oxford during Full Term.

8. An undergraduate room in College is for single occupancy by the undergraduate to whom it is allocated. Hence undergraduates must strictly observe the limits on the number of occasions when an undergraduate may entertain a guest overnight, given in the Deans Regulations. '

I'm sure all yje other collages hace similar rules, Sounds the same as where I was an undergraduate

I knew a mature student with children when I was at Oxford who was exempted from all the normal residence rules, she lived somewhere further away, with her family.

TBH I'd go for the mature student college, or another university. Unless it's changed a lot I think Oxford as a whole is far less tolerant of different types of student (and diversity altogether) than many other universities. I've worked and studied in a few since leaving Oxford and I think that you have to factor the downsides of Oxford against the good points - in another university you might find many more mature students and students from all sorts of backgrounds, which could be more pleasant if you're going as a mature student.

We live in Stratford-upon-Avon at the moment, so I imagine we would be looking to move. Oxford is very expensive, but so is Stratford so not too much of a shock to the system hopefully.

I think I am getting a bit carried away. It's quite a big decision though. We also need to consider education for DS (eligible for school in 2008), next DC, DH's career, my career (all kind of go hand in hand)....

Porpoise - pmsl at your 'approach' to your studies.

Re other Universities: I was originally considering Coventry, Bham, UCE - all local. Wasn't inspired by UCE prospectus, liked Coventry a lot (although was not looking for PPE at that time), Bham still waiting for prospectus 3 weeks on.....

As we would have to move for Oxford anyway, perhaps I should widen my search. Oh boy, what have I started ?

I will def get in touch with the Admissions Office and the Dept for Continuing Ed, thanks for that.

By the way, Theodore's Mummy, I had a bit of a fling with a mature student from Manchester college while I was an undergrad.

He was extremely lovely. And frighteningly clever. And now a rather balding academic.

Message withdrawn

Pruners - do you think you could ask him how he is finding it ?

How supportive are the tutors ?

How many essays/tutorials does he have per week ?

Have just been reading through a few of the college prospectus' and get a very good vibe reading the Harris Man one.

Balliol came across as a world away.

Trinity seemed ok and Worcester ok too, but Harris M just sounds 'right'....

I was at Trinity, so I can tell you a little bit about that. Lovely college (though I would say that ) and very laid back. Huge advantages in terms of location - slap bang in middle of city, yet big, beautiful gardens. Not too academically pressured, but not right at the bottom of the league tables either. BUT (and it might be a big but for you) it's fairly traditional - still quite a high percentage of public school students, for example (though I was state school and got along fine). And I don't remember ever meeting any mature undergrads - whether that means there weren't any, or just that the 'regular' undergrads didn't really mix with them , I don't know. But it does suggest they weren't terribly well integrated, if there were any.

I'd say it rather depends on what you're hoping to get out of college life. If you're keen to benefit from the social side as well as the academic, then you might be better off in a mature student college, or at least one with a bit more diversity than Trinity, so that you feel you're at the heart of college life. If you're only really bothered about getting the degree, and you're not expecting to socialise with other students that much, then it probably doesn't matter too much which college you go for, as long as they accept a reasonable number of mature students.

I'd definitely echo the advice about attending a college/subject open day. That way you should be able to get a chance to speak to students and college staff. It might even be worth contacting the PPE tutor at whichever college you decide you fancy, by phone or email - some tutors are a bit batty, but most of them would probably be pretty receptive. And if you have a nice chat with them, and seem keen, they're more likely to remember you when your application lands on their desk.

I read PPP so there was some overlap with PPE (the philosophy bit) but I think (and hope) that the philosophy course has changed since the late 80's, and the tutors I had have either moved on or are dead (of excessive alcohol and tobacco use ).

Not trying to put you off, I loved it at Oxford, and I did appreciate the academic rigour and high expectations, but then I would probably have loved any university.

But as Mrs Bumblebee says, as a mature student, be careful you choose somewhere which doesn't make you feel like an ancient spare part among all the gilded (and arrogant) youth.

Fennel - your comment about philosophy rings a bell with me!

We didn't study anyone more recent than JS Mill . The tutors were all cobwebby old relics.

In fact my philosophy degree consists of Mill, Hume, Plato, Locke, Hobbes, Machiavelli. Ummmm. That's it. Oh, and one lecture on Wittgenstein.

Oh yes, 1.5 terms - 12 essays and tuturials - just on JS Mill.

Logic. More Logic.

Then Locke, Berkeley, Descartes, Hume. More Hume. Yet more Hume. And some more Hume.

That was about it. Turgid.

Oooh, Berkeley! Had forgotten him.

Hume - missing shade of blue!!

What a pointless waste of time

It was a bit, I was quite irritated about how much we hadn't done in 3 years of Philosophy, I did a Ph.D. which included lots of philosophy of language and postmodernist thought and had to read all of that from scratch.

Hence some of my reservations about the Oxford courses, they are thorough, but aren't necessarily the best in their subject, depending on your interests.

Agree. It was the same in economics. Elderly, elderly curriculum. A degree in Economics from Oxford would not have qualified you to join the Government Economics Service because it was not good enough .

when I was there I did phil of logic and language and also heidegger and satre so a bit more modern, but I agree there wasn't anything post war apart from the the l&l paper mentioned and the post-kantian paper (I did satre and heidegger but you could do more modern - I was advised against anyone more kooky than heidegger on the basis that the finals questions would be too obscure as no one there really knew enough about them!). This was ten years ago.

I did languages. I would say you could definitely get away with missing a lot of lectures for most components- I got a 2:1 having been to probably under 10 lectures the whole tim I was there. We seemed to have a lot of work compared to other subjects - i had a bf doing PPE who hardly ever seemed to do any essays, but he did have more lectures he had to go to. I found it a very DIY course really. You had to be extremely self-motivated and good at concentrating on your own for hours on end to get the work don. But I also partied a lot so overall would estimate that I spent 2-3 days a week writing and researching essays, then another day or two doing peripheral stuff (translations in the context of my degree), so in the scheme of thigs you could fit that around children. Exams were stressful as we only did them after 2 terms then right at the end so there was a lot to revise for Finals! Good luck!