I'm holding a History offer from St Hilda's. As I'm not there yet, can't comment as helpfully as some of the others here, but I definitely picked my college because I liked the atmosphere...however, I did also check out the college library and the way they teach the 1st year compulsory papers. Things like Historiography and Historical Approaches are adapted to fit tutors' expertise, so it might be worth considering that. For example at St Hilda's, everyone doing Historical Approaches does a gender option in the first term because the tutors (and the college Fellows generally) consider that an important area and it is one in which many of them do research. I had some questions about working with a couple of tutors with interests in Italian history in different colleges and was reassured that they really try to take that into consideration when you study optional papers, which are generally taught outside the college. I also checked out the travel and support grants (Hilda's has a special grant just for historians, so I was sold. Or bought?).