PPE or PPS?

Also, does anyone else find it weird that an irate economics graduate on the brink of middle age is posting in a teenage forum? Has your subscription to the Daily Mail (reassurance you're not the only one who's a total ass) run out?

1) It isn't just a teenage forum, there are a number of threads for postgraduates on here.

2) There are a number of people in their 30s on this site.

3) Getting personal about my age and associating me with the hard right because you can't handle the fact that I ridicule those on the extreme left isn't going to make your point your any more convincing.

4) I know 'studying' PPS/SPS has made you the butt of many jokes, but you don't have to make it that obvious.

5) I have made my reasons for contributing to Oxbridge-only threads anywhere on the internet quite clear, if you have a problem with that, it is for you to deal with in your own time.

I know you lefty sociopaths love to claim to be the champions of the poor and the needy, but it's amazing just how quickly you resort to abuse when the veneer gets scratched.

I'd love to do Philosophy and I'm good with numbers so I guess PPE would be an obvious choice from the two, but I'm really interested in Sociology, and if the Psychology part wasn't scientific I'd love to study that too...

Nothing, it's certainly FAR better than the garbage Guardian.

Calling the Guardian garbage. Oh that's brilliant.

The Daily Mail is a joke of a paper that isn't even taken seriously.

Not taken seriously...? Wow, big statement.

Daily Mail circulation: 2,100,855

The Guardian circulation: 283,063

..... which means just over 7 times as many people read the Daily Mail as The Guardian.

Now, if you knew anything about politics, you might know that the editor of the Daily Mail is pretty much the most powerful journalist in politics. In fact, despite their arguably very opposed ideologies, Gordon Brown desperately tried to keep up a friendship with Paul Dacre (Daily Mail Editor), above all others, because he realised just how much damage Dacre could do to him if Brown wasn't careful.

Obviously some people take the Daily Mail seriously. Wait, no, sorry, Gordon Brown doesn't count as a human.

My mistake. You're right.



Dumbass.

Calling me an idiot? Oh the irony

The Sun is the biggest selling Newspaper, doesn't mean its taken seriously. People mock the Daily Mail. If you watch HIGNFY and QI, the likes of Stephen Fry, Paul Merton and Ian Hislop have mocked. It's has almost become a parody of itself.

Whenever a DailyMail article is posted on here or forums such as Digital Spy Forum (politics section), peoples reaction are "Oh, it's the Daily Mail " I mean, it even has nickname. The Daily Fail

The majority of its readers are sad, pathetic middle class women who are in their 40s or 50s and have nothing better to do.

If you want, I could create a poll in the General section, and I would, I bet you the majority of the people would agree.

The fact is, the Daily Mail is a hypocritical newspaper.

Oh and have a look in here...

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1480965

That's just a taster.

You could do history and politics? You sound more suited to PPE or history and politics with your subjects if Im honest.

Bit late for subject suggestions. I'm graduating in 6 months.

(.....)

If you use that logic, the fact that people mock it, then you can say the Prime Minister is not taken seriously. Nor is the President of the United States. Nor is Al Qaeda, for that matter.

People often mock things that are powerful and take a big role in the general picture of things. This is why such prominent things as major politicians, world organisations etc etc are so mocked. Have I Got News For You feeds off these types of things because people like to laugh at people who they may conceive as superior to them. People like to think that they could do a better job at running the country, neglecting the fact that they themselves have achieved very little in life. This is why you're more likely to hear ''David Cameron is a ****'' than ''Peter Sutcliffe is a ****''. Everyone knows David Cameron is an infinitely nicer person, but a lot of people are jealous of the power he holds and thus enjoy knocking him.

Furthermore, the majority of the people on this site are extremely liberal, unrealistic and naive individuals who see it as fashionable to knock the Daily Mail. It's just the thing to do. Just like it is fashionable to defend all immigrants. We, as students, just have this annoying trait where we think we're better, and could do a better job, than the people running the country.

Finally, the Daily Mail is not the only paper with a disparaging nickname. How about ''The Grauniad'' and ''The 'Torygraph''???

No doubt you're also one of those people who will use every opportunity possible to scream ''THAT'S RACIST!''

2) There are a number of people in their 30s on this site.

PPE for guys.
PPS for girls.
Some will break this trend.

reckon it's easier to get into pps then?

Edit: Funnily enough, a very similar percentage of English, biology, history, law and sociology graduates go into retail, catering, waiting and bar staff jobs ('McDonald's jobs') according to the HESCU stats. So much for law graduates being prepared to take 'only the best' jobs. As you will no doubt point out there are of course problems with this. The study isn't longitudinal and so these stats don't tell us what jobs these graduates were in after another 6 months and another 6 months etc. but it is the best we have until we have another study.

Craggy, I have to take issue with one of your points. You claimed your essays were required to be about 2500-3500 words, which was three times as long as law essays. Our essays are typically in the 1700-2500 word range, so they're not really that much shorter. Admittedly, problem answers occasionally are, and anything handwritten in an hour (as some of our supervision essays are required to be) will be shorter. Still, our essays aren't particularly shorter than yours. I realise this isn't a big pissing contest--Cambridge courses in general are tough--but my experience of the law course seems rather different from that of your friends/acquaintances.

1) Those who switch to SPS for the final year (e.g. medics), and who effectively do the Part II in one year, aren't restricted by their choice of papers. The paper I sat appeared to include a majority of SPSians and you have no idea just how far away you are from the rest of the Cambridge pack when it comes to the technical demands of your subject.
Your papers have a huge choice, the questions are almost the same every year, the reading lists consist of (joke) low-grade references and the essays that I saw, including from those who supposedly gained firsts (I can't see how you can get anything less), were essentially childish stories written by the exceptionally naive and exhibited nowhere near the quality and depth of those in other arts subjects. You don't need any prior training in Sociology/Politics and your claim is just a facile attempt to cover up just what kind of low-grade intellect does this pitiful subject and your diatribe illustrates this - you make a series of dubious assumptions about who would do what kind of paper and then insult your own peers in the process, failing to note that the percentages gaining the various classes do not vary a great deal between SPS papers. I took 8 supervisions and that was 8 more than I needed - the SPS students were asking questions for which the answers should have been obvious in kindergarten.

2) You can lie about your workload, and you are lying to the nth degree, not only about the number of essays in comparison to other subjects, the amount of effort you had to put in etc...but what you fail to mention are the technical demands of the subject, which many would put in the bargain basement category.

3) You then exhibit the classic hallmark of the intellectual lightweight - the discrimination/prejudice card. You make a childish claim, like most of your ilk, and then assume that I am the same age as you - I finished my Cambridge degree in the 90s, have a Phd, and have worked for a number leading employers in London. You then make a series of laughably naive assumptions about my 'corporate agenda' (and that of others) in the process, throwing around typically wet notions of "value" systems without any evidence to back up your claims - I've noticed that sociologists do suffer from the need to make up the opinions of others or invent theories without any basis, thinking that they have provided some kind of insight into a particular topic that nobody else has ever thought of - it's usually nothing insightful at all. Let me guess, you are attending the University of Life, you don't care what happens around you because you think that smoking a joint, dressing like a hippie, going on about the poor in society and spouting your facile nonsense might actually change things ? Tell me, why did you go to Cambridge if you didn't want to be a conformist with a decent job ?

4) You then go on about original/creative clothes, most would regard it as late-onset puberty - just what point are you trying to prove by standing out in a crowd, are you attention seeking ? Since when did a gender balance equate to entry on merit ? You should know that there are three times as many men as women with an IQ above 130 (the Oxbridge top 2%) - I bet that would get me a third in the mother of all non-subjects, Gender. Since when did the proportion of ethnic minorities/international students imply anything about the quality of the course or the intelligence of those doing it ? Since when is a "social" environment of any consequence to anyone except a sociologist who has too much time on his/her hands and who does nothing else but spend their life socialising (banging townies) at 5th Avenue ? I daresay you don't ask how many are from disadvantaged backgrounds or on special access schemes as the answer is obvious - most of them.

5) I'd take a History graduate over an SPS/PPSian every time; when recruiting graduates from Cambridge I chuck all those with an SPS/PPS degree in the reject pile now - it's frightening the frequency with which those graduates leave any given graduate scheme they somehow manage to get onto, they just can't handle it. I'd rather be a tweed-wearing toffy historian with a brain and a bank balance of note than an SPS/PPS graduate without either.

Nobody has anything bad to say about any degree at Cambridge other than SPS, why is that ?

A few like-minded souls decided that after the Laura Spence debacle it was about time Oxbridge graduates did something to fight back and save the reputation of the two universities from the populist Oxbridge bashing that one sees so often, with particular reference to the nonsense issue of elitism and degree classifications wherever there exists a forum on such topics online. These are dark times for Oxbridge and unless they come out fighting, we'll go from having two out-and-out world class institutions to having none - if the truth be told, we have little else to brag about abroad now.

I know you lefty sociopaths love to claim to be the champions of the poor and the needy, but it's amazing just how quickly you resort to abuse when the veneer gets scratched.

Oh sorry! The West Wing told me that essays tended to be about 1500 words. But I know this sort of thing varies by college.

As to the point about value systems, its not particularly controversial to observe that a large number of people trying to get into finance and law are people who want to be rich and successful. This has got nothing to do with postmodern theory or anything else connected to SPS. Its just straightforward observation and its a fairly neutral point, that most people agree with.
I don't actually care about being rich and successful. Unless by 'success' one means finding a livelihood that I enjoy and find fulfilling, and having time to spend with people I love. Again several people would be to hand on here to point out that I'm not in the least bit 'conformist'.
You've just had the misfortune of trying to slap a stereotype onto a very unusual person.

Actually people take the piss out of Education Studies and Land Economy more than they do of PPS these days.

No worries! Just setting the record straight--don't like it when people think my degree is less work than it is (any more than you do...).

General question @ PPS applicants; what other courses do you apply for? PPS is the only course of its type in the country, no?

Ok. Didn't you find it hard to write your personal statement, though? Cos wouldn't you have to talk about psychology and sociology, which wouldn't be very useful for a Politics admissions tutor?

No. Cambridge are quite understanding about the fact that people will usually be applying to single subjects elsewhere. There are lots of different strategies people adopt for how to deal with that in their personal statements. Mine was basically focused on issues that interest me which are broadly relevant to loads of subjects including Politics. I didn't explicitly tackle the discipline in it.
The other thing is that Cambridge give people an SAQ to fill out where they have space for an optional extension to their personal statements. I'm sure many people use this to tack on bits about how they really like the other subjects too

I actually applied for Biology and Natural Sciences previously and it was a similar thing.