Oxbridge: The Good Life.
Welcome to the Oxbridge forums: where prospective and current students can discuss anything about Oxford and Cambridge.
-
- Reputation:
- Thread Starter
- New Member
- Location: London
Oxbridge: The Good Life.Hello!
Ive been reading this forum for a quite while and I haven't seen anyone giving a good coherent account of what its like to be at Oxbridge and why people should be so keen to apply here.
There's some information floating around but its quite patchy and deals with mainly practicalities for students who already have offers or with very broad issues which you can get from college websites.
My post is aimed at encouraging people to apply to Oxbridge. It is a bit unconventional. It really is written from my perspective; it highlights things which I personally love about being at Oxford, rather than 'advantages' you would find on the TSR wiki pages. I think there are quite a few people like me, who think like me and are attracted to the same sorts of thing as I was when I was an applicant. I always suspected that going to the best university in the country would be 'the good life' but no one ever confirmed it; no one ever showed me pictures or made it come alive...that is what im aiming to do.
I am really targeting people who have just finished that AS levels and are considering applying to Oxbridge.
If you think im emphasising the wrong aspects of Oxbridge or encouraging people to apply for 'not the right reasons'; don't bother replying, your opinion does not add anything to the discussion. Thanks!
My post has 5 sections:
1. Accommodation, College and Living
2. Social Life and Going Out
3. Finances
4. Work and Exams
5. The Degree and Prospects
Ill do one section each day.
Click on the images to make them bigger.
Accommodation, College and Living
I'm very fortunate that I go to quite a wealthy college. And it does help to apply to a wealthy college because you will invariably get more comfortable and spacious living conditions.
ChCh, St Johns, Magdalen, Merton, Balliol at Oxford
Trinity, St Johns, Clare, Emma, Caius, Christs at Cambridge
Don't listen to people who say they were put off by the college being 'too big'. There's no real advantage of having a small, ugly college somewhere out of town.
So, this is the front of the accommodation:
From inside:
Its located about 10 minutes walking distance from Tesco, Sainsburys, M&S and many other shops. Nearby are several cafes and restaurants including Starbucks, Costa, Brown's and a couple of wonderful cocktail bars. Its about 15 minutes from the main club area.
This central location is a theme common to many Oxbridge colleges. Unlike most other universities, undergraduate accommodation is incredibly close to all the amenities you will ever need and more. Its also very close to the main lecture theaters. I will go into more detail in Section 4 but my main lecture theatre was 10 minutes walking distance from where I lived in first and second year.
The accommodation I am living in is very modern but of course there are the beautiful older buildings throughout both cities. My college has several large, picturesque quads also but accommodation is certainly more comfortable in one of the new buildings.
My room is on floor 2 - we have a lift so transferring things in and out is quite convenient.
Each room is equipped with an en-suite and a fridge/freezer as standard. We also have unlimited internet. It is extremely fast (3-8 MBps) and there are literally no limits. I have downloaded over 100 GB in the last 3 months and quite a lot of that is from torrent/usenet. No one ever says anything. Its absolutely brilliant. Another advantage of a rich college, I think.
The rooms are cleaned and vacuumed by college employees called scouts. At our college, they clean room + toilet twice a week and even leave wash your towels and bedding for you. Anything breaks or doesn't work? Inform them and within 24 hours it will be replaced or fixed, even on weekends! They do an excellent job.
The kitchen is of excellent quality. Its cleaned every day by the scouts. 5 people share one kitchen.
This is one the living areas which is attached to our kitchen:
What if you don't want to make your own food?
The college food is amazing. Its not only the food though, its the setting and the grandeur too. The hall is like the Hogwarts (from Harry Potter) hall. Dinner can be a three course meal where each course is served by a large catering crew or a simple buffet-style meal if you're in a hurry. The cost of these meals is also ridiculously low as everything is subsidised like mad at Oxbridge, especially at good colleges. All meals are around £2.50-£3.
The society dinners are the best. These are usually with tutors and students in your college studying your subject. They have the best food and sometimes you get some amazing guests!
^prof winston.
We also have a free gym in the basement of the building. Its hardly ever busy and its extremely well equipped.
It is really is a wonderful place to live.
We also get car parking provided by the college. Now for a bit of a digression...
and its to do with my car. I drive a nice little car, a BMW 1 series. Yeah, its not amazing but for a student car its quite decent. And you might think my parents paid for it, just like they did my public school education? Wrong on both counts. I went to grammar school and the 10k I paid for the car I earned by doing an internship for a bank over the summer holidays. Students from other universities also get the opportunity to do these but at Oxbridge they are just so much more common and easy to get. 40% of my year group at my college did one of these lucrative 10 week internships. I'll talk a bit more things related to this in Section 5.
And what is the cost of all of this?
£3000 per year (£830 room + £170 meals per term X 3)... including room and meals. You just can't beat that for what you get. No matter where you go you can't beat it because Oxbridge subsidise your costs so much.Last edited by TGL; 11-07-2012 at 23:42. -
- Reputation:
- Exalted and Worshipped Member
- Posts: 1,119
Re: Oxbridge: The Good Life.Good post, but I'm pretty sure Balliol is not one of the wealthiest colleges. In fact it's pretty average in terms of endowment (compared to other old colleges).(Original post by TGL)
Hello!
Ive been reading this forum for a quite while and I haven't seen anyone giving a good coherent account of what its like to be at Oxbridge and why people should be so keen to apply here.
There's some information floating around but its quite patchy and deals with mainly practicalities for students who already have offers or with very broad issues which you can get from college websites.
My post is aimed at encouraging people to apply to Oxbridge. It is a bit unconventional. It really is written from my perspective; it highlights things which I personally love about being at Oxford, rather than 'advantages' you would find on the TSR wiki pages. I think there are quite a few people like me, who think like me and are attracted to the same sorts of thing as I was when I was an applicant. I always suspected that going to the best university in the country would be 'the good life' but no one ever confirmed it; no one ever showed me pictures or made it come alive...that is what im aiming to do.
I am really targeting people who have just finished that AS levels and are considering applying to Oxbridge.
If you think im emphasising the wrong aspects of Oxbridge or encouraging people to apply for 'not the right reasons'; don't bother replying, your opinion does not add anything to the discussion. Thanks!
My post has 5 sections:
1. Accommodation, College and Living
2. Social Life and Going Out
3. Finances
4. Work and Exams
5. The Degree and Prospects
Ill do one section each day.
Click on the images to make them bigger.
Accommodation, College and Living
I'm very fortunate that I go to quite a wealthy college. And it does help to apply to a wealthy college because you will invariably get more comfortable and spacious living conditions.
ChCh, St Johns, Magdalen, Merton, Balliol at Oxford
Trinity, St Johns, Clare, Emma, Caius, Christs at Cambridge
Don't listen to people who say they were put off by the college being 'too big'. There's no real advantage of having a small, ugly college somewhere out of town.
So, this is the front of the accommodation:
From inside:
Its located about 10 minutes walking distance from Tesco, Sainsburys, M&S and many other shops. Nearby are several cafes and restaurants including Starbucks, Costa, Brown's and a couple of wonderful cocktail bars. Its about 15 minutes from the main club area.
This central location is a theme common to many Oxbridge colleges. Unlike most other universities, undergraduate accommodation is incredibly close to all the amenities you will ever need and more. Its also very close to the main lecture theaters. I will go into more detail in Section 4 but my main lecture theatre was 10 minutes walking distance from where I lived in first and second year.
The accommodation I am living in is very modern but of course there are the beautiful older buildings throughout both cities. My college has several large, picturesque quads also but accommodation is certainly more comfortable in one of the new buildings.
My room is on floor 2 - we have a lift so transferring things in and out is quite convenient.
Each room is equipped with an en-suite and a fridge/freezer as standard. We also have unlimited internet. It is extremely fast (3-8 MBps) and there are literally no limits. I have downloaded over 100 GB in the last 3 months and quite a lot of that is from torrent/usenet. No one ever says anything. Its absolutely brilliant. Another advantage of a rich college, I think.
The rooms are cleaned and vacuumed by college employees called scouts. At our college, they clean room + toilet twice a week and even leave wash your towels and bedding for you. Anything breaks or doesn't work? Inform them and within 24 hours it will be replaced or fixed, even on weekends! They do an excellent job.
The kitchen is of excellent quality. Its cleaned every day by the scouts. 5 people share one kitchen.
This is one the living areas which is attached to our kitchen:
What if you don't want to make your own food?
The college food is amazing. Its not only the food though, its the setting and the grandeur too. The hall is like the Hogwarts (from Harry Potter) hall. Dinner can be a three course meal where each course is served by a large catering crew or a simple buffet-style meal if you're in a hurry. The cost of these meals is also ridiculously low as everything is subsidised like mad at Oxbridge, especially at good colleges. All meals are around £2.50-£3.
The society dinners are the best. These are usually with tutors and students in your college studying your subject. They have the best food and sometimes you get some amazing guests!
^prof winston.
We also have a free gym in the basement of the building. Its hardly ever busy and its extremely well equipped.
It is really is a wonderful place to live.
We also get car parking provided by the college. Now for a bit of a digression...
and its to do with my car. I drive a nice little car, a BMW 1 series. Yeah, its not amazing but for a student car its quite decent. And you might think my parents paid for it, just like they did my public school education? Wrong on both counts. I went to grammar school and the 10k I paid for the car I earned by doing an internship for a bank over the summer holidays. Students from other universities also get the opportunity to do these but at Oxbridge they are just so much more common and easy to get. 40% of my year group at my college did one of these lucrative 10 week internships. I'll talk a bit more things related to this in Section 5.
And what is the cost of all of this?
£3000 per year (£830 room + £170 meals per term X 3)... including room and meals. You just can't beat that for what you get. No matter where you go you can't beat it because Oxbridge subsidise your costs so much.Last edited by qwertyuiop1993; 12-07-2012 at 01:24. -
- Reputation:
- Overlord in Training
- Location: London
Re: Oxbridge: The Good Life.Is there a ranked list on wikipedia?(Original post by gethsemane342)
Equally, Christ's is *definitely* not one of the wealthiest colleges in Cambridge. It's average at best. Wikipedia informs me that 17 colleges have more money than it does... -
- Reputation:
- Vengeful, Imperial Overlord of The Student Room
- Location: Wales
- Posts: 3,561
Re: Oxbridge: The Good Life.Yup. Wikipedia Cambridge Colleges and there's a list of the colleges with various attributes. You can alter the order of ascendancy on any column.(Original post by Chief Wiggum)
Is there a ranked list on wikipedia? -
- Reputation:
- TSR Idol
- Posts: 8,172
Re: Oxbridge: The Good Life.wow - this is going to be an extremely comprehensive account! I applaud your effort.
Indeed. Plus it is having troubles balancing the books recently - it tried to introduce a fee for joining the college that was fortunately defeated, but the money will have to come from somewhere.(Original post by qwertyuiop1993)
Good post, but I'm pretty sure Balliol is not one of the wealthiest colleges. In fact it's pretty average in terms of endowment (compared to other old colleges).
You can find lists of endowments. Not exactly the only/perfect measure of wealth, but its the one that seems to be used the most(Original post by Chief Wiggum)
Is there a ranked list on wikipedia?
Last edited by nexttime; 12-07-2012 at 19:37. -
- Reputation:
- Vengeful, Imperial Overlord of The Student Room
- Location: West coast main line.
Re: Oxbridge: The Good Life.That's because we spend it all on being cool. It costs a lot of money to not be Trinity.(Original post by qwertyuiop1993)
Good post, but I'm pretty sure Balliol is not one of the wealthiest colleges. In fact it's pretty average in terms of endowment (compared to other old colleges).
In all seriousness- Balliol isn't particularly rich by Oxford college standards- about 15th out of 40. It generates a lot of money compared to most colleges year on year, but the endowment figure is quite small. This is partly because it rose to prominence in the last 200 years, and as such doesn't own half of England like St John's does. It also spends a lot on scholarships (they gave me one, so any moron should be able to get one) and student support, so the endowment figure never tends to increase much.
This being said, for a place with 700-ish students, it's still positively minted by comparison to most institutions in the UK. The next three richest universities, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester, have a combined endowment of £550m. Between 85,000 students. And, compared to most of the UK, they're rich. Warwick, for example, has twenty times the students, but roughly one twentieth the endowment of Balliol (£4m).
I'm full of useless crap like this. -
- Reputation:
- TSR Idol
- Posts: 8,172
Re: Oxbridge: The Good Life.Its St Johns. Can't you tell by the first thing he mentions being wealthy colleges?(Original post by benpearson1)
What college do you go to? Sorry if it's in there but couldn't find it..
Last edited by nexttime; 18-07-2012 at 07:01. -
- Reputation:
- TSR Idol
- Posts: 8,172
Re: Oxbridge: The Good Life.I just realised that this statement makes no sense. Since when did small colleges equate to being out of town? All of the centre-most colleges are smaller than average (Exeter, Lincoln, Jesus, BNC...). And since when did being small equate to being ugly? The most modern colleges tend to be amongst the biggest (not that modern necessarily = ugly, but if you polled people they would correlate).(Original post by TGL)
Don't listen to people who say they were put off by the college being 'too big'. There's no real advantage of having a small, ugly college somewhere out of town.
And i disagree - size is a perfectly valid criteria.
Its St Johns. Can't you tell by the first thing he mentions being wealthy colleges?(Original post by benpearson1)
What college do you go to? Sorry if it's in there but couldn't find it..
-
- Reputation:
- Exalted Member
Re: Oxbridge: The Good Life.true, but Balliol definitely has one of the best (if not THE best) student support cash pool (in Oxford anyway...)(Original post by qwertyuiop1993)
Good post, but I'm pretty sure Balliol is not one of the wealthiest colleges. In fact it's pretty average in terms of endowment (compared to other old colleges).
