Oxford postgraduate applicants 2014/15

If you're still working on this – I did not get the Ertegun Scholarship, but I did get interviewed for it, and in the end got a different scholarship (Clarendon), so I could potentially answer a few questions. Definitely apply, though! Let me know if you have anything you'd like to ask me.

Clarendons unite!

Reply 5981

Historiadora

1

Original post by JoshS92

Thanks for your reply! I just really want to know what they are looking for in an applicant and how competitive it is? I am looking to apply for the MSt in Philosophical Theology and It's not a very popular course. I don't know if that influences my application or not? Also the academic achievement part are they looking for people who are at First Class Honours level now? I just finished my second year and am entering third year with a 2:1 but with the expectation to finish with a First. I don't know if i've blown my chance by finishing my second year with a 2:1?

Thanks for everything! :smile:

Your best bet for knowing what they're looking for in an applicant is to look carefully at all the materials posted on their website, and the profiles of any scholars that DID get the scholarship. I didn't get it, and I personally think it was because I could not justify well and wholly how a) my work could be interdisciplinary/my interests were interdisciplinary and b) how it would benefit my country/how I would contribute to culture there.

As for marks, again, I don't know, but I suspect in your case it will depend very much on references, writing samples, and your proposal. 65ish doesn't stand out much on its own, but if you have good supporting materials they might consider you. The thing is, even if you're sure you can achieve a 1st in your 3rd year, that's hard to justify, so you're gonna need your referees to do it for you. I don't know if you've blown your chances or not, and you can't know until you apply. Definitely do apply!

If it gives you a point of reference, I had 74 for my 2nd year, and ended my degree with 73 overall.

Reply 5982

farazgla

1

Original post by llacerta

Moved into my new house on St. John St., and currently have a nine-bedroom Georgian townhouse to myself. If anyone fancies a rave, let me know. :tongue:

And good luck to everyone moving to Oxford soon (or those who have just moved!) Don't be perturbed if there aren't many people in your accommodation yet; they'll begin to trickle in over the next few weeks. Use this time to get to know your college and the town so that when everyone else does arrive, you can be the expert. :biggrin:

Moving into college accommodation tomorrow. Exciting! When do most people tend to have moved in by? (It's an all-postgrad college, if that makes a difference.)

Reply 5983

EffigyWellington

6

Original post by farazgla

Moving into college accommodation tomorrow. Exciting! When do most people tend to have moved in by? (It's an all-postgrad college, if that makes a difference.)

In my house this far I'd guess about a third of the rooms have been filled, people have been quietly milling in over the weekend. I've been by the college site a few times and it looks rather dead this far, so my guess is a lot of people will be turning up over the course of this week!

Reply 5984

ellie.rew

9

Original post by farazgla

Moving into college accommodation tomorrow. Exciting! When do most people tend to have moved in by? (It's an all-postgrad college, if that makes a difference.)

Usually the latter half of this week is when it starts to fill up - my house last year was full by Saturday of the equivalent week, with the UGs arriving en masse on Sunday of 0th.

Reply 5985

funlips

anyone payed any actual fees yet? payed accomm but nothing else, feel as though i should have...

Reply 5986

llacerta

19

Original post by funlips

anyone payed any actual fees yet? payed accomm but nothing else, feel as though i should have...

I haven't even paid for my accommodation and I've lived here for a week...If I'm honest I don't know how payment for fees works exactly, but I assume at some point soon you'll get a bill telling you what you need to pay and when.

Reply 5987

kittyb99

11

Original post by funlips

anyone payed any actual fees yet? payed accomm but nothing else, feel as though i should have...

At my college we didn't pay fees until like 6th week or something mental like that :tongue:

Reply 5988

El Salvador

21

Original post by funlips

anyone payed any actual fees yet? payed accomm but nothing else, feel as though i should have...

Paid accommodation until January, paid college and university fees.

Reply 5989

swing89

Hello all. I've been lurking with intent these past few weeks as I find myself in the same position as many of you were this time last year, i.e. pulling together my supporting documents (and pulling out my hair with stress/excitement!). It's very encouraging to see the success stories.

On that note, I hope you don't mind my asking but I had a question about MSt supervisors for those who've gone before. Did any of you contact a potential supervisor for a Masters, or is that DPhil thing only? There are a couple of faculty members in the department (English) who perfectly match my research interests, but so far I've seen quite conflicting information on whether Masters students should make an approach. Any and all help much appreciated :smile:

Reply 5990

Alexherzog

I haven't even been told anything about my rent - I paid a deposit, and that's it. I'm keeping my mouth shut :wink:

Reply 5991

Historiadora

1

Original post by funlips

anyone payed any actual fees yet? payed accomm but nothing else, feel as though i should have...

Original post by llacerta

I haven't even paid for my accommodation and I've lived here for a week...If I'm honest I don't know how payment for fees works exactly, but I assume at some point soon you'll get a bill telling you what you need to pay and when.

I haven't paid anything at all either. My scholarship covers college and uni fees, so I'm guessing Grad Funding will take care of that one for me, but when I asked the Domestic Bursar at my college about paying accomm fees they said we wouldn't be charged until at least term started, so I'm not too worried.

On the subject of flatmates/housemates: I was on my own for the past two weeks, but the first of my flatmates has made it in today!

Reply 5992

QHF

11

Original post by swing89

On that note, I hope you don't mind my asking but I had a question about MSt supervisors for those who've gone before. Did any of you contact a potential supervisor for a Masters, or is that DPhil thing only? There are a couple of faculty members in the department (English) who perfectly match my research interests, but so far I've seen quite conflicting information on whether Masters students should make an approach. Any and all help much appreciated :smile:

AFAIK the English faculty has no rule saying potential MSt students shouldn't informally approach people in their areas of interest. I remember doing it. It might be worth framing it more generally in terms of research interests rather than going straight in talking about supervision, because while it's worth having a specific potential MSt dissertation interest, these often change pretty radically between when you apply and when you start dissertating. One thing you could consider is emailing one or both of the people listed as course conveners on the page for the MSt period you're interested in -- they're generally very happy to talk about the MSt and they might be able to point you towards other people in the faculty who might potentially be dissertation supervisors. The conveners might also be on top of potential spanners in the works, e.g. '[X] would be perfect but she's retiring for good next year' or '[Y] would be perfect but next Trinity she's likely going to be tied up with the final stages of her long-awaited volume for the Cambridge History of [Important Topic]'. And they might know about specific resources (obscure but valuable collections hidden in college archives, &c &c) relevant to your interests, which you could then name in your application, showing that you've done your homework and have a reseach interest which is particularly suited to Oxford.

Reply 5993

Gridiron-Gangster

5

Anyone here applying for a part-time Phd or have are studying one? I'm thinking of applying for one.

Any advice on college choice?

Would it be near impossible to get into a big college like say Christ Church or new without a 1st in a Bachelor's and then a Distinction in a Master's?

I got a 2:1 in my Bachelor's from the OU and then 71% in my MPhil from Camb .

The colleges I'm interested in are Christ Church, New, Balliol, Hertford and Queen's. Christ Church is my dream choice but I get the impression you need to be a near perfect applicant to get offered a place at Christ Church.

What's Hertford like?

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 5994

ellie.rew

9

Original post by Gridiron-Gangster

Anyone here applying for a part-time Phd or have are studying one? I'm thinking of applying for one.

Any advice on college choice?

Would it be near impossible to get into a big college like say Christ Church or new without a 1st in a Bachelor's and then a Distinction in a Master's?

I got a 2:1 in my Bachelor's from the OU and then 71% in my MPhil from Camb .

The colleges I'm interested in are Christ Church, New, Balliol, Hertford and Queen's. Christ Church is my dream choice but I get the impression you need to be a near perfect applicant to get offered a place at Christ Church.

What's Hertford like?

I'm not sure how much colleges look at your grades, but as far as I know CC and New take a much smaller propostion of grads compared to their overall size than other colleges, which might be why it's trickier to get in. I knew people in Hertford and Queens though; Hertford seems lovely, lots of bops, decent hall and you get the Bridge of Sighs, whereas I didn't know the Queens person as well, but her attitude to college seemed very ho-hum. The thing is that at grad level, college is what you make of it and there are people in every college who will only ever set foot in college to pick up their post and Bod cards. Especially if you're gonna be part-time, it won't have a huge impact on your life, especially as you can just go and wander around the pretty colleges by flashing your Bod card in any case!

Reply 5995

llacerta

19

Original post by Gridiron-Gangster

Anyone here applying for a part-time Phd or have are studying one? I'm thinking of applying for one.

Any advice on college choice?

Would it be near impossible to get into a big college like say Christ Church or new without a 1st in a Bachelor's and then a Distinction in a Master's?

I got a 2:1 in my Bachelor's from the OU and then 71% in my MPhil from Camb .

The colleges I'm interested in are Christ Church, New, Balliol, Hertford and Queen's. Christ Church is my dream choice but I get the impression you need to be a near perfect applicant to get offered a place at Christ Church.

What's Hertford like?

I'd probably go for Hertford or Balliol out of the ones that you've listed (ChCh might be your dream choice and it is personal taste, but I'd get fed up of the tourists and the serious atmosphere after a while...) but sometimes you can get rejected by a college for quite arbitrary reasons, e.g. they already have too many people from your subject- as opposed to academic reasons. So even if your academics are amazing there's no guarantee.

The people I know at ChCh do tend to have pretty sterling academic results, but that's not particularly different from anywhere else- even the people I knew at Hilda's had often come top of their class at undergraduate and that sort of thing. So part of me wants to say "apply to whichever college you'd prefer!" but another part of me wants to say that from my experience, the quality of graduate life at Balliol and Hertford is in many ways better than that at Christ Church or New (both of which are known to be a bit boring). And to be fair, what Ellie says is true, it does depend on the cohort you get, though people who apply to Christ Church are self-selecting to some extent.

Reply 5996

Gridiron-Gangster

5

Thanks to both of you.

Yes the impression I got was that because of the small number of graduates they can select and given their popularity, they can afford to be uber selective. Whilst I'd be happy to receive an offer from Oxford for a Phd regardless of the college, it would be nice to have some say in the matter and to go to a college which I selected.

Hertford for some reason always stood out to me; old, nice history, nice buildings esp the bridge of sighs, central etc. As I probably won't be living in college, location won't matter too much.

How picky are Hertford at graduate level? Would my academics make me a strong candidate?

Just going back to ChCh and New, would my academics be considered strong for them or on the weaker side compared to their "traditional" cohorts?

Reply 5997

Gridiron-Gangster

5

Original post by llacerta

I'd probably go for Hertford or Balliol out of the ones that you've listed (ChCh might be your dream choice and it is personal taste, but I'd get fed up of the tourists and the serious atmosphere after a while...) but sometimes you can get rejected by a college for quite arbitrary reasons, e.g. they already have too many people from your subject- as opposed to academic reasons. So even if your academics are amazing there's no guarantee.

The people I know at ChCh do tend to have pretty sterling academic results, but that's not particularly different from anywhere else- even the people I knew at Hilda's had often come top of their class at undergraduate and that sort of thing. So part of me wants to say "apply to whichever college you'd prefer!" but another part of me wants to say that from my experience, the quality of graduate life at Balliol and Hertford is in many ways better than that at Christ Church or New (both of which are known to be a bit boring). And to be fair, what Ellie says is true, it does depend on the cohort you get, though people who apply to Christ Church are self-selecting to some extent.

Sorry to pry but when we say sterling results would I be guessing a 1st in a Bachelor's quite often from Oxbridge or an elite university, a distinction in a Master's etc?

I got told by the grad tutor at Clare College (Cambridge) when considering applying for a Phd that my profile would be considered weak.

Reply 5998

llacerta

19

Original post by Gridiron-Gangster

Sorry to pry but when we say sterling results would I be guessing a 1st in a Bachelor's quite often from Oxbridge or an elite university, a distinction in a Master's etc?

I got told by the grad tutor at Clare College (Cambridge) when considering applying for a Phd that my profile would be considered weak.

It really does depend on the course, but a 1st at undergrad is pretty much the norm here (not that 2.1s are unheard of entirely- in fact, I know someone who got onto a 1+3 programme with a 2.1). Master's results vary a bit more, especially if the Master's was done at Oxbridge as a distinction is harder to come by, but anything 67+ is pretty decent.

It's pretty much impossible to say what your chances are for each college, though. It seems like you're interpreting ChCh and New as harder to get into as Hertford etc., but that may not necessarily be the case. On the other hand, I was rejected by New with a (I like to think) pretty strong application, and a good reason to apply to New (my supervisor is there, which is another factor that makes a difference- where is your potential supervisor? Whatever college they're at, you're more likely to get in). But I was then picked up by a college many would say is also very competitive, St. John's.

Oh, one other thing: exactly where you got your Bachelor's from doesn't really matter. I hardly went to an 'elite' university as an undergrad, but the admissions committee didn't care; they just paid attention to my 1st. So I'm afraid that better marks as an undergrad tends to be more important than the university itself (though a good combination of both also helps!)

It's worth noting that it's the department that will accept (or reject) your PhD application, and the college allocation is more of an afterthought at Oxford. I don't know if it's different at Cambridge, because here you wouldn't want to ask someone from a particular college what your chances are, but more someone from your potential department.

Referring to your question about Hertford's pickiness: they're all pretty picky, unfortunately...Like all of the other old, pretty colleges, Hertford is a popular choice for grads. But don't let that put you off applying- just choose where you'd be happiest.

Sorry about how all over the place this reply is- currently suffering from freshers' flu and my head is a bit fuzzy. But I hope this helps a bit.