Oxford postgraduate applicants 2014/15

has anyone from odid heard about funding yet?

I haven't. If the department is considering us for any funding (e.g. Clarendon, Ertegon, down to college-based scholarships, etc.) should there have been mention of it in our offer letters?

I reckon there isn't much available for Masters students.

Hey TSR, I was very fortunate to be accepted at both Mphil in IR and Msc in GGD. That being said, how would you compare the two programs, ie on terms of career opportunities, prestige, etc?

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However, the letter did not state what type of award I recieved, only that "we'll now put together your award package and will let you know the details in a month..." As an international student, were there a lot of options for me? It would be icing on the cake if this was the Clarendon!

on post 1476: wow, "selection by wealth" makes me sick. I'm from the states and as far as I know, I've never heard of colleges demanding to see proof of financial resources before you go to a university. usually, if you miss a payment, you get dropped from your classes and if you got a balance on your account you won't be given a dipolma...simple as that.

I was wondering the same thing! I got my offer for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. The letter was a bit vague...Does anyone in ODID know if we need to accept our offer before we're passed on to colleges or if that's automatic? I see that it seems to vary among departments...
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At least in the UK at present, we have a postgraduate application landscape in which universities make more offers than they have places in the knowledge that some people won't have the money to take those offers up, and the result is selection by wealth. In the absence of more widespread funding and/or a decent system of postgraduate student loans, I don't think it's unreasonable for a university to want to be fairly sure people aren't suddenly going to drop out. I do think the way Oxford calculates living costs is unreasonable and should be changed, but the big thing that would have to change to really solve the big problem is the country-wide lack of financial support for people who want to do postgrad study but can't afford it.

on post 1476: wow, "selection by wealth" makes me sick. I'm from the states and as far as I know, I've never heard of colleges demanding to see proof of financial resources before you go to a university. usually, if you miss a payment, you get dropped from your classes and if you got a balance on your account you won't be given a dipolma...simple as that.

x

As a current applicant who is holding an offer from Cambridge and still waiting on Oxford, and can realistically attend neither without financial assistance, I still don't necessarily agree with this entirely.

The implicit idea is that there should be universal access to postgraduate study - that everybody should be able to do it regardless of their economic background. Whilst good in theory, I'm not sure that postgraduate study is something for everybody - I certainly think a lot of people do it who aren't necessarily good enough to do it. I mean, maybe my view is slightly skewed since my UG was from Scotland and my government paid for that, so the UG qualification is pretty much universal. That's fine. If you're then exceptional enough to do postgraduate study, then there is a significant amount of funding and scholarships available for that. If you're not good enough to receive those, and you can't afford what is an expensive education for good reason, then maybe you shouldn't do it or should work for some years to pay for it yourself. I don't have a problem with that. I wish there was more money for funding, but there's not. I could have gone to a number of Universities and received full funding but I wanted to go to Oxbridge, and that was a choice. It's not like I had no postgraduate path available to me.

People have more money than others, it opens doors. I wish I was one of those people but my lottery tickets insist on being incorrect. Until those numbers come up, I'll just deal with it and be thankful that there are scholarship programmes which are meritocratic available, and hope I'm good enough to earn one of those.

EDIT: I am of course aware that exceptional students will slip through the net. I know that students of exceptional potential will not necessarily exhibit that potential on paper from UG for a number of reasons, but if we're happy to assign places based on academic history, we should also be happy to assign funding that way. It's not a ridiculous notion that one might do a masters at an institution outside of Oxbridge, receive funding for that, and then exhibit the ability and potential to receive a fully funded PhD at Oxbridge. We're essentially asking for a place at one of the top institutions in the world and then also demanding that they pay for us to attend it.

Congratulations that's awesome! New is lovely How did you hear? Post I'd presume?

Clarendon announcements begin tomorrow for half of us. I cannot take the anticipation.

I know, this week is going to be hell. I know I've still got the AHRC to go as well (though I don't know if I've been nominated) so all is not lost if I don't get a Clarendon, but still!!

I made sure I had a lovely day today though, went to David Bowie Is at the V&A - epic is the only word, booking to go again!

x

Hey, hey - do you think it's overly ambitious to think that we might potentially, possibly hear something this week? :O I mean, people are finding out about all kinds of scholarships and **** now and we've not heard anything.

Not fair.