[ugla]

Hello

Anyone planning to apply for Oriental Studies at Cambridge?

[niff524]

Hi I'm not personally applying for Oriental Studies but my younger sister is considering applying for it (Japanese) this year

Which college(s) have you got in mind? And which language do you intend to do?

[Ronove]

I applied to Trinity for Japanese last year. If you want to know what my experience was like, or how I think I could have done better (or anything else for that matter) then feel free to PM me.

[Ayumi]

im applying to Selwyn for Japanese.

[janemansfield]

anybody else accepting an offer for oriental studies? I got one for Japanese. I'm actually really excited! anyone??

[Epicurus]

Yep me
Information's in the sig.
What college are you at?
Im doing Middle eastern studies.

[janemansfield]

peterhouse, but pooled from kings.
so what language are you doing, hindu?

[Jucus]

There is already a thread on Oriental Studies offers,could someone move this one to that?? thank you
Janemansfield:congrat on your offer,see you in October but are you serious with this hindu thing?

[janemansfield]

(Original post by Jucus)
There is already a thread on Oriental Studies offers,could someone move this one to that?? thank you
Janemansfield:congrat on your offer,see you in October but are you serious with this hindu thing?

the i is next to the u but that's south asian isn't it sorry.

[Jucus]

yep it is Middle East is Arabic and Persian. Sometimes Turkish also...but I've read this only recently.Anyway in our case it's the first two!

[Jucus]

Actually I saw on the faculty homepage that they wouldn't continue South Asian languages anymore...

[Epicurus]

Yep that is a great shame.

We Islamic Orientalists, being so few in number, are quite a rare breed. I hope I don't live to see the day Islamic and Middle Easern Studies goes down the same route as South Asian Studies or Portuguese.

[Epicurus]

(Original post by janemansfield)
the i is next to the u but that's south asian isn't it sorry.

Lool
There was I thinking you were really dumb.

[bazzasballs]

At the moment I really don't see Middle Eastern studies going the same way as South Asian, considering Sanskrit had 2 students in the whole university, whereas Arabic as part of the MML course has many more. This doesn't even include theologians who take Arabic as part of their course.

[Lottie]

It's a shame that not many people want to learn Sanskrit or Hindi or, more broadly, study South Asian Studies at Cambridge.

[janemansfield]

when i went down for the open days on the 6th & 7th, the woman who was head of arabic studies said it was the biggest section of the whole oriental studies, with more students than the other languages admitted each year...hmm...
hindi is one of the most spoken languages in the world isn't it? and India's economy is growing almost as much the chinese one..that's a shame it's not continued really.
i would have though chinese would also be larger than japanese, considering how everyone thinks china's going to be so important, even the government wants school children to learn chinese. whenever people ask what i'm doing at uni, they always say 'how come you're not doing chinese?' which is annoying.

[kitsunechan]

Hey, I've been offered a place for Japanese, pooled from Clare to Corpus Christi I know two girls Ayumi and Nono_seventeen got places for japanese as well on the TSR...

When I went to the OS open day last year, they said that chinese was currently more popular than japanese at cambridge but I think that is a lot to do with growing economies etc...

I think the thing the government was saying about trying to get all children learning chinese in school was pretty unrealistic/newpaper headline-grabbing, learning chinese even for me (british born chinese) took a long time and I don't think a reasonable level of chinese can be achieved without quite intensive learning/dedication../random

Oh, I got asked 'so why don't you want to learn chinese or arabic then?' in my interview which was..well not annoying as such but just 'how do i answer that?!!!' fear inducing ^^'''

[Johnny01638]

Well done on the offers guy!

[kitsunechan]

thanks

[bisou797]

Hello!

I'm applying to Oriental Studies (Chinese) and am extremely nervous... studying in the UK (let alone at Cambridge) seems a universe away for me! Who else out there is applying for OS, and are there any current OS students who would be able to tell me more about what the course is like?

And are there any other foreign students feeling very bewildered by the whole application process, what to write on the statement etc?