History/English at Oxford or Cambridge???

Hello

Does anyone have any experience, firsthand or secondhand, of studying joint honours History & English at Oxford? Or any info on applying to joint honours history &English at some universities and simultaneously single honours history/English at others (and how you'd compose a good personal statement in this instance)?

Some background -
I'll be applying for university next year and have been planning to apply for English for a while. However, I am now very interested in History and am doing very well – perhaps more so than in English in both instances. Cambridge's English course appeals to me a great deal; however, I feel that joint honours would suit me well and so am now looking into English & History at Oxford. (I do love Oxford) I worry however than I won't be able to demonstrate my interdisciplinary interest – how would I do this? Also, a lot of other universities I'm interested in don't offer joint honours English and history – could I apply for joint honours at some unis and single (either English OR history) at others?

Finally, the cliché question – are my grades good enough for Oxford? 8A*s 2As from a good school. And I hope to be predicted A*A*A* for A level. Is this good enough for Oxford (or more suited to Cambridge)?

I'd really appreciate any responses :smile:

Reply 1

Kiki09

Original post by purplesockmonkey

Your grades are fine for Oxford or Cambridge.

Yes you can apply for single honours at some universities and joint at others. It does make writing your personal statement a little different and hopefully someone who has done this will be along who can advise!

As for showing interdisciplinary interest, are you interested in literature from a particular time period? Have you been able to use any of literature texts in your history classes or bring your history knowledge into your English lit work? How do you think literature can be used as a historical source? what are the strengths and limitations of doing so? How important is historical context to our understanding of literary texts? Disclaimer: I did not do History and English so happy to be overruled on any of these by someone who did!