Oxford History Students and Applicants

Much like the others have said, the only advice I could really give would be to make sure you have read everything you said you have on your personal statement, and re-read your submitted essays! One of my interviews was based entirely on my submitted essay, so it does no harm to know this very well!

I had one good interview but one bad one- can a good one offset the other? :/

Your perception of how well or badly your interview went is subjective, you have no idea how well the Tutors think they went.

It all depends and there is nothing more you can do to try and analyse how good your chances are. It's best just to try and not think about the whole thing, try and keep busy and put it out of your mind or you'll go mad with worrying.

Are you a current student or applicant?
And yeah I agree with you... can't help it though :/

I had an alright econ interview, and an awful history one. They asked if I was a Communist, so I've been trying to analyse that rather than my interview performance, how random

I had an alright econ interview, and an awful history one. They asked if I was a Communist, so I've been trying to analyse that rather than my interview performance, how random

At my college they told one of my fellow applicants that he was 'a Marxists and didn't want to admit it'

In fact he is a quite a left wing but is in no way a Marxists Historian, I know as we had a joint rant about how overly simplistic an attitude to History it is!

Oh George Garnett (the owner of the quote), you gave us many joke... and lots of fear

Haha and why did they ask you that or was it genuinely random?

At my college they told one of my fellow applicants that he was 'a Marxists and didn't want to admit it'

In fact he is a quite a left wing but is in no way a Marxists Historian, I know as we had a joint rant about how overly simplistic an attitude to History it is!

Oh George Garnett (the owner of the quote), you gave us many joke... and lots of fear

Basically, they were asking me on a topic which I'd studied the era in school, but we didn't do the economics module they were asking about, so I had to kind of skirt around and think of ways economic policy came up in the actual foreign policy module that we did.
This was fine, but I didn't feel anything particularly controversial about the economic policy, because I don't know much about it, so I was trying to look at each bit with a balanced view.
He then said I was hedging my bets etc
I said that econ was a constant cause of unrest but not really a sparky factor
He asked if I was a Communist. and stared at me. very hard.
awkward.

I possibly laughed in his face

That would have been even fiunnier if it had happened at Catz, because our senior tutor actually is a Marxist He's a lovely guy though, and it doesn't tend to come up in tutues at all - except for the fact that his room is strewn with books like "A commentary on the Communist Manifesto" "Anarchy: is it the answer?" etc. Slightly intimidating when you're being interviewed, I can tell you...

The bizarre thing was that at my Third interview at St Hugh's (the guy accused of being a marxist also got one) we were given an extract from a Marxists history book to analyse

It's a fairly common interpretation and pretty useful for some analyses, so I don't see why being 'accused' of being one would be a bad thing! Like I say my tutor is one, and he's one of the best historians in the department. So it is pretty weird.

I had an argument with an E&M student while I was at interviews, he was a massive Marxists and I was explaining to him why it is far too simplistic a way to interpret history and that it basically ignores free will or religion or ordinary human emotions and how some things can simply never be explained!

I am absolutely not a Marxist historian, partly as what appeals to me about History is that there are some things we can never really explain or understand and that it is always so much more complicated than we can imagine. Marxists history basically flies in the face of that as it sees everything as easily explained and falling into neat, predictable patterns.

Oh yes I understand that, that's why I'm not either. It ignores agency which is that crucial chaos factor in making people be the irrational idiots they've proved to be throughout history However, that said, understanding the Marxist position is a good thing because it does tend to spot factors that we might not otherwise have considered, like social control, economic patterns and class conflict. What you do is you take the Marxist interpretation of an event and compare it to your own or others, see what questions arise and synthesise the resulting data into something which does take other factors into account. Same with feminism, postmodernism etc - all have their flaws but can be used as a different angle to take on an issue to improve overall understanding. As long as a historian understands this, they can take one side or another and still be perfectly competant.

I think the historian's unofficial motto is "It's a bit more complicated than that." The number of times I've had to say that to people who think they know my subject top to bottom already...

Oh yes I understand that, that's why I'm not either. It ignores agency which is that crucial chaos factor in making people be the irrational idiots they've proved to be throughout history However, that said, understanding the Marxist position is a good thing because it does tend to spot factors that we might not otherwise have considered, like social control, economic patterns and class conflict. What you do is you take the Marxist interpretation of an event and compare it to your own or others, see what questions arise and synthesise the resulting data into something which does take other factors into account. Same with feminism, postmodernism etc - all have their flaws but can be used as a different angle to take on an issue to improve overall understanding. As long as a historian understands this, they can take one side or another and still be perfectly competant.

I think the historian's unofficial motto is "It's a bit more complicated than that." The number of times I've had to say that to people who think they know my subject top to bottom already...

Agree with all of this so so much XD
ESPECIALLY the motto - in fact I probably said that this summer when the riots were happening.
My friends were like 'they are nothing but criminals... they are morally wrong... their evil is the only cause of the riots...'

This followed with a 'well, it's a biiiiiit more complicated than that ' That said, I would also disagree with a Marxist reading in that it was some proletariat revolt etc....

What's annoying is that, despite forming my own ideas on these sorts of things, I wasn't really asked about them/couldn't really get them into my interviews So didn't really 'shine' as much as I wanted to :/

Ought to find out the decision tomorrow though...

Well I would agree that a lack of basic respect for the lives and property of others was a factor in the riots happening.

I would say that a vacuum of authority caused by the police being unwilling (due to the lack of strong political leadership to take responsibility if things go wrong) to properly enforce the rule of law coupled with the constant presence of the media allowing kids to see what was going on where and to move around accordingly was more of a factor.

Add to that basic human greed and crowd mentality and bam you have the riots.

The idea that the riots were caused by resentment against the police I don't actually buy, as if you look at footage of it in only a few cases did there end up being direct confrontations. People who joined ij the riots didn't join in to attack the police, the joined in to get free stuff and very often ran away as soon as the police did a few running charges.

It being a political movement simply doesn't hold water, they weren't rioting outside the house of common were they?

I don't think it was a political movement. But you have to ask why there was a basic lack of respect for property among some (but not all) people in very poor areas within cities.

We have to ask why they decided to join in... only for free stuff. People are greedy, yes, but that cannot surely be the primary cause else we'd have riots all the time and not only by socially disadvantaged people in inner cities.

Anyway, don't want to debate this on the history at Oxford thread :P But essentially it was neither political or a random, spontaneous display of human evil. It's a bit more complicated than that :P