History at Oxford

Is anyone here studying Modern History at Oxford?

No but I share a house with three who are/were so have an indirect flow of history issues.

Breadth of choice?

Hard to beat apparently and plenty of opportunity to follow particular interests although you do need to cover the range of periods.

Recommended colleges? (I realise that's probably quite subjective)

You're probably spoilt for choice. I've never heard anyone say college x is bad for history. In some colleges it's a particularly large subject area -Merton,Magdalen, Lincoln, Univ,Balliol, St Hughs spring to mind. You need to read the profiles of the tutors and look at their interests. Whilst you shouldn't slavishly match these to your own nor should you ignore them. Remember they are selecting a relatively small number of people who they will teach for three years or more so you can assume some correlation of interests is helpful although not compulsory.

Interviews?
Very competitive in some colleges but only you can make a judgement about that.

Relative difficulty of the course by comparison with A2?

The verdict seems to be that it can be big jump for some people but this is mainly in the way of working and the indpendent use of sources, monographs, documents etc rather than the content being intrinsically more difficult.


Any answers would be greatly appreciated.