Oxford Graduate Application 2012/13

Original post by Artvandelay22

Just a quick thanks to everyone who offered support when I was scrambling to submit my application in time. Just got an offer for the Msc Russian and East European studies. :smile:

Congratulations!
I also got an offer for MPhil REES two weeks ago, perhaps will see you there! It seems like the first year the courses for MSc and MPhil are exactly the same.

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sj27

14

Original post by zooey_1990

Thanks for your comment! And I agree that the program is very expensive. I'd really like to get your advice on this. I am deciding whether I should apply for Migration Studies or MPP. I'm interested in both and I feel like the career options for MPP seem better. Do you think it would make sense to apply for Migration Studies in November and then see if I get accepted. If not, then apply for MPP in March? Would something like this be feasible? Thanks :smile:

Sorry - I know nothing about Migration Studies! So I can't help with a comparison. But clearly MPP is aimed at those looking mainly at public sector work. I am guessing MPP would also open more doors, being more general. I would think the most competitive MPP applicants will also be those with some work experience.

Original post by janjanmmm

Money should come from taxes. Governments spend a lot of money on defense, prison system, welfare, why can't they spend money on higher education? Everyone benefits from education, not only the person who goes to study - think what would happen if Einstein or Newton did not receive the education they had, do you think the only people who would loose out are Einstein and Newton themselves?

But they can and do spend on higher education. As an economics major you should be well aware that government revenue is not an unlimited resource and they have to make decisions on something. You can argue on the allocation, or you can argue that government should raise everyone's taxes by x% to fund everyone at postgrad level, which would make a lot of voters unhappy. And not everyone is an Einstein or Newton.... Just being realistic here, countries with large budget deficits and growing debt are not the ones in a position to suddenly expand spending anywhere. (and believe me, I know the pain of having to turn down an offer because of lack of funding :frown:

)

(edited 11 years ago)

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Original post by threeportdrift

Sorry, can you explain this theory a bit more? In what world of philanthropic giving would research money be sufficient to support research, competitive academic salaries, teaching costs, equipment, teaching spaces, laboratories, libraries and postgraduate students (accommodation, consumables, living costs etc)?

Well, this is what happens in the US and it seems to work for them. Of course there should also be more support from the government. Anyway, it doesn't matter, things are as they are.

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Original post by threeportdrift

Well in the UK, the philanthropy you see is the philanthropy that there is. Charities (which includes universities) are obliged to put philanthropic funds to the specific use the donors request. So if there isn't enough scholarship money, that's because potential donors are not donating. As university fundraising is increasingly professionalised, especially in the Oxbridge, Manchester and London universities, and is financially very efficient, it would seem the argument for funding post-graduate students is just not convincing enough.

Sorry, but what exactly is your job? And if your job is indeed related to securing/attributing funding, I really find many of your comments very taunting. You have your opinions, and fair enough, but do you have to come here where many people have recently seen their dreams crash and make them feel like beggars? You obviously don't think the Humanities should be getting the funding (I am just hoping you don't work in an area related to Humanities...). The conversation was not initiated concerning the humanities though. Lack of funding is a general problem.

edit to say that I think that the main problem that Oxford has is, as many said, that they favour their own. And there are even professors here who admit it and complain about it.

(edited 11 years ago)

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Original post by Athena

Perhaps the arts and social sciences need to make a better case for their own importance. If you ask the man on the street would he rather fund someone to research cancer, or research Ovid, you can see why he might think the former is more important. Unless you can convince him otherwise, of course - and this applies to MPs who help set research funding priorities and the public who elect them. When I look at an awful lot of my friends studying philosophy, English lit etc, I can't see how I directly benefit from their research (although I certainly benefit from the consumable arts - cheap tickets for the RSC, music, Bernard O'Donohue's poetry etc). Whereas I can tell you in one sentence how you might benefit personally and directly from my research (which is philanthropically funded). For the engineers I know, they're funded by companies because they are a cheap form of research and development. The arts and humanities need to stamp their feet a bit more and be clearer about why they benefit the whole of society (and maybe that means making intangible benefits seem more tangible).

To be honest, I agree with you. I know I am a humanities student, but I also understand that in an age where there are so many problems out there researching poetry is not a priority. I do think that humanities are equally respectable, and equally important, but I cannot overlook the fact that if I had money to give I'd rather give it to a cancer research project than someone who wants to study a poet. On the other hand though, what annoys me is that not all sciences are equally useful. There is so much money going into finding even more ridiculous phones/laptops/TVs/cars or god knows what. Or there are branches of science that are just not as useful. Like astronomy, I don't care if there is a galaxy far far away. So I think its important to remember, when we say that humanities are not as useful, that the same applies for many sciences/technological subjects.

Original post by Athena

Don't assume that because a student went to Oxford or Cambridge as an undergrad, they come from an affluent background and can self-fund. There are many universities in the country where undergraduates have parents with more disposable income than at Oxbridge. LSE, SOAS, UCL, King's, Durham, St Andrew's, Bristol and Edinburgh were all among them, if I remember the article I read correctly.

No one assumed that. We just complained about the fact that Oxford prefers their own, which I think is unfair. Especially after being here and seeing, quite clearly, that their own are not always the best.

(edited 11 years ago)

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Original post by Athena

I picked Ovid because he'd been mentioned before, and feels terribly distant from everyday life, although I'm sure you think he's not useless :p:

Many of the sciences you think aren't useful (esp. technology development) aren't being funded by the government/university - they're funded by companies who think they can make money out of them. Engineering, biomedical sciences and technology areas like chemeng/materials science do get a large share of government funding, but they get an awful, awful lot of funding from other sources (charitable or targeted research for a given company).

Anyway, as I said before, I don't like it, but I see where the problem comes from.

(edited 11 years ago)

Reply 2687

Shakesper

Anybody else apply for the Weidenfeld Scholarship? From the email sent on Monday, it looks like we should know soon. Their are currently zero English scholars, so I'm doubting that I'll be considered.

Reply 2688

mochadouble

Original post by zooey_1990

I was looking at the Master of Public Policy (MPP) program offered by the Blavatnik School of Government. The one year masters program is new and is currently accepting its first class of students in September 2012. Do you guys think that because the program is new it will be easier to get accepted since not a lot of people know about it?

According to this article http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/world/europe/26iht-educlede26.html?pagewanted=all, there were about 480 applicants. With an intake of 30 this year, that's an acceptance rate of about 6%. Seems like a LOT of people know about it. I'm going to guess that in the next few years the intake will rise more rapidly than the number of applicants so that the acceptance rate should rise, but it probably won't go up higher than 15-20%

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HoVis

9

Original post by *Corinna*

edit to say that I think that the main problem that Oxford has is, as many said, that they favour their own. And there are even professors here who admit it and complain about it.

I fear I'm going to have to call you out on that one. Oxford gave me an offer for History but have given me no funding -- knowing full well, because I stated it in my statement of intent, that I could not take the offer up without funding. A friend of mine (also an Oxford undergrad) was turned down completely for the course he applied for here, in spite of being a very good applicant. Oxford's reaction to my application is also in contrast with other universities, which are either currently considering, or have seriously considered, my application for funding. If 'Oxford favoured its own', then how come the least enthusiastic response I have had to my application has been from them?

Also (and I'm not trying to be mean here, and sorry for bringing it up!), aren't you yourself proof, as a Master's student at Oxford who didn't (IIRC correctly?) get their AHRC grant renewed, that Oxford doesn't 'favour it's own'? :s-smilie:

I think that the 'Oxford favouring their own' might indeed come into the game at the JRF level, but these are so competitive that it's hard to know what they're looking for, and when they have 500 applicants for 1 place, why shouldn't they prioritise people who, as far as they're concerned, had the best possible training beforehand?*

*I'm not saying that an Oxbridge education is objectively the best training! Just pointing out that from Ox/Cambridge's point of view they obviously think their methods are very good, otherwise they would change them.

I hate to rant but I also really, really hate the all-too-frequent generalisations made about Oxford: 'Oxford's elitist!'; 'you have to be rich and go to private school to go to Oxford!'; 'going to Oxford means you get everything else in life handed to you on a plate!'. I worked sodding hard to get here, and I've worked sodding hard to do as well as I can here, and I have worked sodding hard applying for Master's courses. And currently I'm facing pretty dismal chances of funding, meaning I'll be scrabbling around come autumn for some job that I can do to get me through a year. If my having done my undergraduate at a very good university has made universities I have applied to for graduate studies look twice at me, how is that unfair? If Oxford 'favours their own' at all it is surely a) a negligible impact as, for each year I know in the Balliol MCR, you get about 3 returners from Oxford to 97 students from other universities, and b) probably a result not of nepotism but of an awareness (because they are the university that provided your undergraduate degree) of exactly what having survived an Oxford undergraduate means you can do.**

**I'm not saying that other universities don't train people to similar standards! Just that an Oxford academic, when looking at an applicant who is already at Oxford, will be able to look at their Prelims marks (for example) and say - yes, I've marked the exams she did, and I know what level of understanding that mark signifies.

I hope that all makes sense... :redface:

Reply 2690

I'm not saying that Oxford students don't work hard, but so do other people.
Apparently we can actually request the statistics of where the research council awards go to, I recently came across such statistics, not for the AHRC but for another research council. There were 27 graduates from Oxford, 7 from Cambridge (second highest) and all the rest where 1-2 people from other unis.
Just because your application (or mine, at least for last year..) is different to the norm, it doesn't mean that the norm does not still exist.

I also think that, despite your claims, you seem to think that somehow, having done your undergrad at oxford, you are special...having survived it and all that. In my opinion, the only advantage oxford people have is that they know the system and what Oxford wants. And believe me, what Oxford wants is very specific, and just because that's what they want it doesn't mean that people who think differently are not good. I've seen people who came first at Ivy league unis and are here with scholarships getting marks below pass. This in my opinion does not reflect on the quality of the student, just on the fact that Oxford expects a specific "way of thinking", which naturally people from Oxford have had years to practice on.

(edited 11 years ago)

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Original post by sj27

But they can and do spend on higher education. As an economics major you should be well aware that government revenue is not an unlimited resource and they have to make decisions on something. You can argue on the allocation, or you can argue that government should raise everyone's taxes by x% to fund everyone at postgrad level, which would make a lot of voters unhappy. And not everyone is an Einstein or Newton.... Just being realistic here, countries with large budget deficits and growing debt are not the ones in a position to suddenly expand spending anywhere. (and believe me, I know the pain of having to turn down an offer because of lack of funding :frown:

)

Of course, it is different from country to country. In Germany, for example, postgraduate education is free for everybody, including foreigners. In Scandinavia it is free for EU citizens. This shows, that it is possible to make it free without braking a budget or getting into financial difficulty. Of course, if you are going to wage two wars at the taxpayers expense, like some countries, it may indeed be difficult to pay for anything else ... I guess killing people is more fun than educating them :smile:

Reply 2692

sj27

14

Original post by janjanmmm

Of course, it is different from country to country. In Germany, for example, postgraduate education is free for everybody, including foreigners. In Scandinavia it is free for EU citizens. This shows, that it is possible to make it free without braking a budget or getting into financial difficulty. Of course, if you are going to wage two wars at the taxpayers expense, like some countries, it may indeed be difficult to pay for anything else ... I guess killing people is more fun than educating them :smile:

You're using countries that have had (and in the case of Scandinavia, continue to have) very healthy fiscal positions. It's far easier to do something like this when the funds are available, which was my original point. ...But also bear in mind that the tax burden across Scandinavia is far higher than most other countries. Like I said, it has to come from somewhere.

(Also, in Germany, postgrad is not all free for everyone. I know Freie Universitaet Berlin charges for at least some postgrad programs. I didn't do enough investigation to find out which and why.)

Reply 2693

Original post by sj27

You're using countries that have had (and in the case of Scandinavia, continue to have) very healthy fiscal positions. It's far easier to do something like this when the funds are available, which was my original point.

Healthy and unhealthy fiscal positions is not an act of God. You can not screw your own budget and then cry "But I have no money to pay for your education!" My answer to this would be - perhaps you should not have screwed your budget to begin with!

...But also bear in mind that the tax burden across Scandinavia is far higher than most other countries. Like I said, it has to come from somewhere.

Not the case with Germany.

(Also, in Germany, postgrad is not all free for everyone. I know Freie Universitaet Berlin charges for at least some postgrad programs. I didn't do enough investigation to find out which and why.)

Some business related programs (mostly finance) are, indeed, not free. It really does not change the point, though.

Original post by *Corinna*

When we say that Oxford favor their own we tend to mean their undergrads.

How would you separate out this bias from the (obviously wildly unrealistic) claim that Oxford, as one of the most competitive and academically rigorous undergrad universities in the world, produces some of the strongest candidates for post-graduate degrees? And heaven forfend that undergrads might ever apply in greater numbers to, and then choose to stay at, their current university?

Clearly staff bias in selection of their own students is likely to be rampant, because they certainly reverse their obsession for academic excellence displayed in undergraduate admissions, and just go for people they like on post-grad courses. But just suppose the first paragraph happens in some world, how would you separate it out?

If you are seriously thinking of pursuing an academic career, you really need to start to set your arguments on a more evidence based, logical train of thought, and not just chuck a load of random personal opinions around. Just as well TSR is anonymous! :wink:

Reply 2695

HLS

Just to expand upon this - the only empirical evidence I have seen, Oxbridge graduates took between them over a third of the research council's grants at Oxford.

Within this third, the vast majority (~80%) went to Oxford graduates.

Alone this statistic doesn't mean anything except the obvious - the University's own graduates take the biggest institutional share of research council studentships.

This is not actually as bad as in some other sectors where public money is being allocated. Some Graduate Medical schools (a course I have also applied to) give over 50% of places to Oxbridge graduates - each single place amounts to probably well in excess of £100k in public subsidies and loans.

The English Establishment at its worst.

Reply 2696

HoVis

9

Original post by *Corinna*

I also think that, despite your claims, you seem to think that somehow, having done your undergrad at oxford, you are special...having survived it and all that. In my opinion, the only advantage oxford people have is that they know the system and what Oxford wants. And believe me, what Oxford wants is very specific, and just because that's what they want it doesn't mean that people who think differently are not good. I've seen people who came first at Ivy league unis and are here with scholarships getting marks below pass. This in my opinion does not reflect on the quality of the student, just on the fact that Oxford expects a specific "way of thinking", which naturally people from Oxford have had years to practice on.

I thought ( :redface:

) that both of my elaborating statements (* and **) made it clear that I'm very aware that other universities provide strenuous and good-quality training for students.

On what you said about your personal experience, when you say you were the only person in your year not from Oxford to get the AHRC, do you mean your subject year-group or your MCR year-group? If the former, it might be worth pointing out that as far as a quick search on UCAS reveals, only 12 universities offer a Classics course. I'd argue that for a more common course the ratio of Oxford/non-Oxford AHRC fundees (right word?! :tongue:

) might be a bit different.

As for knowing the system and knowing what Oxford wants, I have not the slightest clue what Oxford wants and there is no such thing as a specific 'Oxford thinking style' into which students have to fit (or if there is, it isn't something that being an undergraduate at Oxford can teach you), or at least not in my subject and in my experience. Certainly I suspect the reason I wasn't so successful with my Oxford application is because my research proposal was on something that doesn't really fit with the faculty's current research interests - but that's not about 'thinking style', and not something that my having been at Oxford for undergraduate could compensate for.

To turn to your slightly hurtful personal comment, do I think I'm 'special'? I believe myself to be a fairly good student, and yes, I am proud of my academic achievements. That I got into Oxford and have done reasonably well here is one of the things I am proud of. I don't think I am 'special' and do not refute anyone else's right to be proud of their academic achievements at any other university! However, all too often I have heard things like: 'oh, you got into Oxford because they favour state school students to try to fill quotas', and 'if you get a good job / funding, it's just because you went to Oxford'. How come an Oxford student isn't allowed to be given credit for what they achieve off their own backs? I'm not saying that I'm any more 'special' than a hard-working student from Birmingham, LSE, KCL, St Andrews, or any other top university. But I (and every other student from Oxford/Cambridge, the only universities these sort of prejudices seem to attach themselves to) have every right to be proud of myself for achieving things on my own merits, rather than being constantly told that the only reason I achieved x or y was because of my background, be it social or academic.

As an aside, I'd be equally proud of myself if I'd gone and done all the things I've done at Oxford at a different university....! I don't think I'm the bees knees by any means, and indeed I've traditionally had a very low opinion of my own abilities! But I'm starting to gain confidence in my work and the things I've done over the past three years. If I get funding (fingers crossed!!!) I would like to think that it will not be because I have an undergraduate degree from Oxford but because of the other things which give me a sense of academic self-worth - like the fact that I wrote an additional thesis (entirely on top of my other work) and have done a reasonable level of manuscript work, or the fact that I seem to have impressed my referees. I'm sorry if I seem to have over-reacted to your post but it can be quite hurtful when applied on a personal level - saying that being an Oxford graduate gives you an 'unfair advantage' in anything just automatically devalues an individual's achievements if they succeed.

As for the surviving it bit, I do feel quite proud for having survived it. :tongue:

I'm not saying it's better (indeed in many ways it's a bad thing), but I think there's a lot of evidence to show that the Oxford undergraduate system is one of the most stressful undergraduate environments you can put yourself in. Our Counselling Service is literally overrun and I think we have more students on Prozac than any other university in the country. The Finals system puts an immense amount of pressure on students' performance in a very short amount of time, whilst the tutorial system can also add a lot of pressure, along with the very short deadlines. Once again, this doesn't make the Oxford system better. But it is difficult to survive with one's sanity intact, so I'm quite happy with myself that I've only lost a few marbles along the way. :biggrin:

Look, I really don't want this to turn into an argument, especially as we're bumping into each other all over the application threads. :tongue:

These threads should, in an ideal world, be a place to support each other during the tough time of applications, not argue or take shots at each other. :redface:

??

Reply 2697

sj27

14

Original post by janjanmmm

Healthy and unhealthy fiscal positions is not an act of God. You can not screw your own budget and then cry "But I have no money to pay for your education!" My answer to this would be - perhaps you should not have screwed your budget to begin with!

Of course, but you can't just suddenly start providing funds for unis when "some other politician" should have done something differently ( allowed the banking system to fail so you wouldn't have spent all that money on bailouts, not given such wide welfare services to anyone who blinks, not started wars on the other side of the world, founded the country somewhere else so you could have had Norway's oil riches shared among just 4m people, whatever). To be perfectly frank, your "answer" is of no practical relevance! If you want to fix systems you need to provide solutions. My own solution has been to enter the workforce so I can now self-fund (assuming I manage to get another offer, of course....)

And switching back to the MPP discussion (slightly more on thread topic!) I somehow missed that Ngaire Woods was heading up the school - thanks to whoever posted that link. Interesting to see the large number of applicants...Waiting to see how the program is received. Will possibly apply next year. Although for that price, I'm still thinking the (well established) Harvard Kennedy MPA for example is a far better bet (and if Internet forums are to be believed, at 20-25% acceptance rates may actually be easier to get into!)

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Original post by sj27

Of course, but you can't just suddenly start providing funds for unis when "some other politician" should have done something differently ( allowed the banking system to fail so you wouldn't have spent all that money on bailouts, not given such wide welfare services to anyone who blinks, not started wars on the other side of the world, founded the country somewhere else so you could have had Norway's oil riches shared among just 4m people, whatever). To be perfectly frank, your "answer" is of no practical relevance! If you want to fix systems you need to provide solutions. My own solution has been to enter the workforce so I can now self-fund (assuming I manage to get another offer, of course....)

Of course I am talking about policy in general, not about any country in particular.
But it is all too clear that for some countries (including UK and US) postgraduate education is not a priority. This is the main problem, unwillingness to pay, not the lack of funding. Of practical relevance is the question of priorities, and it is a general question, equally relevant to all and every country.

If you want to discuss particular country - be my guest, otherwise I suppose we can wrap it up.

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