Oxford Graduate Application 2012/13

I emailed my preferred college to find out when decisions would be made and was told 'we dont correspond with applicants whose decisions are still pending' and that I should probably follow up progress with the faculty.

Doesnt sound too promising huh? Do you think it means my application was returned to the faculty?

I don't think it's necessarily bad news - they might just have a strict 'no communication whatsoever until you get an offer' policy.

I just object to them sending things only by mail and not by email. I mean, it's all well and good if you're in the UK and you get it in a couple of days, but 3 weeks is a reasonably long time, and I'm sure it's even longer for people in some other countries. They could at least send a notification of decision email or something. But at least it means I'm not compulsively checking my email

Yes it is a bit of a pain (I live miles abroad too and my faculty offer letter arrived almost 3 weeks after the letter was dated!). Cambridge updates college offers on Camsis don't they?

Kitchens, yes, but they don't seem to have dining tables etc (that seat more than about 2). Living rooms would be nice. I don't have a college offer yet. I'm hoping for Queen's, but the longer I go without hearing, the less likely I realise it is

Perhaps I have judged the rooms etc too harshly based on the photos. At any rate, it all looks liveable.

Most of the Queens' Grads live in a building on St Aldates. The rooms are relatively small, but not bad, and there are a number of kitchen/living room areas (roughly one between 5). Each has a kitchen and some sofas I think. It is halls rather than a house, but there is some communal space.

So I wasn't thinking that Oxford's provision of accommodation was sub-par, I was just thinking that it would be hard to live in one room day-in, day-out. There doesn't seem to be, in the various accommodation I looked at for a variety of colleges, much in the way of living rooms, or gardens, or even kitchens where people can eat together around a table. Is this common space meant to be wholly provided by the college?

So yeah, it's not so much that the rooms themselves are tiny, or that I think I won't be able to fit all my stuff in, it's that it's just one room in which you have to do basically everything. I was wondering whether this was actually less of a problem than I was expecting, or what people did to deal with it.

In my experiences of living in (undergraduate) accommodation I've found that the sort of space issue you're concerned about ends up not being too much of a problem for various reasons. In my first year I lived in a small room on main-site, but I was close to both Hall and the JCR, which provided plenty of communal space to eat and meet people. Often I'd eat breakfast in my room (my college lets students have a kettle and a toaster and mini-fridge if they want - I didn't have a fridge, just kept milk on my windowsill ), which meant that I eat quickly and got on with the day! I found there was plenty of space to study, sleep and entertain people if I wanted to.

In my second year I lived in off-site accommodation which had eight student rooms in one flat with a small kitchen and a table that we could all (just about) fit round. The way the flat was organised it didn't really lend itself to bumping into people unless it was in the kitchen, but we saw plenty of each other at mealtimes and generally had a good amount of human contact!

I think something to remember is that Oxford is a pretty compact city** and you'll probably end up spending a lot of your time in libraries. There are so many different libraries in Oxford that you'll never be bored when it comes to study spaces!* If you're savvy about it you can also figure out which ones have good canteens or just coffee machines - I think the coffee machine in the Philosophy faculty charges 20p for a mocha. You don't have to be a faculty member to use a faculty library so you can go anywhere with your Bod card!

If your accommodation is close enough to your college you'll probably also end up going to Hall a lot - it's a good place to socialise and also generally normal (i.e. non-formal) college food can be pretty cheap (and in some colleges even formal is ridiculously cheap). I'm always aware when I go to Balliol Hall that I could definitely cook myself something tastier, but could I do it for less per meal? Probably not! Your college might also have a bar and will definitely have facilities for MCR members (this can vary from a single room to a whole complex, in my experience - the Balliol MCR has a bar, tv room, big kitchen and large space for watching films on a screen / hosting parties, plus an oak-panelled MCR*** ).

Basically, I really wouldn't worry about feeling hemmed into one small room for your whole time at Oxford! St Aldate's, if that's where you end up, is so close to town -- I think you'll end up spending a lot less time than you'd guess in your room!



*You can choose between the carved marble of the Radcliffe Camera, the austere portraits staring down at you in the Old Bodleian, the ridiculous vastness of the Codrington, the cosiness of the Haverfield Room in the Sackler...

**I stopped moaning about the five minute walk to Exam Schools for lectures when I realised that some of friends have to catch a bus to get to their lectures at other uni's.

***Oh goodness, the irritating confusion that arises from the room and the organisation having the same name.

This is very reassuring - thanks. Now if only I could actually get a college offer, I'd be all set
Hang on, you kept milk on your windowsill? didn't it make you sick?
Also, I share your apparent love of libraries, one of the (numerous) reasons I picked Queen's was its beautiful, beautiful library.

have you been to the UK? 6 months of the year it is freezing, I would worry that her milk would become ice-cream.

Isn't there heating everywhere indoors anyway, or do you mean you leave it on the outside of the windowsill?

I don't think it's necessarily bad news - they might just have a strict 'no communication whatsoever until you get an offer' policy.

I just object to them sending things only by mail and not by email. I mean, it's all well and good if you're in the UK and you get it in a couple of days, but 3 weeks is a reasonably long time, and I'm sure it's even longer for people in some other countries. They could at least send a notification of decision email or something. But at least it means I'm not compulsively checking my email

I didn't have a fridge, just kept milk on my windowsill )

No, I haven't, but I do know it gets cold and I have been to other parts of Europe. I just didn't know it would be so reliably cold so often that you could use the open air as a fridge. Overnight, sure, but I thought that during the day it would get warm enough often enough that you couldn't just leave stuff out for months at a time (obviously not the same bottle of milk for months at a time!), or at least that you couldn't leave it out from Spring - Autumn. Isn't there heating everywhere indoors anyway, or do you mean you leave it on the outside of the windowsill?

Clearly, my education has thus far been lacking in improvised refrigeration arrangements (but I think we can blame my geographical location for that). I look forward to experimenting upon arrival in the UK.

I'm surprised the uni agrees to sending the decision letter as a .pdf in an email upon an applicant's request, yet colleges stick to a no-communication-unless-by-post measure. Definitely agree, it seems troublesome to non-UK students, and even ones who are: most UK unis were just on their Easter breaks, and many headed home to other parts of the UK or abroad, while correspondence sat at their term-term address. I guess it's not a huge problem unless in a college letter there is some kind of looming date by which you need to confirm you accept your place there?

haha, well I would not recommend keeping milk outside the fridge, but I can understand how a small carton would not actually go off. Near the window, no matter how much heating there is in the room, it is always very cold. Plus the good thing with milk is that if it does go off the smell is a definite warning so you won't end up poisoning yourself.

Anyway, be prepared for the cold. And a piece of advice from someone who also comes from a sunny country (oh, sun, how much I miss you). It would be a good idea to consider taking Vitamin B tablets (or is it Vitamin C that we get from the sun? Whichever, anyway). I found that for 4 months during the winter I felt very depressed constantly (which is not normal for me). I thought it was because of the stress of studying + PhD applications but the moment the sun came out in March I instantly felt better. And then I remembered a professor of mine telling me back in October that I should be careful because people in England often get depressed because of the lack of sun and that this is even worse for people coming from sunny countries. He was right...next year I am definitely taking Vitamins + going back home for Christmas for a dose of sun.

Thanks for the advice - even here I get a bit grumpy/stressed in the middle of winter, so I'll be on guard for my first proper winter. I think it's Vitamin B, but at any rate my little sister is a dietitian, so I shall ask her what are the correct things to take. However, if it is Vitamin B, as a frequent consumer of Vegemite, the world's richest source of Vitamin B, I might not even need a supplement

I will definitely miss the sun - I need to remember to take pictures of home while it's still sunny, because I'll be leaving in the middle of winter. I wish I could afford to go home for Christmas, but it's a bit too far and too expensive (and I hate flying, so the less of it I do the better). Once I finish up at Oxford, I plan to go straight on to further study in Canada, so it's going to be a LONG time without a proper Australian summer (and indeed a proper (for me) Christmas, which I've only ever had in summer - Christmas = beach + BBQ, that's just the way it is).

I said this morning that it was starting to cool down, and my boss (gently) reminded me that this is potentially going to be the warmest day I have until June/July 2013! I hadn't really thought about it that way yet, although I'm sure there'll be plenty of other new Oxonians in the same boat.

In other news, I came home this afternoon to do some other work (I have a few different jobs), and it kept directing me onto the Oxford Law website - it was a very nice reminder of the exciting things I'll get to do soon

I hope everyone else is feeling the excitement too

This is very reassuring - thanks. Now if only I could actually get a college offer, I'd be all set
Hang on, you kept milk on your windowsill? didn't it make you sick?
Also, I share your apparent love of libraries, one of the (numerous) reasons I picked Queen's was its beautiful, beautiful library.

You are spending 3 pounds a day on food??? What are you eating, if you do not mind me asking?

Also - clothes? toothpaste? soap? laundry? books? toilet paper?

In my case I have difficulty imagining how I can survive on 12900 a year, it will most likely be closer to 15000.

I hate to be the harbinger of doom, but where do you currently live? Oxford is an expensive place to live and you should bear in mind that the only supermarkets in walking distance of the city centre are Sainsbury's or Tesco's, which are not exactly the cheapest. And unless you've already got cheap accommodation in Oxford lined up, rent here is also so much higher than elsewhere in the country (unless you live out -- but then you'd have to factor in travelling costs). For example, my fiancé and I are paying £750 a month on a one-bedroom flat in a not particularly nice part of Oxford,* which is £100 more than my parents are paying for a 3-bedroom detached house in Suffolk!

Like I said, I don't want to get you down-hearted, but don't underestimate how much living costs can vary. I'd reckon one could get by (if living in non-college rented accommodation, 12 months of the year) with around £9,000 a year.


*I always used to scoff at people who thought Oxford had any 'rough' parts, but since moving into a flat on Rectory Road I have had: a group of men arguing in our back yard, guys smoking in a separate incident in said back yard and scaring the bejeezers out of me when I looked out of the window (incidentally the same night someone was murdered on St Clements, about 100m away), massive shouting matches happening in the car park behind our flat, and terrifyingly huge men accosting me on the street whilst alone. And then there was the time the police came knocking on doors asking if anyone had any information about a mugging that had occurred on our street.

haha, well I would not recommend keeping milk outside the fridge, but I can understand how a small carton would not actually go off. Near the window, no matter how much heating there is in the room, it is always very cold. Plus the good thing with milk is that if it does go off the smell is a definite warning so you won't end up poisoning yourself.

Anyway, be prepared for the cold. And a piece of advice from someone who also comes from a sunny country (oh, sun, how much I miss you). It would be a good idea to consider taking Vitamin B tablets (or is it Vitamin C that we get from the sun? Whichever, anyway). I found that for 4 months during the winter I felt very depressed constantly (which is not normal for me). I thought it was because of the stress of studying + PhD applications but the moment the sun came out in March I instantly felt better. And then I remembered a professor of mine telling me back in October that I should be careful because people in England often get depressed because of the lack of sun and that this is even worse for people coming from sunny countries. He was right...next year I am definitely taking Vitamins + going back home for Christmas for a dose of sun.

I'm non-UK and got both my university and college offers as e-mail attachments. Maybe it depends on the college being nice or not.