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Oxford Life, Work Load, Perspectives...

OK...At Oxford, students "work hard, play hard" ..and work hard part is quite expected since its a leading school and its a target for the brightest kids of the country and the world. Its clearly not a easy ride...
BUT I wonder for sciences(especially engineering) how much is the work load? Is it the content that is hard or is it the time it takes that makes that "work hard" bit....
During my education I have never studied for long. I learnt the class in the classroom and then it was just enough for me...All the school that I went didnt require much work in terms of its quantity but they were challenging in their content. So topics were tough but there wasn't much assessed work. Right now, since I am trying to decide whether Oxford is the right place for me, I think I need to find an answer for this question.

PS. Also I really want to learn about the student perspective at Oxford. Is it all about grades etc...Or do people go there just for the sake of learning without caring about grades at all....

Thanks everyone for your responses in advance..

Reply 1

antipotato

I'm a first year engineer, and there's definitely plenty of spare time. 10 hours of lectures a week and 2 hour long tutorials, each of which requires about 5 or 6 hours of work on a sheet. Oh, and 5 hours of labs a week. That might sound like a lot, but I tend not to learn much in lectures (or get up for them...), so that's under 20 hours of work a week. Admittedly it's pretty tough stuff, but it leaves time to go out normally at least 3 weekdays a week, and then the weekend's free for whatever you wanna do.

Essentially, the only things that need to be worked for are tutes, and if you don't get it at all, the tutor will help you. (aka easy to blag, for many tutors).

So yeah, I wouldn't worry basically :smile:

i love it.

PS this might change between colleges, I don't know...

Reply 2

matthew_mi

OP

Thank you antipotato...It sounds nice....Do you know if this changes during 2nd and 3rd years?

Reply 3

Cirsium

19

I think it's a bit of both. Obviously antipotato has given you an idea of contact time: for many subjects it's a lot more than that - but there is going to be a lot more self study to learn stuff than you're used to (although mainly nearer to exams)

Reply 4

matthew_mi

OP

Do u really start studying like a freak during ur 3rd year? Or is it like with the tutes u re already ready for the exam?

Reply 5

Angelil

19

I don't know anyone who would just rely on tutorials and seminars to be 'ready' for an exam - most sensible people will revise as well :p:

I'm not a scientist, but according to one of my friends who is a physicist, the Physics building is the sort of building you could walk past at midnight and still see the lights on.

I don't think anything that any of us can say can fully prepare prospective students for life at Oxford. I don't have the words for what it's like here. It's weird and wonderful and a nightmare all at the same time.

Reply 6

Athena

6

matthew_mi

Do u really start studying like a freak during ur 3rd year? Or is it like with the tutes u re already ready for the exam?

Don't use txt spk :poke:

It depends how good your memory is, whether you're the sort of person who learns something once and has it stick, and also the amount to examined content that just needs you to learn facts or examples, not understand things (I don't know how much of an issue this might be compared to my subject, where we need to do some fairly disparate fact learning, such as all the nerves in the pain pathway to the brain, all the hormones in gonadal development, the names of some obscure tribes in the Amazon, and which sociologist said what about public education... those are the sort of things that either stick when you learn them, or require considerable cramming).

Reply 7

Peter_The_Great

4

Bekaboo

I think it's a bit of both. Obviously antipotato has given you an idea of contact time: for many subjects it's a lot more than that - but there is going to be a lot more self study to learn stuff than you're used to (although mainly nearer to exams)

One history student’s typical day*
(And yes, historians are the aristocracy of the degree world)

10am: Wake up. Mess about on Internet.
11am: Get out of bed. Either exercise or do some cooking for this evening.
12pm: Shower etc
12:30pm: Arrive in college just in time for lunch (we live out in Cowley)
1pm: Go to a library and do some reading, or take a book to the garden in nice weather
3pm: Take a break: tea, smoke, conversation, go for a stroll, croquet in summer etc
4pm: Resume work for another hour
5pm: Leave college, return home. Cook, talk, smoke, drink, visit friends, make music etc, generally be idle
8pm: Go to the pub or college bar
10:30pm: Go to a club, or back to Cowley for music/film and a cheeky smoke
2am: Stagger home and go to sleep

Repeat with minor variations every day for the rest of term. Just remember:

Tuesday: Class, 2 - 4pm
Wednesday: Essay writing day, so work a bit harder than normal
Thursday: Tutorial, 2 - 3pm
Weekend: Avoid current degree work, read some *******s that has nothing to do with the course

Total reading time: 15 hours a week, give or take a few hours
Total contact time: 3 hours

*Typical now - definitely wasn’t this pleasant when I was busy doing extra-curricular rubbish last year

Reply 8

gooseymcgoose

11

I really don't mean to be rude or 'one upping' but I think very few people at my cambridge college would go out at three times a week and manage to maintain a grip on work. Nor should it be surprising that lots of people work past midnight? The library I work in tends to still be pretty busy at midnight..

Reply 9

Athena

6

My friends at Robinson in Cambridge seem to work stupidly hard as well. Clearly, they chose the wrong university :cool:

Reply 10

thomasjtl

9

different people work different amounts- some people are just bastards who can do 10hrs of work a week and still get 1sts come exam time, others really just the boat out and practically live in the library. Most people find a happy medium, though. Basically, if you expect to be working most each day you won't go far wrong in most subjects, and will be pleasently suprised if you find you can get away with less.

Reply 11

Cirsium

19

Do u really start studying like a freak during ur 3rd year? Or is it like with the tutes u re already ready for the exam?

As others have probably already given the impression it depends a lot upon the person. Chances are you'll be "studying like a freak" a long time before 3rd year. I'll admit that it's rare that the people who are out on big nights out 3+ nights a week are the ones getting first but equally it's not always the people locked in the library.
I would definitely agree with Angelil though that tute work does not constitute revision.

Reply 12

sciencefan

Bekaboo

I would definitely agree with Angelil though that tute work does not constitute revision.

But don't tutes help check whether you're on the right track? Can you be totally off, not studying, not going to lectures, and expect this will not show in the tutorials? (Have no intention of doing this, just trying to establish the link between tutes and the rest of the academic work).

Reply 13

Cirsium

19

sciencefan

But don't tutes help check whether you're on the right track? Can you be totally off, not studying, not going to lectures, and expect this will not show in the tutorials? (Have no intention of doing this, just trying to establish the link between tutes and the rest of the academic work).

Oh I'm not saying you can just coast through and the tutes mean nothing - but you're doing very intensive detailed work on relatively small parts of the course. It's up to you to do that for the other 75% of the course that you don't cover in tutes on your own. And by june you'll have forgotten a lot of the extra reading you did in michaelmas anyway so you need to do it again.

Reply 14

ThePants999

14

Peter_The_Great

One history student’s typical day*

<snip>

Total reading time: 15 hours a week, give or take a few hours
Total contact time: 3 hours

*Typical now - definitely wasn’t this pleasant when I was busy doing extra-curricular rubbish last year

Sounds pretty similar to me (E&M). Just enough to get by on my studies, then lots of time on extracurricular stuff and general chilling. Was good fun, and I got a 2:1.

Reply 15

epitome

11

Re: Peter_the_Great's "Day in the Life" of an Historian...

I'm an English student (at Cam, not Ox), and if I tried to get away with that I'd sink within a week. Absolutely no way.

The way I loosely divide my time, once I've gone to 4-6 lectures, 3 supervisions and 3 classes a week, is to aim for about 7-8 hours of work a day. In reality this means that many days I'll do 5-6, and fairly frequently I'll do 8-10. Sometimes, rarely but deiciously, I'll do nothing (though this "nothing" more often than not includes going to a supervision or class or something). I do masses of extra-curricular stuff (about 30 hrs a week), and have a healthy social life (albeit one that cannot survive past 1am!).

So it's definitely possible to work hard & play hard -- I rarely feel that the work is overwhelming (though sometimes there's a couple of days where you just have to work all the time). Revision term, though, is going to be less fun...! But that's to be expected! :smile:

As for as I can see in my sciencey friends, they have plenty of time for fun whilst getting good grades -- sport, music and academics happily combine in one person.

And yes, there are people here for the education rather than the grades. Though if they're serious about that, they will more often than not get good grades anyway, because they'll have spent their time reading and thinking!

Reply 16

Mayfly

Bekaboo

Oh I'm not saying you can just coast through and the tutes mean nothing - but you're doing very intensive detailed work on relatively small parts of the course. It's up to you to do that for the other 75% of the course that you don't cover in tutes on your own. And by june you'll have forgotten a lot of the extra reading you did in michaelmas anyway so you need to do it again.

I cannot even begin to express how much I disapprove of this system. Maybe it's bearable in other subjects, but it gets ridiculous in history. There is NOTHING more infuriating than being told on your collections that you should have written about something that not only have you not covered in tutes, but that was not covered in lectures, nor even mentioned by anyone in the university, ever. You're just somehow meant to know?! Seriously, Oxford, what theeeeeee badwordTSRwon'tallowmetotype.

Reply 17

martin101

10

mmm medicine is a rather structured course. Basically we need to know what the lecturer says and what we learn in tutes. My reading consists of reading for the tute essays (which isnt usually a lot of reading past the lecture notes). We have a fairly large number of lectures but so long as your paying attention you only need to do a couple of hours a day after lectures to keep afloat quite comfortably

Reply 18

epitome

11

Sometimes I wish I were doing a science subject, Martin...

Reply 19

matthew_mi

OP

WOW WOW WOW....probably it will be damn so hard remembering all the complex Engineering stuff that I ll learn over 2 years.....i mean i even hate final exam that we have each term....

Oxford Life, Work Load, Perspectives...

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