Oxford students - What is it like there?

Can you not go to an open day?

>"Just wondering what life is like there, what the accommodation is like, whether you are happy there/happy with your course, and whether the workload is manageable."

Life is quite nice, the general atmosphere depends (a bit) on the college but overall it's a beautiful and very inviting town. Something more less for everyone, whether it be going out 2-3 times a week, chill movie nights or something in between.

Accommodation depends almost entirely on the college, overall it's certainly reasonable but some are definitely better than others. For specific info on accommodation you would need to ask someone familiar with that college.

As for the workload, I do PPE, I would say it is manageable but there's a lot of it, if that makes sense. If you're not on top it's easy to fall behind, but you have the first term to figure all of that out. The rather unique 2 months on/6 weeks off term schedule on top of the scarce contact hours (especially in smth like Lit) leads to an overall lack of structure that you either love or hate.

>"Also, did you always want to go to Oxford? Did you think you were going to get in, or were you surprised? What do you think was the most valuable preparation you did? And how did your ELAT/interview go?"

Nope, my English teacher convinced me to apply 2 weeks before the deadline. I thought that I had a shot, but since it was so far out of my frame of reference (American/French student) I really had no idea. Eh it's hard to really prepare, outside of doing the reading they recommend and not freaking out too much if you get something wrong, be prepared to justify your position etc. Can't speak for ELAT but interview generally went well but not exactly spectacular or anything.

what the accommodation is like,

whether you are happy there/happy with your course, and whether the workload is manageable.

Also, did you always want to go to Oxford?

Did you think you were going to get in, or were you surprised?

Thanks, that's really helpful. Did not know about the term schedule at all. Is it true that they ask you weird questions like (quote) how you would describe a cucumber to an alien, because honestly I wouldn't know where to start with that lol.

This would include 'long' 'cylindrical' 'green' 'edible'...

Er they can, it depends a lot on the tutor, college and subject. They will in general try to throw you a curve ball, even if it's not just a clearly silly question like that definitely something that makes you do a doubletake.

That said, with the right approach those questions aren't very hard-they're testing your thought process, adaptability and communication skills more than your actual knowledge, which I really respect.

Off the top of my head: ask yourself what the question is really asking. Ie this isn't really about aliens and cucumbers-it's about describing what to you is a completely mundane everyday object to someone who has a completely different frame of reference to you.

The obvious starting point is-does the alien have anything you could compare the cucumber to, perhaps on their ship, a part of their body that's cucumberesque, or anything that you have on hand.

Props aside you get into harder methods. Assuming you can communicate with the alien, you need to instead of describing the whole object as smth they understand, individual properties as smth they understand. This would include 'long' 'cylindrical' 'green' 'edible' etc.

As long as you can break down this sort of thought process and bring it somewhere, you can be almost entirely wrong and do fine. That said, I don't think you'd have a question quite like that for an English interview.