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Oxbridge undergraduate or postgraduate?

penguingirl18

If you attended Oxbridge once, which would be best: undergraduate, masters or PhD?

Reply 1

thegeek888

President Obama went to Harvard Law School as a postgraduate.

Reply 2

penguingirl18

Original post by thegeek888

President Obama went to Harvard Law School as a postgraduate.

That's not Oxbridge? :confused:

Reply 3

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Depends on subject, career ambitions, and what you want out of 'the experience' :yes:

Reply 4

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

As above, hugely dependent on your interests and plans. For the example of a single subject, while Cambridge has a pretty well regarded history of art undergraduate programme, I think their graduate programme (both masters and PhD) is a bit more limited and their research tends to focus more on architectural history and/or conservation (via the Hamilton-Kerr institute) and so for areas outside of those you may be better served at Oxford, the Courtauld, the Warburg, RCA, or similar, depending on particular areas of interest.

As another example, while Oxford is clearly the best (and really, only) place to study Sanskrit at undergrad level in the UK, at masters level they only have formal degrees focusing on religious studies elements (rather than e.g. literature in general) so you would be limited to a one year research based masters if you were interested in e.g. various areas of literature (drama, poetry, etc), Paninian grammar, dharmashastra or arthashastra. However, at PhD level (or DPhil since that's what Oxford calls their course) they would undoubtedly be able to support projects in that area. Therefore while great for undergrad and PhD studies for most areas of Sanskrit studies (if one is restricting oneself to the UK anyway), for masters studies the options are somewhat more limited.

All that said, in general I'd note that PhD studies at Oxford or Cambridge are likely to be similar to PhD studies at similar institutions elsewhere. For undergraduate studies they have the unique tutorial/supervision system which is not used in the same way elsewhere in the UK, which may be a major draw. I believe some masters programmes also incorporate this format at either. So undergraduate study at Oxbridge may offer particular unique benefits (or drawbacks, depending on your perspective!) that other courses don't.