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Hat 2023

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Reply 60
Avatar for Charis*
Charis*
Original post by arinkoc1
Just an Open Application tbh, didn't know much about each college individually (I only decided to apply for Oxford two weeks or so before the deadline lol) so I figured that would be the best option.
Also HisPol for me, though if Oxford doesn't work out I've got St Andrews and Edinburgh as reserves so far

I’m applying to all of those as well !!! I’ve applied to Worcester college in Oxford and also Birmingham and Exeter.
Reply 61
Avatar for Charis*
Charis*
Original post by arinkoc1
Oooo, that would have been good to write (oral history changing over time thus being relevant), I went the opposite direction (oral history changes and so can't be fully relied upon) and now I kinda regret it after reading your point!

I did this too, I did make sure to say that it was still repel but can’t be completely replied upon. I’m really not confident in my answers tho I think Oxfords out the window
Original post by Charis*
Finally someone who wrote about the lack of hierarchy I was getting so worried I wrote the wrong thing

But I don’t get it. There was a hierarchy- weren’t there serfs, overlords and a warring class?
Original post by do de die egg
But I don’t get it. There was a hierarchy- weren’t there serfs, overlords and a warring class?

I suppose there was a hierarchy but not a traditional one by any means. It was very much like ‘treat them well and they’ll treat u well’ and ‘make all ur decisions based on if it helps the ppl’ rather than ur a king so u can make whatever decisions u want. It was like the people decided most things and the king was more symbolic than powerful
I’m not sure hierarchy was particularly important in this case… I see both perspectives, it’s difficult to infer something out of it. Again, the source didn’t mention much about genre equality and social differences
Original post by Anonymous
I suppose there was a hierarchy but not a traditional one by any means. It was very much like ‘treat them well and they’ll treat u well’ and ‘make all ur decisions based on if it helps the ppl’ rather than ur a king so u can make whatever decisions u want. It was like the people decided most things and the king was more symbolic than powerful

I did say that but that doesn’t mean a society isn’t hierarchical- the antebellum south also had checks and balances but was deeply hierarchical. Their relationship was reciprocal- the king was to be fair and an arbitrator and in return those tribes would be loyal to the king. Nevertheless, there is a clear distinction between who is part of the tribe and who isn’t; I thought it was relatively apparent that for example, serfs did not have a say in this.
Original post by 121254Gnrdocarmo
I’m not sure hierarchy was particularly important in this case… I see both perspectives, it’s difficult to infer something out of it. Again, the source didn’t mention much about genre equality and social differences

Same I don’t think it’s very important but was still worth noting. I spoke more about their reciprocal relationship. I made one small analysis strand on gender and on how it was largely men who were valued and expected to be rulers- only old men were to be honoured and also the text spoke about people in relation to being the ‘sons’ of others. I still thought social differences were relevant in that they showed the role the king played within these social differences.
Original post by A*Essays
How many words did you put on the paper? What was your word count?

~1200 words
I took the HAT (History Admissions Test) online yesterday (20 October 2023) in America and was pleased with my response (I wrote 750 words in one hour). My writing was excellent but I ran out of time to edit, and saw approximately 6 typos with 5 seconds left to submit and realized I used the same transition “Also,” two paragraphs in a row. In addition, it suddenly dawned upon me that I clearly misunderstood the nature of the source to be a historical piece versus a “mythological piece that inspired a historical piece” even though I answered the question directly. Okay, so how bad will my HAT score be? Will I get any points for being a great writer or am I automatically doomed with my approximately 6 typos and that I failed to identify the true nature of the source? For the record, I practiced and nailed the past 4 HAT practice papers but this source threw me off by mentioning a mythological figure which rarely (if ever) shows up in American history classes. So, will Oxford recognize my potential and see that I can nail this if only I was given more time or should I adjust my expectations and give up my hope of getting shortlisted? Does everyone finish the HAT with a perfect, proofread essay? Was it supposed to be a perfect, polished essay or a writing sample? I applied for History & Politics at Lincoln College. I am not applying to colleges in the USA. Thanks.
(edited 1 month ago)
Original post by Lola_From_USA
I took the HAT (History Admissions Test) online yesterday (20 October 2023) in America and was pleased with my response (I wrote 750 words in one hour). My writing was excellent but I ran out of time to edit, and saw approximately 6 typos with 5 seconds left to submit and realized I used the same transition “Also,” two paragraphs in a row. In addition, it suddenly dawned upon me that I clearly misunderstood the nature of the source to be a historical piece versus a “mythological piece that inspired a historical piece” even though I answered the question directly. Okay, so how bad will my HAT score be? Will I get any points for being a great writer or am I automatically doomed with my approximately 6 typos and that I failed to identify the true nature of the source? For the record, I practiced and nailed the past 4 HAT practice papers but this source threw me off by mentioning a mythological figure which rarely (if ever) shows up in American history classes. So, will Oxford recognize my potential and see that I can nail this if only I was given more time or should I adjust my expectations and give up my hope of getting shortlisted? Does everyone finish the HAT with a perfect, proofread essay? Was it supposed to be a perfect, polished essay or a writing sample? I applied for History & Politics at Lincoln College. I am not applying to colleges in the USA. Thanks.

ngl it depends how good ur other points were! They aren’t overly bothered with spelling, grammar and quality of writing as it’s only weighted with a 1 when they’re marking so ur transition repeats shouldn’t be a problem. Also, again with the mythology thing it’s hard to say, it could be good as it may be irrelevant to the piece and they may have put it in to trick us, or they may have wanted a comment on it. Either way don’t adjust your expectations! I’m sure they’ll see your potential and accept that everyone makes mistakes, as it’s a very hard exam and we were all under a lot of pressure :smile:
Original post by Anonymous
ngl it depends how good ur other points were! They aren’t overly bothered with spelling, grammar and quality of writing as it’s only weighted with a 1 when they’re marking so ur transition repeats shouldn’t be a problem. Also, again with the mythology thing it’s hard to say, it could be good as it may be irrelevant to the piece and they may have put it in to trick us, or they may have wanted a comment on it. Either way don’t adjust your expectations! I’m sure they’ll see your potential and accept that everyone makes mistakes, as it’s a very hard exam and we were all under a lot of pressure :smile:


Thank you!!!
Original post by do de die egg
~1200 words


I only wrote @ 750 words in one hour and I type fast! How did others write 1200-1300 words in 60 minutes?
Original post by Lola_From_USA
I only wrote @ 750 words in one hour and I type fast! How did others write 1200-1300 words in 60 minutes?


No idea, I wrote 600… so… I don’t really know what to say about that
Original post by Lola_From_USA
I only wrote @ 750 words in one hour and I type fast! How did others write 1200-1300 words in 60 minutes?

I have extra time because in my real GCSE exams I struggled with timing. This time though I didn’t struggle so I wrote quite a bit. I think it’s maybe because it was online or maybe it was just about preparation. Idk
Original post by Lola_From_USA
I took the HAT (History Admissions Test) online yesterday (20 October 2023) in America and was pleased with my response (I wrote 750 words in one hour). My writing was excellent but I ran out of time to edit, and saw approximately 6 typos with 5 seconds left to submit and realized I used the same transition “Also,” two paragraphs in a row. In addition, it suddenly dawned upon me that I clearly misunderstood the nature of the source to be a historical piece versus a “mythological piece that inspired a historical piece” even though I answered the question directly. Okay, so how bad will my HAT score be? Will I get any points for being a great writer or am I automatically doomed with my approximately 6 typos and that I failed to identify the true nature of the source? For the record, I practiced and nailed the past 4 HAT practice papers but this source threw me off by mentioning a mythological figure which rarely (if ever) shows up in American history classes. So, will Oxford recognize my potential and see that I can nail this if only I was given more time or should I adjust my expectations and give up my hope of getting shortlisted? Does everyone finish the HAT with a perfect, proofread essay? Was it supposed to be a perfect, polished essay or a writing sample? I applied for History & Politics at Lincoln College. I am not applying to colleges in the USA. Thanks.

I’d say 6 typos is perfectly forgivable. They understand the speed at which we are typing and are probably looking more for the use of vocabulary and grammatical errors that form the core of your writing. I could be wrong though. Anyways as @Anonymous #2 has said, it is only weighted at 1 so will not affect much the mark. About identifying the nature of the source, I did the same as you and on that I have no idea. I don’t know about you but I didn’t understand how it affected the priorities of early Irish society. I spoke about the oral and transcripted element of the source instead. The 2021 past paper was quite similar and it said as a high level indicator that students should offer some reflection on the use of fiction and folklore and put not offering any reflection on the oral vs written element of source as a low level indicator. At the same time, it said that being overly negative on the fact that it is folklore is a low level indicator. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. You made the right choice only applying to UK unis- they’re just as good and they’re cheaper. Good luck :smile:
(edited 1 month ago)
Original post by do de die egg
I’d say 6 typos is perfectly forgivable. They understand the speed at which we are typing and are probably looking more for the use of vocabulary and grammatical errors that form the core of your writing. I could be wrong though. Anyways as @Anonymous #2 has said, it is only weighted at 1 so will not affect much the mark. About identifying the nature of the source, I did the same as you and on that I have no idea. I don’t know about you but I didn’t understand how it affected the priorities of early Irish society. I spoke about the oral and transcripted element of the source instead. The 2021 past paper was quite similar and it said as a high level indicator that students should offer some reflection on the use of fiction and folklore and put not offering any reflection on the oral vs written element of source as a low level indicator. At the same time, it said that being overly negative on the fact that it is folklore is a low level indicator. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. You made the right choice only applying to UK unis- they’re just as good and they’re cheaper. Good luck :smile:

Thank you so much!
Original post by Anonymous
Outside of points made about the rulers' involvement in agriculture, artisanry, justice, and the military, I made an introductory comment distinguishing oral history from written history. In the 500 or so years before the Testament was transcribed, it was disseminated orally, which means that its contents would likely have evolved over time to remain relevant to the social and cultural context of the time (including changing values and beliefs), this meant that despite being oral history, it would be quite relevant.

Thats exactly what I said in my first paragraph. Especially about the fragility of the Testament through oral history and how it may have been shaped over time to suit or even reflect different cultural and social forms in Ireland. So glad somebody else wrote the same.
(edited 1 month ago)
Original post by arinkoc1
How did people find the Oxford HAT today? I thought difficulty-wise it was okay, but I am not at all confident in my response; would have much rather taken last year's paper, that was significantly easier during revision.

Well, I had to open mine with a disclaimer that I’d actually read several things that either cited or directly summarised the text, and was left with lots of questions as to what goes in all the mid section or even mid sentence elipies. I also found the translation to be somewhat clunky at parts, perhaps as a result of knowing roughly what words were being translated.

I found it much easier than either of the practice ones I’d done— the document to question answer was much more straightforward, to the point that I felt I’d missed something when I’d answered fairly fully halfway through. I then proceeded to add on an analysis of why the source might not be very reliable due to transmission, and explained why I’d had to much couching due to the weird elipis and the lack of a mentioned lacuna making me wonder what the extractor didn’t want to include, and that those points that are missing might say more about that.

Honestly my biggest difficulty was not including outside knowledge too much, which is the main way it was harder than any of the practice options would have been.

I ended up finishing my final editing pass with three seconds to spare— enough to hit the submit button rather than time out. I had 1100ish words overal, including my disclaimer.


I more or less broke my argument down into three parts: firstly a discussion of the focus on truth as the ultimate positive attribute, then a discussion of the determine the value section and the three distinct kinds of value (fiscal, societal, abstract) being used within the pattern and structure, and then the things that I noted were emphasised and explained to varying degrees— the idea of history/law/poetry, which is explained and it’s importwnce discussed as a reminder, the idea of military/athletic prowess as be8ng largely defensive in nature, and it’s importance having to be explained and emphasised, and then the idea of interpersonal connections, oaths, and contracts, which are taken for granted as the basis of society— oath keeping is called out as a duty, and the doing of a duty is taken as obviously important with no reason given.

I then went into that discussion of the odd elipsis example by example, including guesses as to what might have potentially filled them, or the kinds of things that possibly could at any rate , and mentioned some standing questions I had about the translation as well.


What I did not mention and now realise I should have is some point on the importance of the rhymtic structure to the reliability of the oral transmission— unlike most of you seem to, I took it as almost certainly a 90%+ accuracy of transmission prior to translation and extraction, and those two factors being the primary cause of an altered text, as the original was so clearly written for memorisation. (Or rather, spoken. The message wouldn’t have been delivered in written form— otherwise it wouldn’t be “tell him”. So it was a spoken message meant to be memorised from the outset.) I think at the time I took this as sufficiently obvious to not need mentioning, and was too focused on not digressing into tangents based entirely on outside knowledge. So I didn’t want to mention the details I knew about how, for lack of a better word, texts from this time were composed for memorisation based transmission.
(edited 1 month ago)
Original post by 121254Gnrdocarmo
I was the only one taking the exam in my centre. And you?

Same— actually we had to specifically request they do it, so it was me and the invigilator (who hadn’t otherwise heard of the exam) in an empty classroom.
Do you remember what the question was?

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