Should I change my topics of interest in Oxbridge Personal Statements
I currently study Politics, Economics & Geography predicted A* in all three subjects and I intend on studying PPE at Oxford.
However, my primary interests are to do with Marxism, Pan Africanism, Neo-colonialism those kind of topics and I feel that institutions like Oxford don't have an affinity towards those topics. So I was wondering whether it would affect my application if I made those the core content of my personal statement or whether it would be easier for me to simply focus on a less controversial topic of interest.
However, my primary interests are to do with Marxism, Pan Africanism, Neo-colonialism those kind of topics and I feel that institutions like Oxford don't have an affinity towards those topics. So I was wondering whether it would affect my application if I made those the core content of my personal statement or whether it would be easier for me to simply focus on a less controversial topic of interest.
Original post by grazing-nap
I currently study Politics, Economics & Geography predicted A* in all three subjects and I intend on studying PPE at Oxford.
However, my primary interests are to do with Marxism, Pan Africanism, Neo-colonialism those kind of topics and I feel that institutions like Oxford don't have an affinity towards those topics. So I was wondering whether it would affect my application if I made those the core content of my personal statement or whether it would be easier for me to simply focus on a less controversial topic of interest.
However, my primary interests are to do with Marxism, Pan Africanism, Neo-colonialism those kind of topics and I feel that institutions like Oxford don't have an affinity towards those topics. So I was wondering whether it would affect my application if I made those the core content of my personal statement or whether it would be easier for me to simply focus on a less controversial topic of interest.
Oxford admissions tutors won’t reject you because they “don’t like the topics you’ve discussed” and I would hardly say that these are particularly controversial topics. Your personal statement should be about what you are interested in. Have you looked into the modules Oxford offers for PPE? Are there any modules in the degree that would allow you to explore these areas more?
Don't worry, OP, if you go to Oxford you will find plenty of opportunities to study the topics that interest you. Many academics share your interests.
Your PS should be about what interests and motivates you. Don't try to second guess what Oxford tutors are interested in and are looking for in potential candidates. If you are invited to interview you can talk much more positively and enthusiastically about your chosen topics of interest.
Original post by bibachu
Oxford admissions tutors won’t reject you because they “don’t like the topics you’ve discussed” and I would hardly say that these are particularly controversial topics. Your personal statement should be about what you are interested in. Have you looked into the modules Oxford offers for PPE? Are there any modules in the degree that would allow you to explore these areas more?
Thank you, I was having doubts as family members viewed these as controversial topics and told me to keep it simple. Thank you for recommending I check the module, I've just seen the topics I would like to mention are part of the 2nd and 3rd year modules.
Write about what interests you and why; that’s really the purpose of the personal statement. Doesn’t matter what it is as long as you’re not going on about current theories on dark matter for an application towards Arch&Anth.
You’d be unwise to try to game it, your natural enthusiasm for your actual interests will shine through, any attempt to make it up may be equally as plain.
Classic PS strategy would be to for ‘what have I been reading’, ‘why is it interesting to me’ and ‘what did I think of it’. With half an eye on relevancy but that should be natural to your application. Half the battle will be trimming the resulting essay down to the character count. It’ll be fine.
There’s some good critiques of statements available in the various Oxbridge entrance guide books. There’s some examples of where to pitch, I can’t remember details but I’m sure there was a couple where they show good and bad. Might be worth a look. Just a couple of insights into the purpose of the document.
Good luck.
You’d be unwise to try to game it, your natural enthusiasm for your actual interests will shine through, any attempt to make it up may be equally as plain.
Classic PS strategy would be to for ‘what have I been reading’, ‘why is it interesting to me’ and ‘what did I think of it’. With half an eye on relevancy but that should be natural to your application. Half the battle will be trimming the resulting essay down to the character count. It’ll be fine.
There’s some good critiques of statements available in the various Oxbridge entrance guide books. There’s some examples of where to pitch, I can’t remember details but I’m sure there was a couple where they show good and bad. Might be worth a look. Just a couple of insights into the purpose of the document.
Good luck.
Somewhat late but, not sure how or why you decided Marxism is not something Oxford has an "affinity" towards. Aside from the fact there is an entire dedicated paper in the PPE Final Honour School on Marx & Marxism, and Marx is included in a separate paper on the history of political thought too.
Marxist approaches are pretty bog-standard social theory toolkit approaches used basically across the social sciences and humanities and I think you'd find it hard to complete a degree in those areas at a university of Oxford's calibre without at least having a basic idea of where and why those approaches get used (even if you choose not to utilise those approaches yourself, or indeed choose to critique them). Likewise research into colonialism, postcolonial approaches, and concepts of neocolonialism I think would also be pretty common to find. Not sure about pan-Africanism specifically but I imagine if you're studying African regions and/or politics you might be looking at a variety of approaches and movements which may include that.
Just searching through the staff flagged under "political theory" in the politics department and I found three people specifically referring to Marx and/or colonialism in their research interests. Just before COVID the African Society held a conference on Pan-Africanism hosted by the African Studies department there. I think you're making a lot of assumptions about what is taught and researched at Oxford and I'm not sure those reflect the reality of contemporary academia in general.
That said, based on the topics you note of interest, you may (also) want to explore anthropology as a potential degree programme rather than PPE, since I suspect a number of those and related topics would be featured there. Oxford offers it through archaeology and anthropology, while Cambridge offers it through HSPS (which allows you to also do some sociology and/or politics). The topics you've expressed interest in seem less strongly tied to either philosophy or economics to me.
Marxist approaches are pretty bog-standard social theory toolkit approaches used basically across the social sciences and humanities and I think you'd find it hard to complete a degree in those areas at a university of Oxford's calibre without at least having a basic idea of where and why those approaches get used (even if you choose not to utilise those approaches yourself, or indeed choose to critique them). Likewise research into colonialism, postcolonial approaches, and concepts of neocolonialism I think would also be pretty common to find. Not sure about pan-Africanism specifically but I imagine if you're studying African regions and/or politics you might be looking at a variety of approaches and movements which may include that.
Just searching through the staff flagged under "political theory" in the politics department and I found three people specifically referring to Marx and/or colonialism in their research interests. Just before COVID the African Society held a conference on Pan-Africanism hosted by the African Studies department there. I think you're making a lot of assumptions about what is taught and researched at Oxford and I'm not sure those reflect the reality of contemporary academia in general.
That said, based on the topics you note of interest, you may (also) want to explore anthropology as a potential degree programme rather than PPE, since I suspect a number of those and related topics would be featured there. Oxford offers it through archaeology and anthropology, while Cambridge offers it through HSPS (which allows you to also do some sociology and/or politics). The topics you've expressed interest in seem less strongly tied to either philosophy or economics to me.
honestly oxford loves all that **** at the moment. topics sound fine going by whats on their geog website
Original post by artful_lounger
Somewhat late but, not sure how or why you decided Marxism is not something Oxford has an "affinity" towards. Aside from the fact there is an entire dedicated paper in the PPE Final Honour School on Marx & Marxism, and Marx is included in a separate paper on the history of political thought too.
Marxist approaches are pretty bog-standard social theory toolkit approaches used basically across the social sciences and humanities and I think you'd find it hard to complete a degree in those areas at a university of Oxford's calibre without at least having a basic idea of where and why those approaches get used (even if you choose not to utilise those approaches yourself, or indeed choose to critique them). Likewise research into colonialism, postcolonial approaches, and concepts of neocolonialism I think would also be pretty common to find. Not sure about pan-Africanism specifically but I imagine if you're studying African regions and/or politics you might be looking at a variety of approaches and movements which may include that.
Just searching through the staff flagged under "political theory" in the politics department and I found three people specifically referring to Marx and/or colonialism in their research interests. Just before COVID the African Society held a conference on Pan-Africanism hosted by the African Studies department there. I think you're making a lot of assumptions about what is taught and researched at Oxford and I'm not sure those reflect the reality of contemporary academia in general.
That said, based on the topics you note of interest, you may (also) want to explore anthropology as a potential degree programme rather than PPE, since I suspect a number of those and related topics would be featured there. Oxford offers it through archaeology and anthropology, while Cambridge offers it through HSPS (which allows you to also do some sociology and/or politics). The topics you've expressed interest in seem less strongly tied to either philosophy or economics to me.
Marxist approaches are pretty bog-standard social theory toolkit approaches used basically across the social sciences and humanities and I think you'd find it hard to complete a degree in those areas at a university of Oxford's calibre without at least having a basic idea of where and why those approaches get used (even if you choose not to utilise those approaches yourself, or indeed choose to critique them). Likewise research into colonialism, postcolonial approaches, and concepts of neocolonialism I think would also be pretty common to find. Not sure about pan-Africanism specifically but I imagine if you're studying African regions and/or politics you might be looking at a variety of approaches and movements which may include that.
Just searching through the staff flagged under "political theory" in the politics department and I found three people specifically referring to Marx and/or colonialism in their research interests. Just before COVID the African Society held a conference on Pan-Africanism hosted by the African Studies department there. I think you're making a lot of assumptions about what is taught and researched at Oxford and I'm not sure those reflect the reality of contemporary academia in general.
That said, based on the topics you note of interest, you may (also) want to explore anthropology as a potential degree programme rather than PPE, since I suspect a number of those and related topics would be featured there. Oxford offers it through archaeology and anthropology, while Cambridge offers it through HSPS (which allows you to also do some sociology and/or politics). The topics you've expressed interest in seem less strongly tied to either philosophy or economics to me.
I suspect that the OP may have been under the misapprehension that, because Oxford is an old and Establishment institution, it has no interest in modernity and in approaches to scholarship which are not Euro-centric.
Oxford is easy to caricature as a bastion of conservatism but it isn't really like that. True it is that the university and some of its colleges were endowed by those who made money through colonialism, and the regrettable past can't be changed, but nowadays the wicked Rhodes is a statue (Oriel want to take it down but English Heritage won't allow this) and, more importantly, a scholarship fund for students from all over the World. Oxford's student body is now diverse, and its academics are interested in all sorts of things.
(edited 1 month ago)
Original post by artful_lounger
Somewhat late but, not sure how or why you decided Marxism is not something Oxford has an "affinity" towards. Aside from the fact there is an entire dedicated paper in the PPE Final Honour School on Marx & Marxism, and Marx is included in a separate paper on the history of political thought too.
Marxist approaches are pretty bog-standard social theory toolkit approaches used basically across the social sciences and humanities and I think you'd find it hard to complete a degree in those areas at a university of Oxford's calibre without at least having a basic idea of where and why those approaches get used (even if you choose not to utilise those approaches yourself, or indeed choose to critique them). Likewise research into colonialism, postcolonial approaches, and concepts of neocolonialism I think would also be pretty common to find. Not sure about pan-Africanism specifically but I imagine if you're studying African regions and/or politics you might be looking at a variety of approaches and movements which may include that.
Just searching through the staff flagged under "political theory" in the politics department and I found three people specifically referring to Marx and/or colonialism in their research interests. Just before COVID the African Society held a conference on Pan-Africanism hosted by the African Studies department there. I think you're making a lot of assumptions about what is taught and researched at Oxford and I'm not sure those reflect the reality of contemporary academia in general.
That said, based on the topics you note of interest, you may (also) want to explore anthropology as a potential degree programme rather than PPE, since I suspect a number of those and related topics would be featured there. Oxford offers it through archaeology and anthropology, while Cambridge offers it through HSPS (which allows you to also do some sociology and/or politics). The topics you've expressed interest in seem less strongly tied to either philosophy or economics to me.
Marxist approaches are pretty bog-standard social theory toolkit approaches used basically across the social sciences and humanities and I think you'd find it hard to complete a degree in those areas at a university of Oxford's calibre without at least having a basic idea of where and why those approaches get used (even if you choose not to utilise those approaches yourself, or indeed choose to critique them). Likewise research into colonialism, postcolonial approaches, and concepts of neocolonialism I think would also be pretty common to find. Not sure about pan-Africanism specifically but I imagine if you're studying African regions and/or politics you might be looking at a variety of approaches and movements which may include that.
Just searching through the staff flagged under "political theory" in the politics department and I found three people specifically referring to Marx and/or colonialism in their research interests. Just before COVID the African Society held a conference on Pan-Africanism hosted by the African Studies department there. I think you're making a lot of assumptions about what is taught and researched at Oxford and I'm not sure those reflect the reality of contemporary academia in general.
That said, based on the topics you note of interest, you may (also) want to explore anthropology as a potential degree programme rather than PPE, since I suspect a number of those and related topics would be featured there. Oxford offers it through archaeology and anthropology, while Cambridge offers it through HSPS (which allows you to also do some sociology and/or politics). The topics you've expressed interest in seem less strongly tied to either philosophy or economics to me.
Yeah I see now that it really isn't that controversial but based off of conversations with family and a teacher I was having doubts about mentioning it.
Thanks for your help.
Just perhaps gently enquire if it’s the topic, or if it’s what you’ve written as your thoughts on it that’s the root of the comment.
Either way have a look at example personal statements - just bear in mind they are personal, as is yours.
There’s nothing wrong with putting Marxism into your statement, just check they’re not worried that you’ve gone wildly off piste on your thoughts.
Maybe get a 1/2 hour with the teacher and see what the thinking is.
Bottom line is, it’s your statement…
Either way have a look at example personal statements - just bear in mind they are personal, as is yours.
There’s nothing wrong with putting Marxism into your statement, just check they’re not worried that you’ve gone wildly off piste on your thoughts.
Maybe get a 1/2 hour with the teacher and see what the thinking is.
Bottom line is, it’s your statement…
How come you aren’t applying for HistPol, your interests seem to suit those papers more and without A-level maths?
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