Oxford MSt in English (all strands) 2026

Hey Good luck in your application, hope it works out! I applied to the World Literatures strand; have lots of broad interests & mainly want to focus on global histories of the novel in the long twentieth century, but would be interested in taking C courses which fall outside of this (I found the course details for each strand here https://oess.web.ox.ac.uk/handbooks#collapse1779761).
Applied to Wolfson College since it has an interesting founder, stylishly unobtrusive architecture, and I hope it would be quieter than the colleges which also take undergraduates. I do think that lots of people get pooled there from somewhere else, though, rather than state it as a first choice.
Which strand did you apply for/what are your interests?

I had no idea Isaiah Berlin founded W ! I applied for a mixed college, but that mostly because I come from another collegiate institution where I've seen the postgrads get special treatment over undergrads haha, so I want to Rectify that Wrong (might not be the best reasons for college choice but yolo...).
Thanks for the links, I couldn't for the lifeeee of me find them. I applied for 1900-present and my interests are mostly on transatlantic 'poetic artifice' in the long 20th c., but like u, I'm quite keen to pick up a totally unrelated C course haha

Hi! I’ve applied for the 1550-1700 strand and my interests centre around the reception history of early modern drama I’m not looking forward to what’s probably going to be quite a long wait for the outcome but wishing the best of luck to everyone!

Hi! I've applied to the 1700-1830 strand. I'm also currently an undergrad at Oxford so if people have any questions they think i could help with feel free to ask me.

Hi there! just thought I'd start this in case anyone else was looking for somewhere to keep up to date : ) Feel free to drop ur strand/college/research interests/whatever

Hello, I would like to ask whether there are many undergraduate students from Course II at your university? Is admission to the 650–1550 strand generally very competitive?

I applied to the 1700-1830 strand! This is my top choice program and all my other offers/rejections have come in so the waiting is killing me

I can answer that there are usually around 5% of students who take Course II. It’s usually a healthy minority of people from both Course I & Course II who want to carry on in academia after the undergraduate course, but Oxford students apply for graduate study through the same process as everyone else, so it’s not very relevant how many people take Course II because this doesn’t give them an inherent advantage over other applicants who have developed experience in pre-1550 literature and language at different universities.
For those wondering about the competitiveness of each strand, here is a link to the actual admissions statistics between 2016/17 and 2021/22: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/english_mst_admissions_statistic/response/2207281/attach/3/202212%201510%20MSt%20English.xlsx?cookie_passthrough=1. I think they also publish last year’s statistics on the course application pages.
In terms of when to expect decisions, I found a Reddit thread from last year (currently stuck at home ill, so spending inordinate amounts of time researching graduate admissions on the internet) where some people received decisions on their English MSt applications in what would be exactly two weeks from now. This makes sense since I’d imagine the admissions staff are still busy supervising people’s dissertations and that kind of thing, but that we’d start to hear from the end of the 6th week of the Oxford term.
Sure we all know it’s an institution like any other; it just happens to have incredibly good courses and resources 🤞🙃 I’m planning to apply to Warwick, Birmingham, KCL, and the MRes at Goldsmiths (probably my top choice for a backup) if Oxbridge fall through.

I can answer that there are usually around 5% of students who take Course II. It’s usually a healthy minority of people from both Course I & Course II who want to carry on in academia after the undergraduate course, but Oxford students apply for graduate study through the same process as everyone else, so it’s not very relevant how many people take Course II because this doesn’t give them an inherent advantage over other applicants who have developed experience in pre-1550 literature and language at different universities.
For those wondering about the competitiveness of each strand, here is a link to the actual admissions statistics between 2016/17 and 2021/22: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/english_mst_admissions_statistic/response/2207281/attach/3/202212%201510%20MSt%20English.xlsx?cookie_passthrough=1. I think they also publish last year’s statistics on the course application pages.
In terms of when to expect decisions, I found a Reddit thread from last year (currently stuck at home ill, so spending inordinate amounts of time researching graduate admissions on the internet) where some people received decisions on their English MSt applications in what would be exactly two weeks from now. This makes sense since I’d imagine the admissions staff are still busy supervising people’s dissertations and that kind of thing, but that we’d start to hear from the end of the 6th week of the Oxford term.
Sure we all know it’s an institution like any other; it just happens to have incredibly good courses and resources 🤞🙃 I’m planning to apply to Warwick, Birmingham, KCL, and the MRes at Goldsmiths (probably my top choice for a backup) if Oxbridge fall through.

I’m in the same situation rn and trying to decide which uni to go with if I dont get an offer from Oxford or Cambridge. Can I ask which unis you hold offers from if you dont mind sharing? Mine are Glasgow, Durham, Manchester and Bristol. I think I’m leaning towards Durham but who knows

I can answer that there are usually around 5% of students who take Course II. It’s usually a healthy minority of people from both Course I & Course II who want to carry on in academia after the undergraduate course, but Oxford students apply for graduate study through the same process as everyone else, so it’s not very relevant how many people take Course II because this doesn’t give them an inherent advantage over other applicants who have developed experience in pre-1550 literature and language at different universities.
For those wondering about the competitiveness of each strand, here is a link to the actual admissions statistics between 2016/17 and 2021/22: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/english_mst_admissions_statistic/response/2207281/attach/3/202212%201510%20MSt%20English.xlsx?cookie_passthrough=1. I think they also publish last year’s statistics on the course application pages.
In terms of when to expect decisions, I found a Reddit thread from last year (currently stuck at home ill, so spending inordinate amounts of time researching graduate admissions on the internet) where some people received decisions on their English MSt applications in what would be exactly two weeks from now. This makes sense since I’d imagine the admissions staff are still busy supervising people’s dissertations and that kind of thing, but that we’d start to hear from the end of the 6th week of the Oxford term.
Sure we all know it’s an institution like any other; it just happens to have incredibly good courses and resources 🤞🙃 I’m planning to apply to Warwick, Birmingham, KCL, and the MRes at Goldsmiths (probably my top choice for a backup) if Oxbridge fall through.

So I'm actually American, and Oxford is the only UK school I applied to! I have a couple offers from funded MA programs at private American universities.

Thank you very, very much for your reply😁. I’m a student at King’s, and I’ll say this quietly: if you’re planning to apply for a pre-sixteenth-century track, I wouldn’t recommend King’s. The programme is structured so that you have to take courses jointly across the English and History departments, and the administration on the History side is extremely poor (unfortunately).🤫