Choosing an Oxford College

Woosta has great food but they've cut down the number of formals. In my day, we had it six times a week

And i stand by Merton's food too - excellent value for money! Although the vegetarians do complain a disproportionate amount.

Disproportionate to what? Their numbers or the quality of the food?

So is there anything bad about Worcester at all? I've not really heard anyone talk about it with any negativity...

Some applicants feel that a college who has lots of medical fellows listed means better teaching provision. This is not a reliable indicator. At all. Lots of tutors aren't fellows, and lots of fellows have very limited teaching roles. And then colleges share tutors regularly, swapping for areas of interest, so its all mixed up anyway. Don't use this criteria.

I can tell you lots about Merton but not much about colleges that aren't my own. Questions like this are what open days are very useful for - speak directly to students who have all the answers!

Equally, i don't know much about libraries. However, this is not so important as the university science library is very well stocked in medical textbooks. You should rarely need to use anything else.

One factor you may wish to consider is the number of people doing medicine at your college i.e. the people you will share tutorials and likely be close friends with. This varies from 4 (Corpus Christi, say) to 8 (St Annes, say), with Pembroke/Brasenose sometimes sharing tutors making 12 combined.

I concur!

We had some honorary type fellows that in 6 years the extent of their involvement was them coming to fancy dinners (but not sitting with students ) or lecturing at big subject events only.

I found the (bookable in advance!) subject specific session of my college open day very helpful to finalize my choice - because you actually meet the tutors likely to be directly involved in your education & perhaps some current students.

These things do change - so I could speak about how utterly awesome my college was for medicine 2003-2009 (e.g. quality, number and range of tutorials both preclinical & crucially clinical, collections/mock OSCEs, perks as below, the medic society/dinners)... but already there have been changes in key people involved - so the experience would be different now.

Libraries will vary but the University ones really are very good too. Also variable are grants (books are standard but some also have equipment and elective grants) & other medic perks available (like rent rebates when on clinical placements/elective) - but these are the sorts of things that finding out in advance about will be a mission...

Now the number of places available is something that you can find out about in advance & was one of my college shortlisting criteria - I wanted a 'medium' number of medics & 6 seemed about right!

The other subject specific parts of college choice for me I think were location (for both the Science area and hospitals which are towards the East), clinical places, graduate accommodation provision (thinking long term here!) & slight seduction by a fun sounding society (Port & Cookies! ) & some Big Names.


But - the other things to bear in mind is that the overall department work hard to minimize the impact that College choice might have on your overall chances of getting in by formalizing 'pooling' - so that more successful applicants will have offers from a College other than the one they applied to. Overall probably a good thing - but means may be best not to get your heart set on somewhere...

Exeter's catering charge is painful. £300 per term just for the privilege of eating in hall (you have to buy your food on top of that)...

So is there anything bad about Worcester at all?

I'd say it's an advantage coz we don't have that many tourists. And it's less than five minutes to Carfax

Of course you would

Of course you would

But come on - right, if i had to pick the biggest negative of Merton, it would be the lack of kitchens on college site (despite the improvement since the new warden). If you had to pick the single worst thing about Worcester, what would it be? Try not to implode.

I will PM you the worst thing about Woosta, since it's quite serious but at the same time I don't wanna put anyone off