Attending the oxford university has always been a dream, so when my admission request was successful,I was so surprised and excited. The wonderful and eco friendly environment provides a conducive and seen environment that makes learning easy and smooth running, also the high quality and standard of our tutors and lecturers mean we have access to the best form of education. Oxford university is indeed a delight for every student.

I didn’t love oxford but I didn’t hate it either. The students were good and most of the teachers too. But there are also many weak teachers that was clear.

In professional terms it was good but I enjoyed studying at the london business school for a master’s degree more.

If I had to rate it, I would give Oxford a 3 and LBS 5. I wish I had studied at LSE instead of Oxford

I was never particularly fond of Oxford. I applied because I wanted the Oxbridge prestige but the university was not at all what I had hoped for.

Regarding the teachers, it was noted that they had a high lack of ability to relate to the students. Office hours were useless. In relation to the students, there was a high level of unhealthy competition.

In terms of career, it certainly helped me to have studied here, but I don’t know if I wouldn’t have been happier at another university. I ended up going to do a Masters at London Business School where the environment was totally different. The idea of the importance of the network was very present and everyone tried to help each other.

Another important parameter is the absence of the placement year. Undoubtedly, the Oxford brand is very important, but without grades or professional experience to complement it, it is useless.

Thanks

Yes. I hated it. Although academically it wasn’t hard for me to do well, I was constantly depressed because I couldn’t feel I fit in the local partying culture and never understood the “Oxford is so darn great and magical” mentality. Looking back it opened doors for me as well as closed some others. As a foreign student it was expensive, that it forced me to think I must take a high-paying job soon just to earn the money’s worth, rather than pursuing my passions. The only people who I know were totally happy about going to Oxford are those who are conventially successful, finding high-paying and high-status jobs quite quickly in their chosen paths. If you try to do anything else, people try very hard to make you feel like a failure.

I am sure if you ask 100 people you will get a hundred different opinions. But for what it is worth, I frequently wonder if they do more harm than good.

The trouble with having not one but two global elite universities in your country is that they suck all of the oxygen out of the room. Britain is stuffed full of excellent universities, but few people know or care about them because they are so obsessed with the Oxbridge duopoly. In the US lots of people have different ‘dream schools’. In the UK, in the vast majority of cases, the dream school tends to be one of those two.

It also creates problems for the universities themselves. My family have a fairly long association with Oxford over the years, and I can’t tell you how many times people tell me about Oxford as a bastion of privilege, full of upper class twits. Now, attending Oxford is a privilege but not a very bastion like one. Upper class twits are happily a relative rarity. Like most British universities, Oxford is pretty hard left politically, and inverse-snobbery is a far bigger problem than the conventional variety. But the perception is very hard to shift.

The universities therefore become a lightning rod both for ambition and endeavour, and also for criticism: both on a scale that is entirely out of proportion with reality. Gordon Brown (a rare British PM who went to a university other than Oxford) loathed Oxbridge. He would obsess over it as a hive of class privilege of discrimination which had to be dealt with. But for some reason he just couldn’t give two monkeys about what went on at Imperial, or UCL, or Durham, or Edinburgh or a host of other excellent universities. To him, they didn’t matter. What mattered – all that mattered – was what happened at Oxbridge.

It just isn’t healthy

Pedro …

I’ve just received my rejection email today, and those of you who know the admissions schedule will notice that this is pre-interview.

I disagree with the other answers – a rejection from Oxbridge (Oxford, in my case) is not just like any other rejection. Oxbridge is treated as something exceptional, something wholly other, and the admissions process reflects this. My applications to other universities were all the same, done in one batch. For Oxford, I had to submit work and take an admissions test. The many hours of preparation for these, and the interview I will never do, were draining, but I did them because I was invested in the opportunity. I poured my heart into my application, and in the thirty seconds it took me to read the rejection email, months or even years of hopes were dashed. I don’t want to be melodramatic, but that’d how it is. Perhaps I didn’t work hard enough. Perhaps I just applied at the same time as loads of extremely talented people. It doesn’t really matter.

Today, I received an email that broke my heart a little bit. I had convinced myself that I stood a chance, that I was a strong candidate who was likely to be interviewed. I desperately wanted to get in, to experience tutors and a course that were just what I wanted. But, that will never happen. With one, generic email my dreams crumbled and I had to face the fact that I’m just not that good.

Ah well. If I’m not good enough for Oxford, maybe it’s not good enough for me. Right now, I’m distraught, but it will get better. I will go somewhere else, and have a wonderful time, and do very well – partially, if I’m honest, out of spite. And I’ll move on, and eventually, Oxford University will just be a thing I didn’t do. And that will be just fine with me.

I went to Cambridge, and Oxford students would call me a ‘Tab’, a derogatory term (derived from Cantab., the abbreviated word for ‘Cambridge’ in Latin – that’s a classy way to come up with a rude word). But Cambridge doesn’t have a derogatory word back – read into that what you will…

The most important difference, particularly for what you want to know, is that Oxford is a city with a University in it; Cambridge is a University with a city around it.

I’ve heard this said numerous times, and it’s true – more true in spirit than in population terms (160k vs 125k). Oxford feels like a proper large city with a University in the middle, whereas the city of Cambridge feels like it’s grown up around the University. Oxford has better public transport and more housing as a result; Cambridge also has a fast train to London but the station is way out of town, and the housing stock is cheaper and wages higher. In terms of links to the rest of the country, Oxford is better placed – unless you have a strong fondness for East Anglia and the East Midlands.

The University of Cambridge was set up after a ‘town vs gown’ fight in Oxford forced scholars to flee in 1209 (and in 1355 there was a two day riot in Oxford following a fight between students and a tavern owner: St Scholastica Day riot – Wikipedia). The origins of Cambridge go deep within in its character: Oxford was always the establishment town, and Cambridge the rebel.

Take the English Civil War: Oxford was a Royalist stronghold, which the Parliamentarians subjected to a series of sieges. Cambridge was in the heartland of Parliamentarian power – it was the headquarters of the Eastern Association army and the Parliamentary leader Oliver Cromwell was a former Cambridge student and MP for nearby Huntingdon.

Classes were in person, lectures were delivered by global experts in their field and tutorial sessions were conducted with very small groups of students, sometimes individually, providing direct engagement with and learning from tutors and professors.

It was a great experience, the quality of teaching and attention was excellent, particularly with the tutorial system. My class sizes were all between 2 and 8. On the whole, the rest of the student body were nice, and it was relatively easy to maintain a good work/life balance.