Student review [#28617] for Anthropology
at University of Oxford

I hope you find my experience interesting.

I went to Oxford, however if I could go back in time I would have probably chosen Cambridge or LBS.

There’s a reason this photo of Oxford’s Bullingdon club, featuring David Cameron and Boris Johnson, because so notorious. ‘Oxbridge’ may be shorthand for ‘establishment’ in the country at large, but between the two the establishment spirit is much stronger in Oxford. A lot of this is down to the famous PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) degree offered at Oxford, which is one of the most prestigious degrees in the country. Many of the leading politicians studied this, so it in turn attracts people with political ambitions at a young age (a boy at my school, when he failed to get into his preferred Oxford College to do PPE, genuinely wailed ‘I’ll never be Prime Minster now’).

In contrast, I’ve always considered Cambridge to have a greater reputation for the sciences, where Oxford had a greater reputation for humanities (especially PPE and Classics). There have been 95 Nobel laureates from Cambridge, of which 2 Peace and 3 Literature. Oxford, on the other hand, has had 65, of which 5 Peace and 5 Literature. That’s 90 vs 55 of the biggest scientific prizes out there.

Cambridge is now one of the fastest booming towns out there, as science and engineering firms choose to base themselves there near the University: Why Cambridge is at the heart of Britain’s economic recovery . If you are a scientist or engineer, you’ll find better jobs in Cambridge. Then there’s the landscape. In reality, the two are so similar that we’re in the territory of narcissism of small differences. I recommend you make your decision based on something arbitrary, like which end you consider the best end to punt from (Oxford from the front, Cambridge from the back). I attended Oxford. In spite of what alumni and students of either institution will loudly proclaim, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge are similar. They are good universities, if you’re the right type of student: you enjoy the subject you’re studying, and you’re talented enough to learn fast enough to handle the syllabus. Let me explain why student satisfaction may not be high:

(1) Change in relative competence Many people enter Oxford or Cambridge from “normal” schools, where they were most likely the top students. I notice that the students who went to “elite” (academically-selective) schools tended to cope a bit better, since they were used to not being the best students in their classes, and used to a more punishing curriculum. For example, I experienced a rise in my relative competence, compared to my previous institution: I was in a selected group of about 50 scholarship-awarded students all placed into two classes, in a top-2 high school, in a country where only the academic top 30% are even allowed into high schools, and where the average PISA score is the highest in the world. Oxford represented a decrease in academic pressure relative to my A Level class in Singapore.

(2) Academic overreaching through extreme hard work Some minority of students at those institutions worked extremely (think 80 hour weeks) hard in order to make it in, in spite of a lower innate talent. Most of them don’t enjoy that level of hard work, and many of them were pressured by their parents to work that hard. These people have a pretty tough time because their parents are no longer there to pressure them, yet they find it really hard to keep up without working much harder than their peers. I wish that parents would not stretch their children so hard. It’s not healthy, and it is ultimately pointless. When they start their own careers, they are going to be free to choose their own pace. The fact that they attended a good university only helps them get that interview: afterwards, their lower level of competence is still going to determine their career path.

(3) Social life automatically gravitates towards the posh British private-schooled crowd Unfortunately, Oxford and Cambridge are disproportionately populated by students from British private schools, especially the elite ones like Eton, Harrow, Cheltenham Ladies’, etc.. Some students will not “fit in” with the group, e.g. international students of different cultures / appearance, state-schooled or working-class students. It does not help that many “posh” students have an unconscious assumption of their own cultural dominance in the university.

My advice to those students is to socialize less in College and more in clubs. First, postgraduates are much more diverse and international, but College social activities tend to be undergraduate-focused. Second, shared interests override other “softer” commonalities such as class or race.

Finally: If you have the chance to study the subject of your choice in Oxford or Cambridge, I recommend doing it. They are very good universities. Enjoyable experience, great environment (very safe, not too urban, not too rural), huge range of diverse people to interact with, strong academic support, and on top of it all, also good in terms of getting interviews at the start of your career. I have zero regrets in attending “Oxbridge”, except that I wish I took Maths (Cambridge)

Margarida :))))))