You don't learn just as much at other universities at all. The work ethic and the atmosphere tends to be vastly different to other universities. At some other universities doing the same subject I would have one essay to hand in on a module at the end of a 12 week term, here I have 8 essays to complete in 8 weeks, with a 6 day deadline for each one. There is a focus on working and it can be pretty intense, and stressful; my friends at other universities do little else other than turn up for lectures until the last three or four days before their end of term deadline when they actually work. My bibliography this term includes probably about 150-200 books/articles, I'd be surprised if theirs included a tenth of that.

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Okay, well Oxbridge is not necessarily better than all other universities in every area (there are other extremely good unis); and it is certainly not the case that its graduates will necessarily be any better than graduates from other universities (they definitely will not be, in many cases).

However, that aside, what does Oxbridge offer? It's not really the collegiate system that "makes the teaching better quality". What this system does is break us down into little groups, so we're treated as individuals rather than herds of cattle. The primary difference between Oxbridge and the majority of other unis is simply the amount of individual attention every single student gets, by way of the supervision system (a supervision is a very small teaching group -- one-to-one with an academic, or one-to-two. Sometimes three students, but no more). This individual teaching puts a lot of pressure on to complete the work. Furthermore, there is MORE work: we have at least one of these intense sessions a week (up to maybe 4 or 5), and each of those will usually have a deadline. I don't know about the workload in economics, but - for instance - in English, I do more essays in one term (and of a similar length) than my friends at other reasonably good universities do in an entire year. That quantity of work simply means you get through more stuff, which means you come out knowing more (hopefully!). Or, at least, you are made more aware of what it is you don't know...

So it's really a combination of two things: VERY small-group teaching (on top of the normal lectures & larger groups), and a significantly larger work-load. The education is therefore generally very thorough, and students are given a better opportunity to become more knowledgeable.

It has little to do with the name. If you take a moment to have a scan of the assessment records of each of the university departments, you will see that Oxford and Cambridge most often have the very highest grades in almost every department -- that's no mean feat. The name creates a silly aura around the place, and lots of myths -- but the education itself is not influenced by silly myths; it is simply an extremely good education.

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I think you're trying to say that you are lectured by 'interesting people' at all universities. Well, that may be so, but you don't get the same level of contact. Supervisions give me one-on-one contact discussing my work with a senior academic (who has either written the texts that are on my reading lists or regularly has dinner with the people who have) for a substantial amount of time every single

week, it adds up to so much more than simply sitting in a lecture theatre listening to someone give a lecture.

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I think the idea is that we have much closer contact with those lecturers. At many universities, you go to a lecture with 200 other people, listen for an hour, then the lecturer leaves. Here, you go to the lecture, and then if you're really interested can set up a one-to-one meeting with that lecturer, or might have him/her supervising you for a whole term on their subject. So we kind of get to know them, and are guided by them much more, than at most other universities.

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The money. Oxbridge are loaded. More money means more contact time (which makes a BIG difference - imagine going for a whole year and having maybe 3 essays marked, and then you have to go write the perfect essay in the exams). It also means more books, more journal subscriptions and better facilities. It also means prizes for doing well in your first year - at many unis the first year is a doss off and THEN the work starts - we never get time to cool off. And mostly, being surrounded by a LOT of people ALL working hard. If you go to another uni then there will be a fairly large proportion of people who have coasted through school with relatively good grades, or who just couldn't care less. I'm not saying these people are absent from Oxbridge but they sure are a minority. When everyone around you is working, you work too. It's the atmosphere rather than tangible gains that I find makes the most difference.

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Assuming I've translated you correctly then, firstly, yes Oxford allows you to spend more time with lecturers - not necessarily more lectures but bear in mind we have at least one meeting a week with those who lecture us - far cry from the faceless lecturers at other unis. Secondly bear in mind that with all its money and prestige Oxbridge attract the very best in the field. Another uni with less money can attract less top notch researchers to lecture.

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I've spent far more time reading relevant primary literature (and hence have been forced to learn how to find it, read it, analyse it, and cite it) as being pretty useful. It also means that come exam time I've covered EVERY topic in extreme detail. I'm not cramming lecture notes because I've already got my own argument.

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An Oxbridge degree is no better, at least not in my subject. Having done a Master's at Oxford, where I witnessed the disadvantage many of the Oxbridge graduates were at in comparison to me, I'm truly relieved I didn't go there as an undergrad. Most of the Oxbridge (particularly Cambridge) grads I was

friends with on my course spent most of the time panicking because a) they weren't used to writing long essays, and b) they didn't have much experience in literary critical approaches outside of prac crit (one girl was upset because she didn't really know how to apply the secondary criticism she was reading to the text at hand, because she simply hadn't needed to at Cambridge - and she was a really bright girl). Also, in most cases, their intellectual confidence or experience didn't match their abilities. It seemed like many had spent the last three years of their lives being patronised and, despite the supposed advantage of one-on-one tutorials, generally neglected. Their tutors hadn't encouraged them or their writing, quite the opposite.

The university I attended as an undergrad encouraged me so much: I was helped to publish my first article, give my first conference paper, become a reviewer for big papers, and many staff members always had time for an intellectual discussion, often over a pint or dinner. This would never have happened to me at Oxbridge. As a postgrad student at Oxford I was treated like a schoolgirl in comparison. As for my undergraduate degree, it taught me not only how to ace exams, which I would have learned at Oxbridge too, but also how to write and research long essays, and to read more broadly than I would have had time for at Oxbridge, and to incorporate what I read into my criticism rather than relying too much on the crutch of practical criticism. I believe the English degree at Oxford and Cambridge is in very many ways poorer than what is offered at certain other universities; it's a shame, because their students, some of whom are truly brilliant, deserve more.

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In the humanities, I'm afraid I'd have to say very little "actually". Outside of academia, it carries a certain whack of prestige, which isn't necessarily warranted, but does count for something; likewise, as Angeli said earlier, it seems that even within academia on the continent people are drawn to the name. Since this perception is there, and can affect the way people view your academic record, it does give the degree a value that others lack.

The standard required to get in does also guarantee that your peers there are going to be brighter than average; and the relatively high number of people who're particularly keen on their subjects, who're trying for firsts, &c. probably increases the feeling of competitiveness at the top end. It also means that being a (very) good student isn't anything special. The make-up of the undergraduate body is a reflection of the fact that they're so selective, and have that prestige, but it's quite a clumsy indicator of who the best students are. Given the fact that A-level work bears no ressemblance to degree-level work, it's reasonable to assume that students bright enough to do well at the former can do well at the latter, but ridiculous to think that an assessment of people aged 17-18 is able to select accurately the very best students, even with interviews. The whole point of going to university is to develop intellectually, and there's no reason why people at Oxbridge can do this more than people anywhere else; they might merely be more inclined to. Plenty of people get rejected who could have done very well, plenty more get accepted who don't have a great taste academia, and are happy to settle just for the presitgious title. On one level, having been to Oxbridge merely demonstrates you had what it took to get in when you were in VIth form, which correlates with a certain degree of industriousness and intelligence, but doesn't mean that what you studied there was more worthwhile that what anyone else did elsewhere.

In sciences, where so much teaching (initially, at least) seems to necessitate going to lectures, I can see how the material on a degree course is going to vary considerably between universities, based on entrace criteria. In humanities, lectures are entirely supplementary: if anything, getting the reading lists from them is more useful than taking any notes. Since syllabuses for individual papers are relatively free, what you learn is more down to personal committment. The whole Oxbridge thing of forcing you through two canonical classics every week gets ridiculous; you can say you've 'covered' them, but you really have just read them and made a brief study of criticism. In the long run, you may as well have just read them in your own time, without having to throw some half-assed excuse for an essay together in the process; which obviously doesn't even go towards your final assessment. I'm not really convinced that reading Milton in Cambridge, then Empson's book on Milton, is any different from doing it elsewhere, other than allowing you to go to Christ's and look at his bust with a smug sense of proximity to the tradition. Whereas taking a course on Complex Analysis or something is probably going to be far more demanding, with correspondingly difficult exam questions.

As the_alba has pointed out above, Oxbridge undergraduates can actually be intellectually disadvanted in some areas compared with those elsewhere. The obsession with weekly essays, and corresponding lack of time given to real research practice, gets infuriating. The continuous pressure to turn out work can also destroy your self-confidence; whilst you do get some fantastic intellectual discussion, you also feel you're being asked to prove yourself constantly, via means of assessment you never have time to fulfill accurately. Some people just take it in their stride and thrive, and don't care about the formal work they're given; others just feel imposed upon. If you lose the feeling that you're working for yourself the pleasure goes out of it, and I certainly felt it got that way. I still find myself having a crisis of confidence whenver I open a blank document.

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However, I think the special thing about Oxbridge degrees and the Oxford and Cambridge system itself (I'm sorry if someone has already mentioned this) is the supervision/tutorial system. As far as I know, no other university in the world has the same style of teaching - which in Oxford and Cambridge dates back to around the fourteenth century - which encourages the student to spend a week on an issue, write an essay, and then argue it out with your expert tutor. Although a lot of people argue that this Socratic method of teaching is outdated (and I agree that it's a lot of hard work and extremely stressful); I think what it does do is build the students' character in a way that the lecture/seminar system at the newer universities can't. I agree that it's terrible for your self-confidence (you begin to realise just how much you don't know), but as a method of intellectual stimulation, I think it's unsurpassed.

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I think the system is rather different nowadays from how it was even forty or fifty years ago. All the tutors I've spoken to about it say that in their day the emphasis was much less on production of written work, and more on reading. One person, a classicist, told me he was just given a reading list and instructed to tick things off as he got through them (in the Latin and Greek, of course). Writing so many essays is really a huge waste of time. Supervisions are not, as there's an obvious advantage to being in small teaching groups, and, you know, things are also slipping towards exam-preparation

more and more: some supervisors prefer spoonfeeding you to improving your debating skills, and whilst it can be comforting to come away with a pre-prepared essay you could dump in an exam, it can start to feel like your whole intellectual life is being dominated by arbitrary forms of assessment less and less linked to your own interests and motivations.

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Tutorials. It's that simple. At Oxford, I got 2-5 hours a week of at most 4:1, and usually 2:1 contact. That doesn't happen anywhere that isn't Oxbridge. I'm sure many subjects are fine being taught in classes of 10+, especially when lectures are the main method of teaching (for science subjects I'd imagine), but for an arts subject where discussion is key, having very small groups helps massively. It meant we got taught at our own pace, could explore topics we found interesting, could properly discuss something, and generally had all the teaching tailored to us.

Sure, the atmosphere, the old buildings, and the calibre of everyone you study with all help, but the tutorial system is by far the most important academic difference between Oxbridge and everyone else. It's also worth mentioning that not everyone gets on with it, as it's not right for everyone. Being such small groups means there's nowhere to hide, it's quite pressurised and some people find it hard to work in that kind of atmosphere.

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While I said myself that for arts subjects it's far less of a tangible difference in teaching, I'd quite like to refute the suggestion that an English student skim reads a book and then throws something together. I'm in a flat with an English student for the second year running, so am quite well acquainted with said flatmates working habits. And the amount of secondary criticism he reads is phenomenal. I certainly wouldn't see him as "throwing some half-asses excuse for an essay together" and he's far from the highest achieving or most conscientious English student at Jesus.

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You tend to read primary texts properly and then the parts of secondary criticism that are relevant, which generally invovles getting a huge stack of books, skimming most of them and reading selected chapters/essays in detail. That is, if you've any sense. There are some people who claim to read huge amounts, or extremely fast, and seem to have nearly zero retention or understanding of the material. Anyway, the volume of secondary material you absorb for a supervision essay probably appears more than it is to untrained eyes

Likewise, though, there's a significant difference between the kind of essay you write for a supervision and a genuine, considered piece of criticism. Supervision essays are, notionally, sketches, jottings, emergent ideas, which are a halfway point between the essays you turn out in exams, and real dissertations. If you have to write two of them a week for three years, though, they start to get tiring, as you feel you actually want the time to read more primary texts, or without much pressure, and a serious amount of criticism; that is, to research something more palpable. I'm not claiming that English students don't have to do work (I know this isn't the case, the amount of work drove me

nuts), but that the work they do is really quite dissatisfying for anyone with a sense of critical integrity.

Though I think my main point was that, whether their work is half-arsed or not, they could do it anywhere with a library; there's nothing special about libraries that authors once frequented.

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I agree that there are a lot of massive books from which only one chapter is relevant! And I agree that you COULD do that in any library... just... well my best friend from home started doing English at Cardiff - I didn't realise how hard I was working at Ox until 5 weeks in I was slaving over essay number 6 while she was panicking about her first "tutorial". Yes you COULD do it anywhere else. Just... people tend not to!

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Da Bachtopus, good posts. I'm actually starting to wonder just how beneficial the whole "essay a day" (ok, I exaggerate) thing is. As you seem to point out, the trouble is that you have very little time to get proper reading and criticism done, unelss you're a particularly skilled reader. I can't help fearing that this may leave less diligent students with a far from complete knowledge of their degree subject matter. It's so rushed that it becomes difficult to write with imagination. I suppose the consequence of the system is that you become accustomed to reading selectively and under pressure. Constantly writing essays also improves your written style because you get so much more criticism and commentary than if you wrote only a couple of essays a term. Seeing your tutors so often I think gives you more of an awareness of what exactly is expected of you, and unique opportunities to test your ideas (if you have any!) and see where and why you might be wrong, and pick up interesting perspectives from tutors and colleagues.The pressure students here have to contend with, and the sheer volume of work they produce, probably gives them some advantages over students who have fewer deadlines.

I think part of the thing with Oxford and Cambridge as institutions, is that they have developed over the years, a very particular 'way of doing things' that's associated with an image that employers find attractive. The resources and history as well as the reputation of the universities, imbue its students with certain manners and habits and exposes them to experiences - academic, atheletic and social - that may not be so available elsewhere. For a start, the most preeminent scholars generally come to teach at these places. I suspect a fallacy among employers is that students therefore uniquely benefit from the tutelage of people who are often leaders in their discipline. While OxBridge does get more than its fair share of good brains, I think much of the attraction to employers seems to be institutional. Students just as fine and better can be found in any of the leading universities in the country. Still, I suspect a good deal of the attraction is image and reputation.

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My only opinion to this matter is that people with exceptional creativity (yes, let's be cliché and say Einstein) would not have been admitted to Oxford, and had they, they would have fared terribly. I don't believe that the way Oxford functions now is the best way to prepare future successful scientists. Yes, I will recur to the old argument about why Oxford has so few Nobel prize winners? My

answer would be that people are taught to think in a particular way, and this deters the more imaginative people from ever studying here.

Look at the list of Nobel prize winners; these include a former construction worker who by a miracle got a position at a university (at age 35), never got a PhD and ended up proposing some marvelous things in a completely different field than the one he worked in. Another person was trained at Med school until age 29, then changed to chemistry and did some exceptional research culminating with the prize in 2002.

Did these people need Oxford? Hell no. I'm only staying on because I like my friends and studying in another country, but quite frankly I'm sick of the way we're forced to regurgitate masses of information. Merton particularly is nasty when it comes to this aspect. Our tutors began discussing exam technique since first week, and tutorials basically center around "that day in June". It's ridiculous.

In Scandinavia they're far ahead the UK by two means: 1) All universities are free of charge in all aspects. 2) All university exams allow students to bring in all their notes and books, because research in education has shown the detrimental effect of mass-regurgitation.

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The tutorial system, for arts at least, is exactly what exceptionally creative people need. It molds itself to the students needs, so very godo students are pushed hard in a way they can't be elsewhere, as any class has to move at the pace of the slowest student. When there are 2 students, that's a lot less of a drag than when there are 10 or more. To give you an example, I was really interested in the link between central bank independence and macroeconomic stability, and whether it was overhyped. Because the other person in that tutorial also was, we spent a lot of it discussing this at a far higher-level than was required for the syllabus. It wasn't needed for the exam, and couldn't have been done if there were a load of other people there, but happened because the tutorial system allows it.

That is what exceptionally creative people need - tutors who teach them what interests them, who adapt teaching to their style. That isn't possible in large classes.

Now this may not apply for sciences, as they are taught far more in lectures, since quite frankly, there's far more (facts, figures, actual tangible things) they need to learn. I don't know. But the idea that Oxbridge is bad for creative people is ludicrous.

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I think there's a curious friction in the ways Oxbridge is meant to be better than other uni's. A lot of people go on about how much personal attention you get from experts but for me the vast majority of the week is spent working alone in my room or the library. So there's like a friction between an education where you are guided more (call it an interventionist one) and one where you have to work a lot harder in your own time.

On one hand people say 'you get loads of attention' but on the other say 'you get worked a lot harder' but when people use the 'you get worked a lot harder' line, all that work is chiefly done alone. Your lectures and tutorials (at least for arts subjects) only supplement your understanding which is mainly created through your own reading (as far as I see it).

In my view, rather than all this 'you get world class attention' stuff people go on about, I think the edge at Oxbridge is learning to deal with a heavy workload in your own way and learning to place excelling academically alongside trying to excel at other stuff, like sport or whatever. There's also the aspect that I could rest on my laurels as the college legend at my subject at A level, but at Oxford you get a fairly large amount of these almost superhumans who can like get the highest score in their year AND have like 3 blues in different sports ect. There is thus no ceiling and, for me at least, being around people who seem to be achieving so much makes me want to compete with them and achieve more. Excelling is also sort of taken for granted, to the extent that is semi-expected, which is great because it pushes you (in a good way, mind) to make the most of yourself in trying to surpass these expectations. I get the feeling that this general atmosphere of under-the-surface competitiveness is greater than at other unis, and thus gives Oxford an edge.

I guess it breaks away from the stereotypical student lifestyle to an extent. Of course everyone enjoys getting wrecked and doing as little work as possible (especially in my year, the first year) but I think at Oxford, if you mess up your tests through laziness and come across at bad at ‘what you do’ as a result (whether its history, biology, whatever) you’re, just considered a joker and not taken seriously. There’s always a slight pressure to do well as well as being a stereotypical idle student.

That’s not to say being at Oxford is a hugely pressurised experience in a negative sense, because I haven’t found it to be that. If anything, the fact so much of your learning is left up to yourself lets you apply as much pressure to yourself as you want in your attempts to pass as well as possible the background institutional pressures of exams ect

That’s the main thing for me, the self discipline it engenders and the self expectation to be the daddy at everything you do.

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The winter vac at Hull lasted from mid-December to the fag end of January, because we had semesters. Summer was basically end of May to end of September, depending on what exams we had. It was sweet.

But yes. The absence of weekly essay deadlines meant I had a good 6 weeks of term time to devote to reading philosophy, linguistics, cultural history, and a vast range of criticism, all of which fed my essays and exams. I doubt anyone manages that at Oxbridge, because of the weekly grind - to the detriment of their work and their research skills.

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It probably has a lot to do with being a postgraduate, but I got **** all attention when I was at Oxford. And from what many of my friends said to me, the attention you do get is often negative -

tutors who are intimidating, patronising, or just plain buffoonish and pervy. I know a lot of people who were undergrads there who got no encouragement, whereas I got bucketloads at Hull. So here am I, with a string of publications and reviews on my CV, and two lots of AHRC funding, and friends of mine are graduating from Oxford and Cambridge with none of that, because they haven't been given the opportunities I had to excel. Tutors saw them once a week, sure, but didn't necessarily want them getting too big for their boots and certainly would never have said, 'Here's the email of my contact at the Guardian - you should write for them over the summer', like mine did. I think the 'attention' thing is slightly misleading. And as for world class - I was taught by FBAs at Hull and by drunken idiots at Oxford. But I guess I was just unlucky.

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Thorough reading? I wouldn't know it if it hit me on the head. Good marks don't come through thorough reading, they come through ideas. Sure, it helps for technical subjects, but to get a first in an essay-based subject (at least a PPE/E&M one) you generally need something interesting, something others won't put. Doing well is about taking what you've read and thinking about it, coming up with your own argument, and using sources to back it up and expand on it.

As for tight deadlines, they're really not that bad. I never slept on an essay, so ~12 hours was the most I ever spent (reading and writing included). That left me loads of spare time to do everything else. Now, if I'd used that time for reading and such, I'd have plenty of time not to be rushed, to read things thoroughly, etc. But it just wasn't necessary for me, as I get frustrated reading every word of something - when I've got the jist, I want to discuss it.

Being that most study is self-driven, Oxford adapts to either. But short terms don't make creative thinking hard at all. Creative thinking is exactly what's needed to do well, both academically and to have time to do other things.

Incidentally, I find now I'm on a grad programme with people from a whole mix of universities, it's still the Oxbridge ones I find more creative, most ready to question how things are done, most likely to come up with new solutions. With a few exceptions, but especially when I look at economics, most people I know from other good universities have learned a lot, and many are technically better than I am (I did do E&M after all ), but they've learned most in lectures and classes, and seem to have more trouble applying it and using what they've learned to think about unfamiliar problems. Which if you look at Oxford's exams, you can see why. Most universities would ask about,for example, public goods in a normal sense, whereas an Oxford finals question would be more likely ask about Wikipedeia; or rather than asking about monopoly vs. perfect competition they'd ask something about how to find the optimal length of a patent. While our exams use stuff you've studied, almost all the questions will be entirely unfamiliar, and require you to use what you've learned in that unfamiliar environment.

At least for PPE/E&M, thinking creatively is exactly what's needed and encouraged, and what the system does well at. Looking at my Oxbridge friends, it seems their subjects aid this too, considering they've all turned out creative thinkers, academically.

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It ain't just about the marks though, but originality as well. You deride thorough reading, but I'd be very pleased to have time to get a little context and breadth into the course. In a subject like history, law or philosphy that's a very welcome attribute. It's hard to "find something others won't put in" when you're so busy cramming for the next supervision. I've managed well so far, but I do if wonder more cannot be gained by giving people the time to think. That said, the long holidays provide excellent opportunities to read more.

But there's no doubt a difference between creative thinking in the sense of juggling the load judiciously, and in the sense of having time to re-read, expand on and ruminate on current work. Perhaps it's because I'm a first year, still getting used to my subject and its demands, but the tight deadlines don't allow much time for this at present.

I supose I'd end in agreement with you. The smarting from the smacks of the workload, seems to give you increasing facility with the the concepts, once you've figured out what just hit you.

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Oxford's English department does not especially encourage creativity, but rather dry, bibliographical-style essays based on solid facts that don't take too many speculative risks or rely on abstract chains of ideas. I have always been a creative essayist, which is probably why I got such a high first. At Oxford, though, my creative essays were marked with comments like 'too speculative' and given much lower marks than my dry-as-dust bibliographical essays. They rewarded scholarly thoroughness over intellectual virtuosity every time. My friend who teaches in the MFL department said the English department is notorious for this, and certainly he is quite the opposite, valuing intellectual creativity above all else. So really it's all relative.

A good example: I wrote a very creative, ideas-packed essay on James Joyce at Oxford, which got a low mark (73) and some perfunctory comments about a couple of my footnotes not being exhaustive enough. When I showed the essay to my PhD supervisor at York, a famous Joyce professor, she said it was brilliant and should be published straight away in a top journal. I just wonder how many other people are writing really good, original, creative work at Oxford and are being told to get rid of the ideas and replace them with obscure facts and dates instead.

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It's good for certain types of creativity, but not neccessarily for that which you need to be a researcher. The oxbridge system teaches you to think on your feet and be able to pull together soemthing meaningful in a short space of time, both very useful skills in many occupations and hence why many employers value the oxbridge system. However there is a lot to be said for other systems that encourage students to research more thoroughly (by allowing them the time to do so) and the space to think differently as well. However, in science at undergraduate level, creativity is lacking in any course at any university, it seems that learning to be creative is left until you are a research student. So, with that in mind, it really is up to the people studying the arts and humanities to offer their opinions of the relative merits of the tutorial system. At the end of the day there are people

here who have experience of tutorial system and other systems of university level learning and perhaps they shouold be listened to.

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I had many more fantastic tutors at Cambridge than you seem to have encountered (albeit in a year) at Oxford, most of whom did encourage originality over regurgitated criticism. I perhaps got lucky, besides considering where I went quite carefully. The problem is more that the whole "weekly grind" pretty much burns out your creative abilities, and can even lead to pretty lazy prose when the essay is thrown together. Most of the time, either in exams or dissertations or supervision essays, I felt I was doing creative work, just that I never managed to pull it off quite right against the clock. Which for me at least also induced a crippling paranoia and frustration.

Long as the vacations were, I couldn't bring myself to do much uni work, so I learned the piano and went to France instead

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I have to say, I've never known anyone to have so much work that they don't have time to think like this. The only reason people cram is because they wait until the last possible moment to do the work. I don't know any subject that regularly gives more than 2 essays a week, and taking say, 30 hours, per essay should give plenty of time to read thoroughly and think hard about the subject. The reason people cram is they don't leave 3 days to solidly work on the topic.

It's true, almost everyone does cram, and perhaps the university should take more account of this. But it's just that the vast majority of people either have bad time management or don't care enough to spend that amount of time on it. Or both, as in my case. However there is plenty of time to properly read things, think about things and such without cramming, if you wish to spend the time.

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There's plenty of time at Oxford if you don't do hordes of other stuff. I spent at least 30-40 hours a week in my second year running a society, and if I hadn't done that, I'd have had loads of time to devote to interesting academic pursuits. The reason people don't is because they don't want to or would rather do other things. There's no detriment to research skills from anything other than not spending enough time studying.

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That's perhaps a bit ungenerous. I think you're displaying a curious lack of imagination for somebody who extols so highly, the benefits of the OxBridge system in terms of creativity! In a subject like law, for instance, part of the frustration especially in first year is that you are starting with a completely blank slate. I'd suggest that with something like politics, economics, history and philosophy, you can have an extremely good mind for context and principles by the time you start, even just from the A Level syllabus. With law, it's very rare that people will know anything beyond the very basics - nor can they - before they start first year. You just don't do law in any meaningful sense before you start university, so you can pretty much throw any of the "winging it" techniques you learn in highschool into the bin. Not to complain, but as an example, I got my first two essays in freshers' week, and

you're not going to say anything sensible that early. People cram not necessarily because they start the work too late, but because, I'm starting to learn in at least one of my subjects, you're expected to speak about very particular things in supervision, almost as to a meeting bulletin. It isn't ,as people may believe, simply a matter of "what do you want to talk about today".

It's extraordinarily difficult to write anything sensible when you don't have time to read in a subject such as that, where you have to learn so many new things before you can even begin to talk, much less argue. Perhaps the key difference with law is that lawyers are learning an entirely new discipline from scratch - which I'd say isn't the case for nearly any other degree offered here other than medicine and a couple of other subjects. I personally relish the challenge and am lucky to be one of those who really does enjoy the course. In any case, one advantage of this system is that you're not allowed time to sink in the mistakes of untrained and undisciplined intelligence before you know what you're talking about. The tutorial system is fine and dandy, but the relentless cranking out of essays can act against the whole point and ethos of that system.

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I still don’t understand this ‘your essays are much different when you start uni’. There’s only so many ways you can cut and dice information in essay format, and my college tutors moan about the same things of signpost sentences, moving from a weak point to a strong one, linking paragraphs, ect just as my A Level teacher did. That’s from a technical point of view. In regard to whatever crap you happen to be writing about in a given week, the main thing for me was how far you could take your own ideas so long as they were based on facts. A Level teachers are more concerned about getting you to write what AQA wants you to write, but whatever you theorise in your uni essay is just open for discussion in the tute.

That’s it, no great world of difference, just a bit more freedom to say what you want. Obviously with so much extra reading what you say might be a bit more profound or better based on facts (at least in theory), but I think that’s a more natural, unnoticed development you don’t worry about anyway. And also, while reading ten books in a week sounds like a lot, everyone knows when you say ‘I read 10 books’, 6 of them were skim reading half a chapter which had an original take and the other four basically said the same thing as each other, so you paid attention to one and glossed over the others for any major interpretational differences you can talk about (and thats a good week, not a bad week, when you leg it to the library ten minutes before it closes and get 3 random books out). So even then the reading isn’t THAT thorough.

you get some people trying to make oxford essay's more arcane than they are by concluding with a pretentious peice of poetry or a 'prfound image', but saying what youre going to say, saying it, and analysing what you just said along with awnsering the question is still pretty much the order of the day.

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My essays this year are vastly different to their nearest comparison at A Level (which would be the 2500 word piece of coursework I did with OCR). Then the focus was on giving basic facts, a tiny bit of explanation and then evaluating the historiography of what bloke A thought compared to bloke B

and then tying up the paragraph with a lovely evaluative sentence. Repeat for the next couple of themes and then in the conclusion you simply sum everything up and then tie it up with a nice balanced conclusion.

Now, it's all about my argument, and I now have to persuasively and effectively argue what I think happened, or how well someone did something, or why something happened. The emphasis is completely different and the step from hiding behind the words of other people to taking a bold and unique line and confidently arguing it is massive. I rarely mention other historians unless the essay alludes to a contentious historiographical debate and then it only forms a small part of my introduction/conclusion.

There is a stark difference, and not everyone is able to quickly realise what is necessary and plenty of people struggle with writing authoritatively and persuasively. You could hardly say the only difference is slightly more freedom.

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The only lecturer whose notes I subsequently reread. He did it all from memory too. Legendary. Didn't he supervise you?

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I just reckon that the argument "I would be creative but don't have time as I'm trying to cram in all my reading" falls down when the vast majority of people who are so rushed spend less than 40 hours a week studying. Unless you're hitting the 60+ marks, you can spend more time studying and this allows time for creative thinking as well as thorough reading.

Now, there may be other arguments on how Oxford can stifle creativity, as alba's comments about the English faculty demonstrate, but lack of time isn't one of them. There's plenty of time at Oxford to be creative is it's important to you. Most people would rather socialise more or play more sport, but that's their choice.

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Fresh perspectives and that jazz. I think you need time to read broadly and holistically in order to do this, and it's hard manage or want be inclined to do this when you're too tightly restricted by set reading and close essay deadlines. I'm fully prepared to admit that first term/year novice-ness is the reason why I find this system unhelpful in some ways, but there seems to be agreement among a few people here, and those on my course and other courses who have similar misgivings.

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I think there's always going to be a difference in the UK vs elsewhere. In the UK, despite a minor amount of Oxbridge-love, most people are aware that other unis can be in the same league / better for some subjects and are more aware that Oxbridge are, although both exceptional universities, not

necessarily the very best at everything. However outside the UK most people have only even HEARD of Oxford and Cambridge - so of course they're going to see them as being superior.

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There is in some subjects. I remember directly comparing exams in economics, and finding that, with some exceptions, ones at other universities were far more obvious (questions about theory, not about some slightly strange problem you have to apply theory to) and quite significantly easier. LSE's ones are technically very difficult, and UCL's mathematically are very hard, and so there isn't any difference in difficulty there, just style - theirs are lots more short, technical questions, whereas Oxford's are essay based (comparing core micro and macro). When you go elsewhere though, the level definitely falls.

I remember my brother mentioning about maths ones too, that Cambridge's went quite a bit further and harder than most other universities.

External examining does help, but to give an example, for E&M they look at the borderline people, and for the last few years gave everyone the higher grade of the two. This may have changed this year, as I haven't seen the examiners report, but I did notice the external examiners comments saying as such on pervious occasions.

In some subjects, especially natural sciences, they are properly externally moderated so there isn't a difference in quality. But there is a difference in some subjects, now just between Oxbridge and the rest, but between different universities. An LSE first in economics is much harder to obtain than a Hull one, for example.

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