A collegiate university? Not for graduates.
By Balaji Ravichandran
PHOTO/Karen Roe
Let me say this as clearly as possible, without pretensions of politeness or gratitude: the graduate admissions system at Oxford, by which the candidates are assigned to a particular college, is nothing short of scandalous and dictatorial. Where the process is not clandestine and irritating, it is downright impolite and arrogant to the point of presumption.
In many ways, undergraduates are the lucky ones. They are explicitly told that it is the colleges that handle their admissions, organise the interviews, and effectively support and nurture them for the duration of their individual courses. The process is made more transparent by the open availability of all the relevant statistics: how many students applied to each college, what were their backgrounds, ethnicities, grades and how they were shuffled around before being finally offered a place.
Alas, I wish that the graduates had a system that were at least half as transparent! To be fair, the first part of the admissions process, whereby the relevant faculty decides whether it is worthwhile to let you pay £25,000 a year to undertake research at Oxford, is simple enough. Thereafter, however, your application becomes a game of cat-and-mouse between the colleges and the faculties. If you had specified a college in your application, the documents go to them after what seems like a year, and more often than not, they reject you. The more arrogant of the colleges do not even bother telling the candidates they have been rejected, and nor does the faculty. Too many applicants, they quip, and neither the £50 application fee nor the £3,000 college fee is enough for the basic courtesy of reply. Then, usually, your application is passed on to the college with the least number of applicants, or is assigned to another college at random, depending on the faculty in question. What’s abominable about this aspect of the application is that, when a college rejects you, and if they let you know of it at all, you don’t get any say in choosing another college. The faculty, or a computer, decides your fate, and you have to abide by it. Reject an offer from a college, and you reject the offer from the faculty as well. With us or against us, remember?
Oxford must think that once you have finished your undergraduate degree, which college you end up in does not matter. That’s why they don’t even bother to put up the relevant statistics online. All we know are how many students ended up at each college, not how many indicated a preference for one place over another, and certainly not how many ended up in the college of their preference. The presumption is that you’ll be a lonely scholar at your faculty library, hardly spending any time at your college. How else would you explain that in the application form, the applicants can merely specify one ‘preference’ for a college? At Cambridge, they at least have the decency to allow two choices. If the first one rejects you, the second one considers it. With Oxford, you don’t have that say. Rather, this is an underhand way to ensure that the exhorbitant sums one pays in fees goes to all colleges, and not merely the popular or reputable ones. That’s why, unlike for undergraduates, it’s not even necessary to have a Fellow in your college who takes some interest in your work. I’m a student of German Literature, and the last German Fellow in my college has just retired. I am, so to speak, academically adrift at Teddy Hall. But, why should that matter, as long as the College and the University get my fees?
The whole affair is richly ironic given the way Oxford boasts of its collegiate structure as its unique selling-point. Each college is an independent institution, we are told, with its own distinct culture, and it offers students both an academic and social home for the duration of their course. Then how silly is it not to have any say in deciding where your home is for up to four or five years, and how arrogant of Oxford to force an external choice upon us.
The truth is, the choice of college is as important for graduates as it is for undergraduates. The prevailing ethos of the college dictates your social life, and your ability to form and sustain friendships at and beyond Oxford. It is our first port of call away from the faculty, where we talk about things, besides work, that engage and drive us. There is nothing worse than ending up in a college where you find you have little in common with most people: a person whose primary passions lie in arts and literature will have little to relish in an atmosphere where there are fifteen sports associations, but none for painting or theatre. Or worse, imagine ending up as a gay man at a college that seems to you, by virtue of its ethos, routinely homophobic. With migration between colleges almost impossible, a student miserable at his college will have to remain miserable for the duration of his stay. Is this what Oxford wants?
The University and the Colleges deserve a severe reprimand, and the issue can no longer be gently brushed under the carpet merely because we’ve made it to the high-and-mighty Oxford. Even the best of universities are only as good as their students and their satisfaction. I, for one, am not happy.
Humor
29/10/2012 at 16:54
A severe reprimand! How stern!
What is your proposed solution, precisely? Surely you must recognise that, even allowing for a 2nd preference, a lot of people are going to end up unhappy. Would you have preferred to be rejected by Oxford than to end up at Teddy Hall?
It is demonstrably false to say “The truth is, the choice of college is as important for graduates as it is for undergraduates.”. Undergrads do their primary teaching and learning in colleges; postgrads do not. Postgrads get their teaching/supervision from the Faculties, not the Colleges, and you must know that full well. Given that, college choice logically cannot be “as important for graduates”.
Your argument that restrictions on college choice undermine the collegiate system are also somewhat spurious: surely for your ‘severe reprimand’ to hold logical water, you need to concede that the college system remains strong?
Some advice: get over it. Enjoy your time at a great University .
cornot
31/10/2012 at 09:11
“What’s abominable about this aspect of the application is that, when a college rejects you … you don’t get any say in choosing another college.”
Neither do undergraduate applicants.
“Reject an offer from a college, and you reject the offer from the faculty as well.”
Ditto for undergraduates.
“this is an underhand way to ensure that the exhorbitant sums one pays in fees goes to all colleges, and not merely the popular or reputable ones.”
What exactly would you consider a ‘disreputable’ college?
“unlike for undergraduates, it’s not even necessary to have a Fellow in your college who takes some interest in your work.”
I’m an undergraduate, and I do linguistics. There are no linguistics fellows in my college. Nor are there medieval French tutors, which is the other major part of my course at the moment. So I have to walk all of ten minutes down the road in order to be taught by experts at other colleges, and the relationship I form with them is no different from how it would be if they were at my own college.
“There is nothing worse than ending up in a college where you find you have little in common with most people”
At my college, I have some things in common with some people. There are some people I don’t seem to have anything in common with, and some things I don’t have in common with many people. I’d be very surprised if this distribution were to end up vastly different at another college.
Lily
31/10/2012 at 17:38
Humor, without the ‘u’, it is your comments which actually don’t hold logical water. Undergraduates also have centralised teaching, especially in the sciences, but have tutorials at the College. When all research postgraduates have are tutorials, it helps immensely if they are in the same College as their supervisors, or at least someone who takes an active interest in their work. I cannot have survived the last four years without my supervisor in the same College as me.
Besides, the crux of the piece is that the College choice is often forced on us, and that is unfair. Similarly, that the reprimand is predicated on an intact College system is what is illogical, I’m afraid.
Cornot, are you denying that Colleges have their own individual ethos, and that you’d fit in some Colleges better than others? All the grads want is a fairer system of allocation than what we have.
While the onus is on the university to device a fairer system, I think at least a more active consultation with the student is necessary. Saying ‘get over it’ will never make things better!
Humor
01/11/2012 at 09:48
Lily, with only one “l”, the point is a subtler one: the predominant teaching forum for undergrads is the college. The predominant teaching forum for postgrads is the Faculty.
While it may be very nice and convenient for you that your (DPhil?) supervisor happened to be in the same college as you, surely you must realise this is the exception rather than the rule, and that most postgrads survive just fine with having to walk half a mile or so to their supervisor’s college for a supervision meeting?
To the extent you identify the crux of the piece as being that College choice is thrust upon you and that this is a grave injustice compared to undergrads, you have completely missed Cornot’s point: undergrads applying to Oxbridge can only preference one college and have no say about where they end up if they are rejected by college #1 and end up in the common “pool”. What is more, undergrads can only apply to one college at either Oxford or Cambridge but not both . Are you chaps envious of that aspect of undergraduate admissions?
Finally, in a glorious example of buck-passing, you say that postgrads should be “actively consult[ed]” but that it is up to the University to “device” (sic) a better system. Ok, great. But when you are consulted, what would you suggest to replace the status quo?
Anonymous
02/11/2012 at 16:09
As a postgrad you get out of the college what you put in. I’ve heard most people say that even if they didn’t end up at their first choice college, they ended up liking it in the end. Having your supervisor at your college or not makes absolutely no difference in your experience since at this level, the college is primarily for social purposes. Oxford used to let people put down 2 choices on their application but what ended up happening is if your first choice rejected you, the second choice college was almost always full by the time your application got there and they would have to reject you too. Then you’d be put in the pool and allocated to a college which still had space. I think allowing a first choice just bypassed the 2nd step and actually means people get to know which college they’ll be in much sooner than before.
The only potential unfairness in the collegiate system is that some colleges offer many more perks (e.g. travel grants, scholarships, housing allowances, etc.) than others but I’m not sure how any system of allocating graduates would solve that.
Piet
05/11/2012 at 17:35
A sanctimonious article that screams “sour grapes”.
Any valid points are ruined by the tone and “spleen” being vented.
Anon
08/11/2012 at 14:06
I would like to add my support to this – especially as a research student, the academic community arond you can be an amazingly positive resource, or the lack of it can be equally stunting. With a disinterested supervisor, the main source of support are fellow DPhils and other academics/mentors, but if your college doesn’t have this community it can be very difficult to make the same progress as someone with a peer group of like-minded researchers. Most importantly, without insider knowledge it’s difficult to work out where has the best atmosphere for your particular specialism beforehand. I for one am extremely disappointed by the failure of my college in this regard. I am lucky enough to have a full scholarship, but I would be even more angry considering the extra college fee each year – in return I get a slew of irrelevant emails, and no academic benefits or facilities – e.g. access to teaching rooms.
Anonymous
09/11/2012 at 13:56
Exactly how is Teddy Hall “by virtue of its ethos, routinely homophobic”? Are you claiming that sport is not for the queer community?
Anonymous
09/11/2012 at 13:57
You don’t even live within the ring-road, let alone in close proximity to your fellow graduates. Your situation is supremely atypical. The arguments expressed within your article do not apply to the vast majority of male, gay graduate freshers.
Anonymous
09/11/2012 at 14:05
Teddy Hall DOES have a drama society. And a marvellous art collection. And a quarter of the art undergraduate freshers are at Teddy Hall (6 of about 24). And it has 4 of the 20 art D.Phil graduates. So you couldn’t be at a better college if you’re interested in art. And if, as you say, there isn’t a painting society, what’s stopping you from starting one? Probably that fact that you don’t even live in Oxford…
H Procter
14/11/2012 at 16:10
I do see your point(s) and I agree that better transparency is in order when it comes to graduate college applications. In my experience however, I would recommend at least trying to positively identify with your college and its environment. Start a theatre society, if that is what you want. Oxford is an incredibly supportive place, at both university and college level, and if a student needs support they are more often than not helped. Trust me, the support that you get at Oxford is streets ahead of other UK unis and for this I am extremely grateful, even if like you I am at a college that doesn’t really represent my interests.
anon
16/02/2013 at 20:12
The claim that “which college you end up doesn’t really matter, you will make friends everywhere” has never properly been proven or argued. Perhaps this claim comes from undergrads who don’t know any other college then their own and the few they “crewdated”. You’d be surprised how many Oxford undergraduates I met who don’t know that Wolfson/Kellogg/St. Cross even existed. Therefore I agree with the author that the current college allocation system is unfair. However, the undergraduate application system is perhaps equally strange. In any case, by which criteria are you selected from another college if your first-choice college doesn’t accept you? Overall, the lack of transparency in selection procedures is quite astonishing, considering that the University/Colleges are funded in large parts by taxpayers money.