Descriptions: Private tutor in London shares her experiences in studying History at the University of Oxford, St Peter’s College.
The University of Oxford holds the reputation of being one of the most respected teaching institutions in the world, with ‘history‘ being one of the universities oldest subjects. In this article, I will address my experience studying history at Oxford, covering: the quality of tutorials and lectures, the breadth of the course in terms of locations and timeframes and general comments on the structure of the course.
While graduates from the University of Oxford all gain a degree from the same university, much of your teaching experience is affected by the college you attend (as much as the university does not promote this). In my first year, I was obligated to take courses taught by tutors in my college, thus limiting the courses I could choose.
While this was academically limiting, it allowed for the history students in my year at my college to get to know one another as we were all in lectures and sharing tutorials together. However, as you progress to the second and final year you can choose courses taught by tutors in any college.
The quality of the tutorials is outstanding; for one term I had one-to-one tutorials and for the other 7 teaching terms, tutorials were two-to-one. Every tutor who taught me was not only an expert in their field, but they were also excellent teachers (not always a given). The lectures were also brilliant; however, it should be noted that as a history student you will only ever have a maximum of three lectures a week.
While the limited contact hours leave a flexible timetable, it does require the students to do much of the work themselves. However, it should be noted that this is the case with a lot of the subjects at Oxford, and the reality of having fewer contact hours did slightly lower the stress levels.
The course is not only taught fantastically, but the breadth and depth of the topics you can study are very impressive. The courses are all laid out well, with clear instruction for reading and for essays that cover the core sub-topics. The course is relatively British and euro-centric focused, with a British history module being compulsory and topics that cover history in Australasia, Asia, Africa and South America being very limited. However, it has to be noted that this is in part due to the fact that we have limited records for these locations from the early-modern and medieval period and sources from these areas also present problems with translation.
The course is laid out with three teaching terms in your first year, covering one topic per term. In your first year, you have to cover at least two out of three of medieval, early-modern and modern topics. While initially disconcerting to students who are particularly passionate about a specific time period, the experience can be beneficial, allowing students to find new areas that they are interested in. In your second and third years (finals preparation), you have four teaching terms; in this time, you are taught four topics that you are examined on in finals.
You also have one piece of coursework based on one of the four taught topics. In your final year, you spend one term on your dissertation, which you are supervised on. All history students take one final module which should be taught throughout your final two years, however, at my college, it was taught in one week over the Easter holidays before finals.
My experience at St Peter’s College, the University of Oxford was fantastic, not only in terms of my academic experience but the activities I did outside of work and the social side. St Peter’s is a very friendly and modern college, which I felt limited the academic pressure and made the social side more enjoyable. I would recommend the course, college and university to anyone who enjoys history.
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