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The Tutorial System

Oxford and Cambridge offer you a unique learning experience through the tutorial system, in which you are responsible for planning your own time to ensure the necessary work gets done. You will meet at least once a week with your college tutor, either on a one-to-one basis or with one or two other students, to discuss an essay or solutions to set problems you will have researched in advance of the session. The purpose of the tutorial is to review your answers and theories and to raise any new points that result from the discussion.

Choosing a college

The following Oxbridge institutions accept visiting Brown students:

Cambridge

• Jesus College
• New Hall (women only)
• Pembroke College
• Selwyn College

• Cambridge University Prospectus

Oxford

• Lady Margaret Hall
• Mansfield College
• Pembroke College
• St. Edmund Hall
• St. Peter’s College

• Oxford University Prospectus

To help you decide between them:

• First, make sure that your grade point average is at least 3.5 before considering Oxford as a place to study. In order to study at Cambridge you will need at least a 3.75 GPA.
• Check to see which colleges offer your subject.
  Oxford Subject Offerings
  Cambridge Subject Offerings
• Consider whether you would rather be in a large, small, modern, or older college.
• Read the various college descriptions:
  Oxford College Descriptions
  Cambridge College Descriptions
• Look at the folder labeled, Oxford Sample Course Selection Forms or Cambridge Sample Course Selection Forms. Be sure to also read the returned student evaluations in the Brown in Britain Student Evaluations binder. Both are located in the OIP Resource Library.

Filling out the Course Selection Form on the Brown Application

Due to the tutorial nature of the Oxbridge curriculum, there is no set course catalog in which to select courses. Instead you need to consider carefully in which field you will concentrate your studies and then propose several topics you want to investigate further with your tutor.

Once you finish your course selection form, it may not look as specific as the ones in the Oxford or Cambridge Sample Course Selection Forms folder, but you should demonstrate that you have specific goals in mind for your course of study. For instance, if you were to travel to Pembroke College to study History, proposing study in "Modern European History" would not be specific enough. Instead you would need to propose more specific areas of inquiry, such as "History of the Holocaust" or "History of World War I."

Further Considerations

As a result of the limited number of available spaces to each college at Oxford, competition for admittance can be intense. Unfortunately there are no hard statistics or acceptance rates for the colleges. This is due to the fact that the acceptance rates are dependent upon the number of applicants in each year’s pool of prospective students and are as a result highly variable. In light of the competitive nature for a spot at Oxford or Cambridge, you are strongly encouraged to also apply to another school outside of the Oxbridge system as an alternate option for study abroad.

Have you:

• used the contact list to speak with returned students from Oxford or Cambridge?
• made an appointment to speak with a study abroad advisor? An appointment with an advisor is required as part of the application process. Sign up for appointments in the Main Office of OIP, J. Walter Wilson Hall, Suite 420.
• read the returned student evaluations in the Brown-in-Britain Student Evaluations binder?

Reminders:

• Review the current deadline information.
• When submitting your application, be sure to include course choice forms for your alternate school choices. You may submit course choice forms for a total of 3 institutions. For instance, you could apply to two of the colleges at Oxford and one other school outside of the Oxbridge system OR you could apply to one college at Oxford, one college at Cambridge, and one other British institution.
• Apply only to study in subject areas in which you have had previous classroom experience at Brown (a minimum of two courses).
• Begin considering a piece of academic writing that might be suitable to submit as a writing sample. You won’t be asked to submit a writing sample until after your application has been reviewed by a committee at Brown. But remember that things can get hectic toward the end of the fall semester…so plan ahead and begin considering what you might submit.

Updated: October 24, 2008