Your First Reading List (Undergraduate)

School may already be feeling like a distant memory, but now your grades have arrived, your new college is often keen to offer their congratulations in the form of the reading list.  These will become all too familiar over the next few years.  At first though, the list of titles, articles and journals, frequently without a note of guidance, can be terrifying.

The first thing to emphasise is not to panic.  It is rare that you have to work your way through a whole reading list, and even if you do, you will learn how to focus in on the most important parts which immediately helps to reduce the amount of material in front of you.

After a few deep breaths, and having comforted the postman and their now bad back, what next?  If there is guidance on material to concentrate on within the reading list from tutors, it is probably best to follow it.  If it is just a list of books, you may find it helpful to speak to your subject parent (they will be in touch soon if they haven't already) and ask them for advice on the best and most relevant texts.

How you choose the relevant texts though will depend on the purpose of your reading list.  If it is just general background reading, then pick the books that look the most interesting.  If though you are expected to produce some work, or prepare for your first assignment, it can often help to look at the contents pages and indexes of the books.

This is because chapter titles or frequent page references to the desired topic can often give hints to the relevance of the book to the question you are expected to answer.  Concentrate your time on the books and parts of books that are most helpful to answering the question.  You will have time later on to explore a wider range of books in more depth, so do not feel you have to read everything now.  Often, there will be one or two key chapters in a book that will contain all the relevant material, and the rest of the book, whilst interesting, may not be very helpful.

Getting hold of books can be difficult outside of Oxford.  Don't be tempted to purchase everything on the list.  For a start, it will cost something similiar to the national output of a small country, as academic books tend to be very expensive.  Your first reading list might also be full of books that your tutor will never expect you to even glance at again.  For key texts and textbooks you may want to consider purchasing them, but it is often better to wait until you arrive in Oxford in case you can buy second hand copies off other students who don't need them any more, or to borrow them from the college or faculty library.  Even if you have to buy them new, Oxford is not short of fantastic book shops, and it will save you transporting the books from home when you arrive.  For the meantime though, try searching local libraries, and even local University libraries that will usually allow students from other Universities access to read from their collections.

Once you've chosen the books to read and got hold of a copy, remember again not to panic.  Few students arrive at Oxford having done much preparation for their new course, so you will not be alone upon arriving if you don't spend every day between now and October sitting in the library.  Do consider doing some preparation: if nothing else it will help ease the workload in the mad panic that is freshers and 1st week, and help get you back into the feel of studying again after the long summer break.