Choosing a Subject

It’s meant to be the reason you go to university. You’ll have contact with a world expert in classes and tutorials each week. And you’ll be given a place at Oxford on the strength of the interest you show in it. Getting your subject choice right is important. Changing once you are here is possible, but not as easy as at some institutions.

Don’t get talked into doing what your teachers or parents or friends insist you should do, though their opinions are of course worth considering. Work out what it is that you find interesting. Some people come for degrees like Classics having never taken the subject formally before, but can show aptitude and interest. If you’re interested in doing a course for which you haven’t done obvious feeder A-levels, it’s worth checking to see what the requirements are. Remember, many of the degrees offered at Oxford don’t exist at A-level at all. Never thought about Archaeology before, but it takes your fancy? Start thinking about it.

You’ll notice that with the exception of Medicine, Law, Engineering and Economics and Management, few of Oxford’s degree courses are directly vocational. Remember, though, that employers are increasingly interested in the fact that you have a good degree, not the subject of it. Even the most obscure of subjects (take, for example, Oriental Studies) is impressive to the most hard-nosed banking firm. Remember, too, that if you want to practise law one day, the conversion course (admittedly said to be a hellish twelve months) can be done after you’ve got your undergraduate degree, and you can always talk about “the additional thinking skills and diverse knowledge base” that Engineering (or History, or Maths) gave you in your law CV.

Joint Honours…

Studying for a Joint Honours degree involves taking two complementary subjects at once, but – and this is important to note – not double the workload! You’ll follow individual requirements for each subject in line with students who are just doing a Single Honours degree, and also usually taking some compulsory overlap or ‘bridge’ papers. The courses are produced by the relevant two departments co-operating, and as many of the courses have been operating for some years, this co-ordination has got very good in many subjects (though there isn’t as much in the way of formal inter-disciplinary options as elsewhere). Joint Honours students are in the minority and often find that they have to take a lot of personal responsibility for their studies. But this option offers a terrific way of combining more than one passion you may have. Whether it’s Physics and Philosophy or History and English, students find that there’s much common ground than they think, and it usually increases their understanding of both.

More Information

You can click here to get a link to the University's page about all the courses - we hope to be providing our own material soon.  You might also want to browse through the Alternative Prospectus (available here) which gives current students views on the courses they are studying. When you find a subject that takes your fancy, find out more on the departmental websites, and talk to the current students at open days.