After a previous visit to Cambridge, this half-term I was lucky enough to be taken to Oxford by my grandparents on what proved to be a highly successful and informative trip. We stayed one night in a nearby Travel Lodge and spent the day in the city, visiting colleges and museums. I had asked my form tutor previously whether she had any good suggestions for places to visit in the city, since she went to university there, and I collected quite a list, with the vague suggestion of telephoning ahead to arrange a tour around a college as a prospective student. After attempting to arrange such a tour and finding ourselves only able to get through to the college porter at Balliol, we turned up after lunch hour and went inside (ushered straight past the no visitors sign). I walked into the admissions office and asked for a prospectus, totally unprepared for the welcome: they had known we were coming and had arranged a short tour. A friendly history researcher then gave me the opportunity to ask many questions and find out a great deal. This experience was invaluable, and the researched kindly gave me her e-mail address so that I may ask further questions.

My main question at this point was selecting a college from the huge number that the universities have between them. It seems that the general feel of the college is important and their outlook on the world, and the way to get this is to read the alternative prospectus, produced by students, and to take a look at the various student-run newspapers of the University, getting a feel for things. As usual University websites prove to be the best source for this, being excellently rich and detailed. At this point I need to do a good deal more research on the web, picking up information. In terms of courses, it seems that Oxford offer a joint Maths and Philosophy course that Cambridge does not, the latter only really having a pure maths course. The advantages of the former are also that there is little/none applied maths which I do not generally like as much, and of course it is a wider subject encompassing more skills. I will need to look into this in more detail, but it is pretty exciting at present. When I was asked what I wished to do, I said maths or philosophy, and the reply came “you know you can do both?”

Oxford also has some other attractions for the intellectual, and we had a good look round the Natural History Museum and the History of Science Museum, which were interesting. The Oxford Blackwells bookshop has a huge room of non-fiction in the basement that my grandfather and I spent a great deal of time in, finding a huge range of interesting titles to look at. Then on the second day we went on a guided tour of the Bodleian library, which was essentially the original bit of the university that is now its main library. The tour was facinating in terms of the history of the place, and the stonework was very impressive. The guide kept singling me out, as the only person under fifty, and pointed out the silly rivalries between Oxford and Cambridge which were rather amusing.

All in all, the trip was a brilliant opportunity and has set me on a better direction with collegiate research where before I was floundering somewhat. I also need to do research into second choices, should I fail to get into Oxbridge which is a very real possibility. Also, while in WH Smith in Oxford, I picked up a replacement fountain pen in a model I have been searching for for some time, which rounded off the trip very well!