Well, I suppose the place to begin this particular story is with how I
got to Oxford in the first place - it all began with a question from
my personal tutor at QMC - a guy called John, he'd been asked to list all those likely to get
three or four As at 'A' Level (this is in the days before AS and A2) and
told me he was putting my name down. All those who were listed were invited
to an Oxbridge meeting, explaining more about Oxford and Cambridge and the
application processes. At the time, I remember going along partly because
John 'persuaded' me to, and because I knew it was silly to rule
something out without considering it; so I'd been planning on going along
and then ruling it out, because of it being too expensive/not the kind of
place I'd like (because neither of them are campus unis - I thought I wanted
to go to one that was).
Well that first meeting didn't enable me to rule
it out completely, so I began to find out a little more about the two cities
- sitting reading the prospectuses/alternative prospectuses in the library, and
then sending off for up to date copies. Then I dragged my mother off to an Open
Day in Cambridge. I don't remember much
about it, apart from the appallingly long drive, and the crowds of people there
in school uniform; ever since then I've thought it a good thing if schools/
colleges only send a few students to each Open Day, and don't send them in
uniform - it *is* incredibly intimidating when you're not part of the crowd.
If there'd only been a few of them, they'd have been much more willing to have
conversations with people they didn't know. Having ruled out Cambridge, I
turned my attention to Oxford - which I'd initially ruled out because I didn't
like the idea of individual tutorials (click here
for an explanation). Again I dragged my mother to an Open Day at St. Anne's College;
which I liked; unfortunately, we'd been rather silly and ignored all the
instructions to not take a car into central Oxford, so she ended up having to
go back to the car every couple of hours to feed the meter.
I think by this
point I was convinced that it was worth giving Oxford a try - it was only one
line on my UCAS form, I liked the City (though I was still quite wary of not
being on a campus I liked the idea of being part of a College). More importantly
I knew that I wanted to apply for law, and there weren't significant
differences in the course content between Oxford and other unis, unlike other
subjects. I was aware of one major difference - that Oxford still does finals
(there's a huge rant about my experiences much later), while other places have
a rather more humane system involving coursework and exams each year, but
dismissed this concern at the time, as being something I'd cross when the time
came.
What had me stumped at the time was picking a College. There are just over thirty
colleges to choose from, and while there were some I could rule out immediately
(St. Hilda's for instance, since I knew I didn't want to go to an all female
college) the whole process was just a minefield. I went for the practical approach
and ruled out those a long way (more than ten minutes) from the centre of the city
and then looked at application to places ratios and ruled out the colleges with
very high ratios. I then tried to find out about battels levels,
which was easier said than done, since it is *very* difficult to compare the
figures across Colleges, since they all include different things. In the end Merton
seemed to be a good choice - it provided accommodation for all three years (which
is important in Oxford, since renting privately is expensive due to the number of
students in the city, had (so far as I could tell) low battels levels, provided book
grants, (only when I'd
been at Oxford a while did I realise how right I was about those points), was
relatively small, academic (though I *really* didn't realise the significance
of this at the time), situated in the middle of the city (but not on the High
Street, which I thought would be noisy - how I wish I'd realised the significance
of cobbles!) and the Porter we spoke to when we visited was friendly.
After this, there wasn't much to do but fill in the forms and hope, which I
duely did.