Applying to Oxford, London School of Economics

Student Lounge International Students
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@vpa2019 has given you some- but you can find them for every course offered by every college (St Andrews, oddly enough, has one of the least helpful sites in that regard). That is also why you only prepare one application, that gets sent- in it’s entirety- to everyplace you apply in the UK: your essay is about why you are a great fit for the subject you are applying to study. Oxford Hx applicants expect to reference some non-curricular reading that is relevant to area of the Hx that they are interested in for their Personal Statement (essay), and are prepared to discuss that text the interview with the History tutor who will likely teach them at some point. Dual hono(u)rs are seen as harder admits b/c tutors (profs) in both subjects have to agree that you are a good candidate.

It’s not just that you have to apply & be accepted to the degree up front, it’s that you have very constrained choices within the subject once you get there. Notice that Durham the student has 5 classes in 1st year, 1 required and the other 4 chosen from a list of ~12. At Oxford first years have 2 required classes, a choice of which Historical Methods class they want and one optional class from a list of about 20.

The UK system (tbh, most international universities) suits students who really know what they like & want to study; the US system is better for students who want a broader range of options. The collegekids have gone both ways- it really is horses for courses.

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Take this with a grain of salt as my son is reading maths/CS at Oxford, but according to him, there is a significant level of independent reading/writing work associated degrees like History, PPE and the like. The 8 week terms are no joke with their pace, particularly when you need to read and turn out essays for your tutors. His words were that his friends on those courses worked like dogs. Been a great experience for him so far though.

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Hi all - thank you for your invaluable advice and information. It has given us some great insight.

Does anyone know which UK schools are particularly well regarded, both in the UK and in the US, for their history course/undergraduate program?

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The usual suspects (backed up by rankings from the Guardian, Complete University Guide, Top Universities) are

Cambridge/Oxford; Durham, St Andrews, Exeter, UCL

Others that come up: LSE, Edinburgh, KCL, Suffolk, Lancaster, Lincoln, Sheffield,

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Great…thank you @collegemom3717

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The following universities are well regarded both in the UK & US:

Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, UCL, Imperial, Edinburgh, KCL and St Andrews.

You can see some evidence here for this argument:

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/london-tops-list-for-us-students-online-searches/2018498.article

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/22635303/#Comment_22635303

International league tables that usually survey American academics and executives will back this up.

For their regards in the field of history, one will have to first eliminate Imperial as it does not offer a History course. For the remaining 7 universities, I would rank them for History in this order:

  1. Oxford
  2. Cambridge
  3. KCL 4=. UCL 4=. St Andrews 6=. Edinburgh 6=. LSE

Oxford and Cambridge have by far a wider breadth and depth of History repository and materials, hence should stand out from the rest.

Electing to go for any of the other universities will not provide any signigicant advantage over the others in terms of learning in History.

That said, LSE and UCL’s brand strength are better than the other 3 and only behind Oxbridge in the UK.

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Hi! Current Oxford history student here - I’m international but applied from the UK and I’m happy to help where I can!

  1. Although the Oxford degree is very rigid as technically all courses you study are in history, there is still a lot of choice within that. There’s only one fully compulsory course that you have to do (‘Disciplines’, about historical methodology, which you study in your 2nd and 3rd year), and if you’re a joint-honours student then you don’t even have to do that.

Notably, the optional subjects in 1st year and the further and special subjects in 2nd/3rd year can be semi-interdisciplinary even though they’re still taught by the history faculty and are only taken by history students. For example, there are courses on political theory and philosophy, early modern literature, French art history, and film. While they’re taught from a historical perspective they still offer a chance to do something a little bit different. I get that this is still very much rigid compared to a history major in the US, but I thought it was worth acknowledging that you can have some variety. I took one of the above courses and, to be honest, it didn’t feel like I was actually studying a history course.

  1. Other unis good for history - I agree with most of those already mentioned but I’d replace Suffolk, Lancaster, Lincoln with Bristol and York. The former three might be well ranked but they don’t have the same reputation in the UK as the others on the list.
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Hi.

I would not use any of the UK local league tables for judging reputation that much. They will always give the wrong outcomes.

They are more for judging student satisfaction and services than they are for academic reputation.

Places like Lincoln and Suffolk should not be coming up in regards to being highly regarded in the US or UK for any field I can think of.

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@LutherVan - thank you for that really well explained list!

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@Glitter22 fantastic to hear directly from a history student! Glad to hear that there is some flexibility even if it is all within history.

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My pleasure.

Note I started off with general reputation because, unlike in the US, in the UK subject field reputation is not a widespread phenomena.

Most people just tend to know and acknowledge general reputation in the UK because we really only have about 150 universities, of which only about 30 are seen as well-above the rest (i.e. the group of Elite plus respected universities).

Unlike the US that has over 4,000 (of which about 1,400 offer four year degree) and with about 100 universities/colleges being well-above the rest. Which has led to subject rankings required for delineating amongst these ~100.

The only few exception cases in the UK where some fields have a select group of universities being exceptional/in their own league are:

Mathemetics: Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial and Warwick
Economics: Cambridge, Oxford, LSE, UCL and Warwick
Engineering: Cambridge, Imperial, Oxford and UCL
Medicine and Public Health: Oxford, Imperial, Cambridge, UCL, KCL and Edinburgh
Neuroscience and Psychology: UCL, KCL, Oxford, Cambridge and Cardiff
Law: Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, UCL, KCL and Durham
International Relations: Oxford, LSE, Aberyswyth and St Andrews
War Studies: KCL
Creative Writing and Journalism: East Anglia and City UoL
Education: UCL, Oxford, Cambridge and KCL

History is not one of such fields with some universities being exceptional. So like the rest of the other academic fields, just use the universities general reputation to make your jugdement and you will likely hit the right mark if you get in.

For general reputation, here are the prestige/reputation tiers:

Tier 1: Oxford and Cambridge

Tier 2: LSE, Imperial and UCL

Tier 3: Edinburgh and KCL

Tier 4: St Andrews, Durham, Warwick, Bristol, Manchester

Tier 5: Bath, Nottingham, Leeds, SOAS, Birmingham, Cardiff and about 12 more universities

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I could not agree more.

The UK local league tables can be misleading for those who are not in the UK.

They are all not really reputation/prestige tables.

Birmingham would be a third replacement I could slot in to eliminate those three.

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I mistakenly forgot to put Cambridge after LSE in “International Relations” above.

And also forgot one more field where some universities are exceptional in:

Sports Science & Physical Education: Loughborough, Birmingham, Bath and LJMU

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Thank you again for the additional info, @LutherVan . It is invaluable since we are not living there.

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Only about 1/3 of Oxford’s international students come from within the EU now (~21% non-UK students, of whom 7% are EU, and 21% RoW), and the countries most affected will be Romania, Germany and Poland (each w/ ~110 students/year) and Italy (50). They all have roughly the same acceptance rate as the US (7-8%), but US students are already used to the international fees

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I don’t know if this should go to a new thread - wondering about the admissions requirements for history at Oxford, UCL etc.

  1. AP exams - My daughter goes to a school here in the US that does not offer AP classes, but does offer quite advanced classes in different subjects. For kids at her school who want to take the APs, they do a combination of these advanced classes and some self-study. She has taken both the AP US History and the AP English Composition exams - so she has 2 AP exams completed. Their school does not offer any course such as World History or European History but offers some intense trimester classes on specific topics such as WWII etc. What other AP exams do you think she should take to have strong consideration at schools like Oxford and UCL? For example, she is taking an advanced biology class this year - she was planning to take the AP biology exam at the end of this year. Obviously that is not related to history, but would that count towards fulfilling the admission requirements of at least 3 APs to apply for history at Oxford, UCL etc? Or in reality does she have to take either the AP World History or AP European History exam? Or one of the others listed under “History and Social Sciences” in the list of AP exams? https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/course-index-page

  2. SAT vs. ACT - do the English schools prefer one over the other? Of course on the website, Oxford says either. But sometimes schools have an unstated preference.

  3. Submitting test scores - do the scores of ALL the standardized tests a student has ever taken need to be submitted for English schools application? Or can the student choose which test results to submit? I am not referring to super-scoring which is submitting section scores from different sessions, but results of whole tests. For example, if a student has taken 5 AP exams, can she/he pick three AP exam scores to submit versus submitting all 5? Or if she/he took both SAT and ACT, can they choose which one to submit?

Thanks again in advance for any advice.

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CAVEAT: These are only my opinions! I know some Oxford tutors, we have been through the process ourselves and I know rather a lot of recent/current His/His+ Oxford students- but I have never been in the room where it happens :slight_smile:

There is both meeting the letter of the law and persuading the history tutors who will be making the decision as to whether to give an invitation to interview and then whether to make an offer.

She needs at least 3 exams- APs/Subject tests. There really is no getting around that. I do know several UK Hx students who applied with History + 2 stem subjects at A-level- but the problem for US students is that the tutors don’t rate US APs as being as comprehensive as A levels, so a US student applying with just US, English & Bio is going to be seen as less prepared (especially as the tutors know that there are also Eur, World, Comp Gov and US Gov out there)… It is really important to recognize how important this piece is for the tutors: they want students whose history background is strong enough on Day 1 that they can dive right in. Given that your daughter is doing the history classes she is, her LoR should reference the breadth and depth of her work in history.

To that end, the HAT score is a big part of the invitation to interview. The HAT is scored up to 40; the 50% for offers is 30. A high HAT score is important for getting to interview, but the interview outweighs the HAT in the final analysis (last year just 1 person scored a 40, and 2 a 39, and none of them got offers after interview).

If there is a way to get an SAT subject test in another history, I would recommend it. If she applies with Bio as her only other standardized test she will need to be predicted a 5, and if she were to get an offer it would be conditional on achieving that 5. If she is very confident of that- great, but it’s a lot of weight to put on a score outside your field.

In general UK unis are more familiar with the SAT, but I don’t think either Ox or UCl are bothered. It is really just a hoop to jump through- they are more interested in evidence of your ability in your subject.

Yes, ALL standardized tests- completed and scheduled- need to be submitted. In some cases they only consider/accept tests within the last 3 years, but that is specified on the websites. And- note that each school gets to pick and choose from both achieved and predicted scores what the offer is. Uni A could accept 3 achieved scores and the only ‘condition’ is that official scores are provided, Uni B could offer based on 2 achieved and 1 predicted, and Uni C could offer based only on the predicted.

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One of the local rankers, the Guardian, just released their 2021 ranking table.

If one goes to the subject rankings and look at that for Mathematics, it ranks Lincoln directly behind Cambridge. Lincoln is ranked well above Imperial and Warwick.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2020/sep/05/the-best-uk-universities-2021-league-table

For Medicine, it ranks Dundee & Aberdeen as better than Oxford and Cambridge. UCL at 18th!!!

Even Oxbridge professors would be laughing because UCL would be virtually on par with them for the study of Medicine.

Lincoln did not even make a submission for 2014 REF in mathematics. 2014 REF is the UK assessment of research quality of UK universities in all fields. That suggests they are so piss poor in Maths research, they could not be bothered to waste their time, but Guardian table says they are next to Cambridge.

If this Guarding ranking is intended as a ranking of prestige or reputation, then the league table is just laughable.

These local tables are really just a ranking of student satisfaction and care.

If one chooses to go to Lincoln for Maths over Imperial, that would just be one of the most horrible choices made in life except the person really just wants to have an easier and happier 3 years at university.

All the UK local league tables are very similar in concept and outcomes as Washington Monthly rankings. That is a ranking where Utah State is ranked higher than Columbia.

WM ranking is not a table to use for assessing the prestige and reputation of US universities/colleges.

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@Charcat56 FWIW - my son only took the ACT for Oxford. But he also had all of his required APs in the bag by the time he applied. Now about to start his fourth year.

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@HazeGrey - ok, thanks - that is helpful to know.
Yes - it is a little pesky that she goes to a school without APs. So it is not an automatic thing. The kids really have to plan things out in order to be prepared to take them

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