<p>Hello, I'm an American student who will be going of to the UK next year. I'll be studying at King's College London, majoring in history. </p>
<p>My long-term goal is to get into a graduate program at Oxford or Cambridge. What are some things I should do to in my undergraduate years to make myself a strong candidate? </p>
<p>Thanks for any help.</p>
<p>Why Oxford or Cambridge? They may not be strong in the subfields that you want. Your interests may change. You may decide to get a master’s in a field that isn’t offered at either of those universities. That’s a very vague goal; your goal instead should be to get into a top history program that will help you get to whatever you want to do with it, or to get into a good solid program in the field that you want to work in.</p>
<p>That aside, you should get good grades and make sure you write good papers that you can use as writing samples when applying. You should also try to do an independent study of some type so you have experience doing scholarship in history.</p>
<p>Thank you for the advice! I appreciate it tremendously. </p>
<p>I’d s that the primary reason for wanting to go to either Oxford or Cambridge is that they both have very strong Graduate-level Modern European/British History programs, which is the period I find most interesting. It’s an area I’ve known that I wanted to specialize in for years now. However, I don’t (or didn’t, rather) know much about getting in. In terms of conviction, I’m not set on going to either of them, but I thought I might keep my options open and be prepared in case I do settle on either of them. I over-emphasized them a bit in the first post, sorry for any confusion.</p>
<p>Oxford and Cambridge will usually make offers based on your academic criteria alone. These institutions have actually continuously discouraged students from taking up too many extracurriculars, tell them to focus on their studies. </p>
<p>You should, however, try to demonstrate a level of interest in history.</p>
<p>Depending on your area of interest in modern European history, learning a relevant language would be a good thing to do.</p>