Oxford initially appealed to me because of it’s unique tutorial system. Little did I know what I was getting into. Classes at Oxford are unorthodox in their structure. Not only do the students here enroll in the college having chosen their major already, but the classes are laid out for each major by year. The most popular course of study here is PPE: Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.
Upon arriving at the college, you are assigned to a ‘tutor,’ based on your subject of study. However, your tutor isn’t our average St.Olaf professor. He or she is usually a visiting professor from an institution like Harvard or Yale, or a Doctorate candidate at Oxford. The ‘teacher’ at the University is generally the lecturer- a scholar in the respective academic discipline. Your weekly readings are books and articles by the lecturers and you attend lectures to listen to the authors of your books and articles speak about their expertise.
Lectures happen about two times a week and you have class with your tutor once a week for an hour. This structure sounded great at first until I was swamped with over a 1,000 pages of reading with a 2,000 word essay due the day before my second tutorial. No wonder Oxford has the largest number of libraries in the world…
Above: The author during down-time with friends. Left to right: Eran, Tahira, Anthony, Apoorva, Ben, Nufar
Essays are integral to the tutorial system. You write at least one 2,000 word essay every week. Depending on the tutor, you either submit it the night before the tutorial for the tutor to make comments. Or, you’re daunted with having to read it aloud in front of the two other students who are in the same class (Yes, the Oxford rulebook doesn’t allow more than four people to one tutor in a tutorial). Then, the tutor provides you with constructive criticism on the arguments. But, that’s not the end of it. The purpose of the tutorials is also to instigate discussion regarding the 1,000 pages of reading. Maybe you’ve been carefree about assignments or classes before? Yeah, you can’t do that here. If you write an essay defending one side of the issue, be prepared to argue the opposite side in your tutorial. It’s almost seems like an informal debate.
While these essays are not assigned letter grades, Oxford students receive “marks.” The scale ranges from 0-100, but I’ve been told that anything above a 60 is a very good essay. Even the best essays score only around 80. It’s similar to curves at St. Olaf. Upon receiving my first marks, I had to remind myself to not translate the number into an American letter grade because a 62 (just an example), for instance, is not a D.
And then this process repeats. Every term, every week, every class. Now, I should probably resort to writing my next essay for my tutorial. I should’ve waited until this year to get all my four WRI’s out of the way…
*Apoorva Pasricha ’14 is studying abroad for the year at the University of Oxford in England