What is life like in Oxford and Cambridge University?

How is grad student life at Cambridge and Oxford University?

• in terms of workload, 'campus experience', activities etc. (as compared to US universities), for someone doing a MPhil/PhD in economics or computer science or related disciplines.

• Answer:

  I completed two graduate degrees at Cambridge (at the Judge Business School, like , interestingly, but not an MBA, although I did assist the wildly popular Strategy professor Dr Hadida for one term -- see ). I was also a Cambridge-MIT Institute Research Fellow at MIT, although it was not during term time. I had a choice to do a PhD at MIT or at Cambridge (you will find I mainly compare these two below) and my choice to stay at Cambridge had a lot to do with the expectations of graduate student life, considering I was a "mature" student with very different considerations from those of the broader peer group. With those caveats out of the way: The "University town" angle: many graduate students in MIT live off-campus so to speak, whereas in Cambridge, apart from a few married students or married-with-kids students, most are required to and indeed do live within Cambridge. While in theory, Cambridge is a town and lots of townsfolk -- as distinct from "gownsfolk" -- live there too, the "campus" feel you get in Cambridge enables complete immersion, which I did not sense at MIT. The importance of the immersive feeling: In Cambridge, your graduate experience is one of a kind. If lucky, you get housing in college (which I did) and have a ready-made social context, dining privileges and library access. But that is more or less where your association with college could end. Your academic connection is with your department and unlike undergraduates, there is no tutorial support for graduate students in college. Since colleges are diverse -- fabulous for a social life, diversity in thinking, broader personal growth and wonderful friendships -- graduate students may find themselves the only one of their department in some colleges and graduate studies can feel quite a solitary experience. Hence, the importance of feeling connected at a broader level to Cambridge. This is of course my judgment and your mileage may well vary. Campus life is rich and multifaceted in ways one can only imagine, when one is here. Disciplinary diversity: Cambridge is an older University (2009 was its 800th year) and a far bigger and more diverse university than MIT is. A handbook of lectures is published around November and it is humbling, overwhelming and exciting to see how much learning is accessible to one, just by being a student in Cambridge. My PhD was multidisciplinary and I sat in on lectures in law, SPS (social and political sciences), biology, economics and medicine departments to enhance my understanding. I reached out to many senior professors and academics and was able to learn so much. I didn't get that sense of accessibility at MIT. An interesting story here is about "office hours". American classmates often asked why Cambridge professors didn't have office hours like the American ones. The answer was simple: professors treat students as adults who will reach out and set a mutually convenient time any time rather than rush around to fit into the professor's convenience. Quite contrary to the impression of "accessibility" prevailing in both cultures! Students as adults: This was where my decision turned. My Master's in Cambridge (see: ) was co-designed with MIT. MIT however still required me to do course work for two years, despite much of the materials having already been taught, mostly by MIT Professors on visiting status with Judge/ Cambridge. As a mature student, who was more conscious of the fullness of my life as well as very aware of my learning style and high self-motivation, I found the inflexibility about transfer of credits etc a deal breaker for me. Rules and negotiation: Cambridge has a ton of rules about attendance, fee and fee remission, research-away terms. I was able to work within those rules, sometimes work around them as well as obtain help from my college -- Lucy Cavendish, not the richest but certainly the most generous place for mature women students -- for fee remissions, and for book and travel grants. MIT had need-blind admissions, but the cost was way too high, and the support for scholarship was all but linked to getting a TA/ RA-ship. I admit freely that some of my quality of life expectations were different from that of my peer group because I was older and had a set-up I was used to. I work for it but the uncertainty was unnecessary -- and foreign students have limited options in this instance (as well as at Cambridge, although the EU students have the same privilege as UK home students). Cambridge made that possible but living in Somerville and Watertown during my work at MIT did not give me much confidence. (See also: ) Workload: See my comment above re disciplinary diversity. I completed 80 interviews for my thesis. I was told by someone I was mad. But it didn't feel like work! I had a wonderful supervisor (see also: ) and I enjoyed working very, very hard for my thesis. That said during my Master's my entire class did weekly dinner outings, I found time to attend random lectures (see "disciplinary diversity" above again), eat out a lot, go to book readings and recitals and special lectures (the last of which happen very, very often at the Judge Business School and elsewhere), exercise regularly, and watch a lot of events in the annual Oxford and Cambridge sports competitions. I had done a two-year MBA at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad in India before so workload wasn't an issue for me; however learning to do everything without invoking the SHIT ("some how in time") model of time management I had cultivated over that time was a challenge and I did well! One of my friends from my Master's did a PhD in the Economics department and his experience did not vary much from mine. There were several Science PhDs in my college and although their work is far more constrained by the focus of their PI, they participated in and enjoyed Cambridge life just as much as I did. I am sure you will get some more answers on this specifically from those streams but for what it is worth, I found the Cambridge experience diverse, enriching, humbling and satisfying beyond my expectations. Hope this helps.