craven.fr (.ox.ac.uk)

This is an article in my series on Oxford's colleges and PPHs. These 'profiles' are based entirely on my own personal perspective and opinions; prospective students are advised to look rather to the prospectus and alternative prospectus of any college they are considering applying to, rather than place too much stock in my descriptions. Previous articles describe what colleges are, then discuss Nuffield College, the PPHs, All Souls' College, University College, St. Antony's College, Christ Church, Oriel College, Pembroke College, and Magdalen College.

In the interest of balancing out my previous article on "T'Oriel", I shall turn now to the college with the Labour party reputation, Balliol. In so doing, the first thing I should point out, again, is that these stereotypes are blown way out of proportion. The head of the university Labour party was recently an Orielensis, and Boris Johnson, mayor of London and a prominent Tory, went to Balliol. So all these things need to be taken with a grain of salt. These are educational institutions which recycle their entire student body every few years, after all. Ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμϐαίνουσιν, ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα ὕδατα ἐπιρρεῖ.

Some of Balliol's most famous alumni are Adam Smith (who doubtless would not have been a Labour supporter!), John Wycliff, and Aldus Huxley. Founded in 1263, it is, with Merton and Univ, one of the contenders for the title of oldest Oxford college, and it commands a great deal of prestige, making it one of the harder colleges to get into.

In spite of that, the reason for its popularity is not immediately apparent. Balliol does not have the most impressive buildings (Christ Church), nor the richest endowment (St. John's), nor the best sporting record (Oriel), nor the highest academic success (Merton, as measured by the Norrington table).

Nonetheless, to a large segment of the "in-the-know" applicant population, there is no more fashionable college choice than Balliol. I suppose this is due to its all-around strength—while Balliol might not have claim to any superlatives, except a (dubious) claim to being oldest, it does rank highly in nearly every criteria one might come up with. So, it is not surprising at all that Balliol should come out on the top of many a student's personal ranking criteria.

Either that, or a vague perception among 18 year-olds that Balliol's "connections" somehow make it a pathway to power.

What Balliol does have is large grounds (especially in comparison to the nearby PPHs and Turl Street colleges), a fantastic location, and beautiful architecture that matches quite closely with the ideal of what a 'typically Oxbridge' college should look like. It is an easy college to fall in love with.

Fortunately, in my experience, the actual people who do attend Balliol are quite nice, and show nothing of the "superiority complex" that I had half-expected to find. Perhaps therein lies the true secret to Balliol's popularity: you're bound to get more applicants if the people who visit you go away convinced that your college has a great bunch of people to be around.

This is an article in my series on Oxford's colleges and PPHs. These 'profiles' are based entirely on my own personal perspective and opinions; prospective students are advised to look rather to the prospectus and alternative prospectus of any college they are considering applying to, rather than place too much stock in my descriptions. Previous articles describe what colleges are, then discuss Nuffield College, the PPHs, All Souls' College, University College, and St. Antony's College, Christ Church, Oriel College, and Pembroke College.

The first quirk to know about Magdalen College is that its name is pronounced "Maudlin" (an archetypical shibboleth for exposing outsiders). The second is that the choir sings from the tower to greet the dawn on May 1st. Third, they have their own deer park. With deer.

Magdalen, then, can lay as much claim as any place in Oxford for having the sort of eccentric traditions that Oxbridge is so famous for. (Speaking of eccentrics, Oscar Wilde was a member.) It can also lay claim to the most beautiful specimens of that amazing architecture that Oxbridge is famous for.

In fact, it is widely considered to be the most æsthetically pleasing college in all of Oxford or Cambridge. And it is very wealthy to boot. (Did I mention they own their own deer park?)

For all these reasons, Magdalen is one of the harder colleges to get into, in spite of its large size. For this reason alone, it was never really on my list of college choices personally (risk of refusal was an important factor in my college selection, as I vehemently did not want to be pooled—though happily the question was moot, as I was accepted into my first choice college Oriel). But, on the other hand, that selectivity is about the only criticial thing I can come up with to say about Magdalen. If your biggest problem is that you are so popular that everyone wants to be associated with you, I'd say that means you are doing pretty well.

I did have multiple occasions to visit Magdalen, however, and their world-famous choir's evensong is not to be missed. I was also lucky enough to get in to view some of the rare books in their old library, although unfortunately I did not attend a formal hall there. It really is a gorgeous place, in fact I would go so far as to say that among the 'super-popular' colleges, it is the most deserving of its reputation as a desirable place to study. Magdalen undoubtedly deserves to be grouped among those colleges that embody Oxford at its finest.

This is an article in my series on Oxford's colleges and PPHs. These 'profiles' are based entirely on my own personal perspective and opinions; prospective students are advised to look rather to the prospectus and alternative prospectus of any college they are considering applying to, rather than place too much stock in my descriptions. Previous articles describe what colleges are, then discuss Nuffield College, the PPHs, All Souls' College, University College, and St. Antony's College, Christ Church, and Oriel College.

Typically the first building a visitor to Oxford lays eyes on, if arriving by train, is "my own"—the Saïd Business School. It is a large, imposing building that greets you immediately as you step out of the train station—very handy for our visiting speakers and recruiters coming from London!

When I first visited Oxford, though, we were visiting by car and arrived via the Park & Ride bus, a short distance away from the University. Approaching from the angle we did, Pembroke College was the first Oxford University building I laid eyes on, and so in spite of its small size and tucked-away location, it has never been a college to get lost in the crowd for me.

Like Corpus Christi, Pembroke's primary advantages are in being ancient (it was founded in 1625), and yet small and relatively unknown: it is a hidden treasure. While students at the neighbouring Christ Church are constantly annoyed by the throngs of tourists blocking their way and making them late for tutorials, Pembroke students enjoy the splendour of a traditional Oxford college life in relative tranquility, and can look back to such distinguished alumni as Samuel Johnson, William Blackstone, and King Abdullah of Jordan.

During my year at Oxford, the dining hall was being restored, which is something that has to happen at every historical college from time to time, but for those of us on a one year course it can be quite a shame. The upside, for this year's batch of Pembroke students, though, is that their dining hall is now beautifully restored!

The main downside, as far as I can tell, is that their sporting colour is pink.

This is an article in my series on Oxford's colleges and PPHs. These 'profiles' are based entirely on my own personal perspective and opinions; prospective students are advised to look rather to the prospectus and alternative prospectus of any college they are considering applying to, rather than place too much stock in my descriptions. Previous articles describe what colleges are, then discuss Nuffield College, the PPHs, All Souls' College, University College, and St. Antony's College, and Christ Church.

It's been several decades now since a certain set of Bible translations came out, and you'll notice a pattern: the New English Bible, the New American Standard Bible, and the New International Version, to name a few. It's really funny. I suspect we'll still be calling them "new this" and "new that" a hundred years from now. Much like New College at Oxford. Do you know when New College was founded? Any guesses? New College was new in 1379.
         —Larry Wall, creator of the Perl programming language

Reading the above quote, in high school, was the first time I ever heard of New College. It immediately led me to wonder what on earth the "Old College" must have been!

The answer is this one, the college more commonly known as Oriel, although it has also been known as "King's College", and its official name is The House of the Blessed Mary the Virgin in Oxford, commonly called Oriel College, of the Foundation of Edward the Second of famous memory, sometime King of England. New College is also dedicated to Our Lady, and it is because there are two St. Mary's Colleges that they are both called by other names, to distinguish them. The name Oriel is not entirely understood: it could refer to the oriel windows (an architectural term), but seems most likely to refer to the large pub called "La Oriole" that stood on the site before the college was built.

As can be inferred from the preceding discussion, that was a long time ago. Begun in 1324 and chartered in 1326, to be precise, Oriel is the oldest college in Oxford of royal foundation, and its coat of arms, a differenced version of the royal arms of England, testifies to Oriel's kingly pedigree. It is a very traditional college: the last to admit women, it holds formal hall six nights a week (with more formality, and better food, than most colleges), and has been nicknamed T'Oriel for the perceived Tory leanings of its student body.

In actual fact, though, Oriel's small student body leads many people of all backgrounds to choose it, because of its friendliness and strong feeling of community. (And some women choose it precisely because it was the last to admit them!) The respect for Oxford traditions at Oriel is not so much a sign of conservatism as it is a recognition of the common desire of those at Oxford to live the university's unique experiences to the fullest. Showing up to formal hall in jeans and a t-shirt, which some colleges allow, cannot but cheapen the experience for everyone present. For me personally, the traditions and history of Oxford are key ingredients of what makes it great, just as much as the brilliant academics. Therefore it only made sense to select a college that would allow me to experience to the utmost all those things that make Oxford "Oxford".

Oriel's reputation university-wide, though, is more than anything associated with its dominance in sport. Oriel has dominated the Head of the River in Eight's Week, Oxford's most important sporting fixture, winning the headship in the majority of the years I've been alive, a phenomenal achievement.

The college, accordingly, features prominently in the 1984 Rob Lowe film Oxford Blues. If that were not fantastic enough as college trivia, Oriel was also the setting for Hugh Grant's first film, Privileged—I don't think you can get more 'typically Oxbridge' than that!

With three main quads, all different architecturally, the college buildings are varied and ample, without seeming too large or too small. The music room, pictured at left, is perhaps my favourite room in the college. The "secret passage" to O'Brian quad also helps give the college some character, as does the ample MCR, already quite large by traditional college standards, and recently enlarged by the addition of a study room on the floor directly above it.

Oriel also provided an outstanding library, holding over 100,000 volumes and open 24 hours a day. The college had multiple copies of all the textbooks I needed for my course. This meant that not only did I not have to buy any textbooks, but I was even able to check out one set, to keep in my room, while still keeping another full set in the library, so I could study at either location without having to carry any books around! That alone made a lot of my non-Oriel classmates pretty envious, I can tell you.

Oriel was my first choice college for a number of reasons, but besides the location (being so old, Oriel sits right in the centre of everything at Oxford), the history, and the respect for Oxford traditions, it was two sets of Oriel alumni that really made me choose Oriel.

First, although Oriel today may have a reputation more for brawn than brains (by Oxford standards, anyway), in Victorian times it was acknowledged as the preëminent college intellectually (a title probably disputed now by Merton and St. John's), and this put it at the heart of the Tractarian movement, with E.B. Pusey, John Keble, and John Henry Newman all fellows of the college at that time. Since this was a period I studied extensively while at McGill, there was a considerable sentimental incentive to actually become a member of the college that sat at the centre of the "Oxford movement", the very place where the Tracts for the Times were written, and where Newman lived and rose to fame. Dining in the same hall he dined in, arguing with friends over some of the same topics he debated with his, and completing my journey following in the same steps he did, was a profoundly significant experience for me.

In my orientation as an MBA student, though, two other, very different, Oriel alumni stood out: Sir Walter Raleigh, and Cecil Rhodes. Indeed, more than any other degree an MBA is about learning to do, to achieve—not to be content with theories or knowledge for its own sake. Leadership ability, entrepreneurial spirit, and real-world results are what we want to get from our MBA experience, and the academic knowledge we gain is sought in order to facilitate and enable that. Raleigh and Rhodes are both figures whose lives may have been controversial, but not even their most vocal critics can deny that they were men of action, and impressive leaders.

I am not suggesting that my intended career path will look anything like either one of those men's, but having their portraits staring down on us was a pretty good motivator to remind us that, once we leave Oriel, we have the potential to change the world.

Floreat Oriel.

This is an article in my series on Oxford's colleges and PPHs. These 'profiles' are based entirely on my own personal perspective and opinions; prospective students are advised to look rather to the prospectus and alternative prospectus of any college they are considering applying to, rather than place too much stock in my descriptions. Previous articles describe what colleges are, then discuss Nuffield College, the PPHs, All Souls' College, University College, and St. Antony's College.

If somebody had to select one Oxford college as the archetypical "Oxford", there is little argument that Christ Church would be the one to pick. It has the largest quad by far, and abounds with famous alumni and literary associations: The dining hall was used in filming Harry Potter. It appears in Brideshead Revisited, and is closely associated with Alice in Wonderland.

While many Oxford colleges have impressive chapels (New College, All Souls', and Exeter all spring to mind), Christ Church's "chapel" is actually the cathedral of the diocese of Oxford. Christ Church has produced more prime ministers than every other college put together—and is only two short, on its own, of the total number produced by the entire University of Cambridge. It is the favoured college of the aristocracy—although Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito attended Merton, which accordingly sees itself beset by Japanese tourists to this day. (King Abdullah of Jordan went to Pembroke, but Jordanian tourists are somewhat less commonly seen.) Like its sister college Trinity, Cambridge, Christ Church has long held the reputation as the "it" college, for those who feel the need to identify one.

So much for superlatives. In practice, Magdalen, New, and Balliol are also held by many applicants to be the "it" college, and a dozen more could legitimately protest my not including them on this list. (My own Oriel among them!) The fact is that most students, once admitted, come to realise that their own college is "actually" the best! And as I will describe below, there are plenty of good reasons not to pick Christ Church as well.

Known familiarly as "the House", Christ Church is known for having porters who still wear bowler hats (something more colleges ought to emulate, in my opinion), and for the aforementioned constant swarms of tourists.

In fact, if a tourist asked me "where is the university"—a lot of tourists apparently think that a university can be a single building!—I most often would direct them to Christ Church. (Radcliffe Square, if it was closer, being the other contender.) This is not least because it is the part of the university that is the best equipped to deal with tourists, who are often not allowed elsewhere. (In Oxford, "No tourists" is seen on signs as frequently as one sees "No solicitors" in the US!)

As a college associated with wealth and connections, and with the high-ceilinged, wood panelled rooms of Peckwater Quad being the most luxurious student accommodation in the university, the House has a lot to recommend it. Despite this, I do not think I would have enjoyed being there. Studying at a tourist trap has real disadvantages. (I've heard tales of students being surprised in their bathrobes by tourists, knocking on their door asking if they can take a picture of their room!) Also the enormous size of the college, I suspect, must detract from the sense of community. But of course I am coloured by my clear bias towards Oriel, and so inevitably find Christ Church lacking wherever it differs from my reference point.

In spite of all that, I count being at the black-tie GCR guest dinner, being served high table food in Christ Church's magnificent dining hall at the end of Trinity term, as one of the culminating moments of my Oxford adventure. Raising a glass of port, after a gourmet meal, to toast the Queen, in such an opulent, historical setting, among such distinguished company, truly was a defining Oxford experience.

And so one sees that, while members of other colleges may like to talk down Christ Church, at the end of the day, we are still entirely subject to its magic.

This is an article in my series on Oxford's colleges and PPHs. These 'profiles' are based entirely on my own personal perspective and opinions; prospective students are advised to look rather to the prospectus and alternative prospectus of any college they are considering applying to, rather than place too much stock in my descriptions. Previous articles describe what colleges are, then discuss Nuffield College, the PPHs, All Souls' College, and University College.

Like Nuffield College, which I profiled previously, St. Antony's is a graduate-only college with a social sciences focus, that does not admit MBA students in spite of its speciality. (With this article, I have now covered all of the colleges that do not admit MBAs.)

Unlike Nuffield, St. Antony's belongs to one of the waves of college-building that have occurred periodically in the history of the university, namely the one that occurred in the 1960s. At this time a number of colleges were created that catered to the emerging phenomenon of graduate students—and, unlike the existing colleges, many of these were created with a specific subject focus: Templeton for business and management, St. Antony's for international relations, and, somewhat later, Green College for medical graduates.

Actually, many Oxford colleges were created with a specific subject speciality in mind, but these "specialities" tend to disolve after a couple centuries, so these 1960s colleges owe their focus more to their youth than anything. In St. Antony's case, however, the association with international studies is likely to continue for some time, since, besides its own library, the college site also houses the University's Middle East Centre Library, Latin American Centre Library, the Bodleian Japanese Library, and the Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre Library. So any researcher focusing on these areas has a good incentive to apply to St. Antony's as his first-choice college.

Because it uses the buildings of a nineteenth-century Anglican convent, the college architecture is far nicer than one would expect for a 1960s foundation. (St. Stephen's House and St. Cross College also salvage ruins of the Oxford movement for their buildings, with beautiful results—Victorian monasteries being far more attractive architecturally than the kinds of new buildings people were putting up in the 1960s!)

St. Antony's is perhaps best known throughout the university for its lively social scene, capitalising on its diverse and international student body to organise themed bops such as Balkan Night, Latin American Party, and many others, that are widely attended by students from all over the university.

Unfortunately, as I was never in Oxford on weekends, I missed out on these bops, and with no MBA students there, I never had any occasion to interact with St. Antony's College myself.

All the same, I have great respect for a graduate-only college that is able to make such an imprint on the university social scene: sometimes I get the impression that the graduate-only colleges recede into the background a bit, as their students prefer to be involved primarily with their departments, or simply focus on their individual research without getting involved in the larger university at all. Clearly, at St. Antony's, this is not the case, and I commend them for that.

This is an article in my series on Oxford's colleges and PPHs. These 'profiles' are based entirely on my own personal perspective and opinions; prospective students are advised to look rather to the prospectus and alternative prospectus of any college they are considering applying to, rather than place too much stock in my descriptions. Previous articles discuss Nuffield College, the PPHs, and All Souls' College.

Some people who misunderstand the college system at Oxford (which I explain here) become confused when faced with the profusion of colleges that one discovers when considering the university up close. (Americans are particularly likely to be lost, since "college" and "university" are generally taken as synonyms Stateside.) They know they have heard of Oxford, and that it is tremendously prestigious, but they have never heard of these other odd names like Oriel, Balliol, and Brasenose.

In the face of all these unexpected names, they may come to the erroneous understanding that "Oxford" must really mean University College and that these other colleges are hangers-on and not the "real Oxford". (Yes, "Oxford University College" sounds perfectly redundant to American ears, but perhaps they had to insist, given the presence of all these 'counterfeit' Oxfords!)

In practice Oxford, like Boston, does have "hanger-on" academic institutions for those who wish to study in these beautiful cities, but who do not have the chops to attend the more prestigious university in town. (Oxford Brookes University is the largest of these—and at least it is a real university, unlike the rather less reputable "Oxford Tutorial College" or "Oxford Business College".)

Unfortunately, because the university is named for the town, unlike Harvard and MIT, the more dishonest of these students come in order to say afterwards that they "studied at Oxford", which I find quite annoying. Most don't do this, of course—as getting found out can be pretty humiliating. But anyway, the point here is not to disparage the non-university education that takes place in Oxford, but only to make clear that the colleges that make up the University of Oxford are all part of one university, the oldest in the English-speaking world—and University College is neither the most authentic nor the preëminent one of these in any particular way.

That said, among Oxford colleges, University has an excellent reputation. Bill Clinton, Stephen Hawking, and C. S. Lewis are just a few of its famous old members, and being founded in 1249 it is a contender for the title of oldest college in the university. (NB, the university itself is over a century older than any of its colleges; the colleges were founded as communities of scholars who were at the university.) Univ, clearly, has a lot to recommend it—but then so does every Oxford college.

Nowadays (perhaps because of the aforementioned misunderstanding of the whole collegiate system, but I hope not!) it hosts the largest number of international undergraduate students. On the graduate level, it is the only college with both graduates and undergraduates that does not accept MBA students, for reasons known only to them. (Not every college can accept students in every course, in fairness—and Univ has few graduate students to begin with, being overwhelmingly an undergraduate college.) So, while I can confirm that Univ has a great location, history, and beautiful architecture—I would say that, though, as architecturally it is the college that most resembles Oriel—I did not spend much time there while at Oxford. One society that I belonged to had some meetings there, and I did enjoy showing guests the Shelley Memorial, but I never did have the honour of dining there—which I regret only because Univ has the longest Latin grace of any college, which would have been nice to hear in person at least once.

This is an article in my series on Oxford's colleges and PPHs. These 'profiles' are based entirely on my own personal perspective and opinions; prospective students are advised to look rather to the prospectus and alternative prospectus of any college they are considering applying to, rather than place too much stock in my descriptions. Previous articles describe what colleges are, then discuss Nuffield College and the PPHs.

All Souls' College is truly unique among the colleges and PPHs of the University of Oxford. Like Nuffield, it has an enormous endowment and does not admit MBA students. Unlike Nuffield, though—or any other college, for that matter—it does not admit any students—neither undergraduate nor postgraduate! No, this enormous, wealthy college, situated right on Radcliffe square at the very centre of the university, exists solely for the benefit of its fellows—it is the unique case of a faculty-only college. (*Some fellows do read for postgraduate degrees while at All Souls', but since they are already fellows I consider them more akin to faculty than postgrad students. Others' definitions may vary.)

That alone is enough to cause any Oxbridge academic to daydream about one day becoming one of these élite fellows, who can devote themselves to their research and teaching in a fantastic, exclusive, and well-funded setting. The dream is all the more tantalising because of the way one becomes an All Souls' fellow: it is not through some hidden old boys' network that no ordinary mortal could ever dream of penetrating, a Crown appointment, or some other inaccessible method. No, to become an All Souls' fellow, you just need to pass a test.

The All Souls' fellowship examination, as a result, has grown to mythical status within the university, and world-wide. Winners are rewarded with seven years' paid fellowship at this über-prestigious college, able to carry on their research in the most ideal setting imaginable. And forever thereafter, the line "Fellow, All Souls' College, Oxford" on the winners' CV commands instant respect even in the most rarefied stratospheres of academia.

If this were not enough, for a long time the exam itself was the subject of fascination. Besides viva voce and four three-hour written components, a fifth written component, also three hours long, was given to all candidates, irrespective of their specialty. It consisted of a single word. (Such as "water".) Candidates could take this any way they wanted, and write for three hours on it.

The goal, no doubt, was to identify candidates who displayed creativity and were all-around interesting people, besides just having academic strength, since, as I described before, at Oxford, graduates do their research primarily within their department. A college is a place to eat, sleep, and socialise. Thus, while the fellows are primarily looking for candidates with the best chance to produce important scholarship if afforded this tremendous opportunity, they also want people at their dinner table who are going to be interesting and engaging to talk to.

Unfortunately, I suspect that the one-word essay, as its fame grew, drew many people to try their hand at the examination just because they thought it would be fun. Having masses of mediocre scholars slogging through the exam just to see what the word would be that year may have been fun for the curious test-takers, but certainly would not be for the fellows who had to read their answers. So, recently this component has been removed from the exam, and the fellows rely instead on the viva voce to form their opinion about the candidate's ability to engage in stimulating and interesting conversation.

While becoming an 'insider' at All Souls' in the full sense is out of most people's reach, I was in fact as an Oxford student able to spend quite a lot of time at the college. Every term the college hosts lecture series, which are either open to the public or to university members, on a variety of topics that are of interest to the fellows. Attending these lectures is both intellectually stimulating, and gives an opportunity to see the college from the inside. The college's greatest asset, though, for me, was the Codrington Library.

Probably the most magnificent college library in Oxford (although Queen's and Lincoln could contest that claim), the enormous, majestic spaces of this library made it my favourite place to study in Oxford. As a postgraduate, I was able to obtain a Codrington reader's card, and I found myself going to this library more than any other when I had studying to do in the day time (its shorter opening hours are its only bad point—well, that, and the fact that it was built on money gained from the slave trade). It was a special experience, and I am very grateful to All Souls' College for making its library available to recommended postgraduates.

All Souls' represents in many ways the quintessence of Oxford's élitist "carrot and stick" approach to running a university: When one visits the city as a tourist, one envies the students that can get inside the colleges. When one attends as a visiting student, one envies the privileges of the matriculated students. As a matriculated student, one envies the privileges of those that can dine at High Table. And, even those at High Table, envy those who can dine at All Souls'.

To many outside the Oxbridge system, such traditions, rooted in hierarchy, may seem outdated. For those on the inside, however, they represent a continuous draw, motivating us to strive to do more—the system is set up in such a way that one's own achievements never seem to be enough, within Oxford. I believe that these continual incentives to achieve more are a great part of what makes Oxbridge perform so well—and in that respect, All Souls' College, abode of the brightest of the bright, must be seen as a key component of making the system a success.

This is an article in my series on Oxford's colleges and PPHs. These 'profiles' are based entirely on my own personal perspective and opinions; prospective students are advised to look rather to the prospectus and alternative prospectus of any college they are considering applying to, rather than place too much stock in my descriptions. Previous articles describe what colleges are, and describe Nuffield College.

Permanent Private Halls, or PPHs, are unique to the University of Oxford. Other collegiate universities, like Durham and the Other Place, do not have this category of hall. So what is it about?

The short answer is that a PPH is a hall where university students live, eat, and go to chapel together, just as a college is. (Although, as I will explain, chapel attendance is likely much higher in a PPH than in the typical college!) The difference, formally, is that in a college, the fellows of the college (i.e. the faculty members) govern the college and handle its affairs. In a PPH, they do not.

Self-governance, of course, implies that colleges are financially independent, having an endowment of at least a certain size, as well as institutionally independent. It follows, then, that the PPHs are smaller and less well-off, and are dependent on an outside organisation. In practical terms, the "outside organisation" is a religious one: The easiest case to understand, I think, is that of the Roman Catholic religious orders. They have their own organisation and outside affiliation, being a part of their order, but have many members who study at the university, and so they operate PPHs. The Jesuits run Campion Hall, the Benedictines run St. Benets, the Dominicans run Blackfriars, and until recently the Capuchin Franciscans had Greyfriars. These PPHs house religious members of their orders or other religious who wish to do research degrees at Oxford, as well as candidates for ordination, and laity reading relevant subjects.

Because the members of a religious order are bound to follow the discipline of their rule, and must be under a superior, it is therefore out of the question that these houses should be self-governing. However, in order for these monks, friars, and priests to be able to study at Oxford, they needed to belong to a college or hall (a mandatory requirement of the university, in modern times). Thus the Permanent Private Hall emerged as a means to accomodate these twin needs.

In the early days, men tended to join a religious order around age 18, and so they would attend Oxford as a part of their training, studying non-religious subjects (chemistry, mathematics, history), in order to teach in Catholic schools. Today this has become rare; a typical novice monk today will be in his early thirties, and not rarely already hold an advanced degree in theology or philosophy. With this change, the role of the PPHs has changed considerably: now most religious members are doing doctoral work, or teaching, while the students will be non-religious undergraduates—ordinary Oxford students who may have choosen the hall for its Catholic ethos, or simply because it was the place they were allocated at Oxford.

The one exception to this trend is Campion Hall: since it is not uncommon for a Jesuit to hold two Ph.D.s, their educational needs are not so easily sated. Consequently, that hall continues to operate as a house to educate the order's own members (as well as diocesan and non-Jesuit priests), and is more or less closed to laymen (with rare exceptions).

With the change in role of the other houses, however, comes a calling into question of the continued purpose of the PPH, and different houses have answered this in different ways. For the Dominicans, continued engagement with academia is central to their Order's identity, so Blackfriars (which was founded by friars sent to Oxford by St. Dominic himself) continues to have a strong sense of purpose, and plays a very active and engaged role in the academic life of the university.

Greyfriars, on the other hand, came to decide that operating a hall for undergraduates was not in line with their core purpose. Since Vatican II there has been a trend among Franciscans of returning to their core mission of serving the poorest of the poor, and so its members have been gradually withdrawing from parish work and schooling. With no need to train new brothers as teachers, and running an Oxford Hall not exactly qualifying as service to the poorest of the poor, the decision to close the PPH makes sense—although it is unfortunate, sentimentally speaking, to see such a historic hall no longer part of the university (first founded in 1224, the old Greyfriars was home to Duns Scotus, William of Occam, and Roger Bacon).

St. Benet's, like Blackfriars, plans to continue, and because the Benedictines do run schools as a part of their mission, they see operating a house for Oxford undergraduates as compatible with their purpose. The monks would like to see St. Benet's grow to become an independent priory (requiring six monks in permanent residence—not including those who come there temporarily to study or teach), and I do hope that this comes to pass. Although it may be a challenge: if I were a monk, I would probably be reluctant to leave a spacious, peaceful monastery in the countryside for a crowded house on the busy St. Giles' Street!

In addition to these Roman Catholic PPHs, there are also three Protestant ones, although these too are in a state of flux. St. Stephen's House was founded as an Anglo-Catholic hall; since that brand of churchmanship is no longer welcome in the Church of England, St. Stephen's will presumably either be successful in reinventing itself as a liberal hall, or close.

Wycliffe Hall, of the evangelical Anglican bent, is in a stronger position internally, but has on the other hand been attacked by others in the university as being too intellectually close-minded to deserve membership in Oxford University. It will be interesting to see how those tensions evolve over time. I suspect it will depend in large part on how the tension between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism evolves among evangelicals themselves.

Finally, Regent's Park College (Baptist), like (the formerly Presbyterian) Harris Manchester College, and (the formerly Reformed) Mansfield College, would like to free itself of PPH status—and, by extension, religious affiliation—and become a full college of the university, independently governed. This should happen as soon as Regent's Park builds a sufficient endowment to support itself; it seems well on its way.

All in all, then, PPHs are for all intents and purposes like very small colleges with a specific focus on theology and perhaps a few other subjects in the humanities, and having a particular religious affiliation. (Most of Oxford's full colleges are themselves affiliated with the Church of England too—Christ Church is in fact the cathedral of Oxford!—but this is not generally a central feature of their identity, in the way it is for the PPHs.) They do not possess resources (libraries, sporting facilities, student societies etc.) anywhere near what the colleges have to offer their students (excepting Campion Hall, which in many ways actually offers its members more resources per capita), but on the other hand, the PPHs offer a much closer, more personal, community, which for some students more than compensates for their small size.

I am embarking today on a series of articles about Oxford's colleges and permanent private halls, since they were a topic of fascination for me for years before I even matriculated, and finding information or even opinions about their nuanced differences online was hard to do. These 'profiles' will be general overviews of what the college is like, based entirely on my own personal opinions; prospective students are advised to look rather to the prospectus and alternative prospectus of any college they are considering applying to, rather than place too much stock in my unashamedly idiosyncratic descriptions.

Nuffield College is in many ways quite atypical. It is extremely wealthy, yet paradoxically quite young, founded in 1937. So its large endowment is not the result of centuries of building up wealth like St. John's or Christ Church. It is for postgraduate students only, and (uncommonly for an Oxford college, but not entirely so for a postgraduate one) has a particular subject focus. (Remember that at Oxford, university departments are a completely separate hierarchy from the college system.) Nuffield's focus is on the social sciences—but, as a final paradox, it does not accept MBA students in spite of this specialty!

Nuffield, then, is a small community of about seventy faculty and seventy-five postgraduate students, all engaged in research in the social sciences. This small size, narrow focus, and great wealth make Nuffield something of a dream location for those who want to do advanced research in economics, sociology, or political science. The college is located away on one edge of the university, near the railway station, and all in all gives off an aura of peaceful tranquility and a focus on research.

Nuffield has a lot of resources relative to the size of its student body; fortunately, it is one of the rare colleges that allows graduates from outside the college to use its library, although without the borrowing privileges of college members (who, besides access to an above-average amount of funding, also get their own offices!). The library is a great resource, with a lot of material that is of interest to business students, and it is located near the business school.

What I particularly like about studying at Nuffield is the unique architecture—quite unlike the Gothic and Tudor architecture one typically sees around Oxford. The exterior is very cozy (apart from the imposing tower!), while the interior has a 1950's modernist feel to it that somehow fits, in my mind, with the study of economics. Finally, the tower (many floors of which are part of the library), is a fun place to study when one wants to make no bones about feeling like an "ivory tower scholar", as was bound to happen from time to time when our courses veered to the theoretical! (And the view over Oxford castle is pretty nice, too.)

All in all then, Nuffield is a unique college, which to its clientele must seem to be an ideal offering. In addition, their food at formal hall is, in my opinion, the best in the university, and the dining hall is certainly unique—even if its austere grey architecture is somewhat reminiscent of a Stalinist mausoleum. It is a shame that so many students at Oxford are unaware of Nuffield, but that is to be expected given that it hosts so few researchers, has no boat club, and sits removed from most of the other colleges. Despite, or perhaps because of this, I am glad I took the time to explore their library, and felt very fortunate to have been able to dine there.

And so my time at Oxford has come to an end. Little of it made its way onto these pages, but I plan to write many more articles about my Oxford experience in the months and years to come—it will be an enjoyable way to revisit my many fond memories.

This article, however, like its predecessor Et in Arcadia Ego, is intended as a more personal retrospective. As the titles' allusions make clear (to anyone who recognises them, anyway!), this is an article I have been planning to write for some time.

It was a life-changing year for me. It was life-changing by design, of course—both the Oxford MBA experience, and my own personal quest that brought me to Oriel were conceived of with the express purpose of creating a life-changing experience. But the fact that it was expected in no way diminishes the fact that it is true. This was the best year of my life.

In my own case, this is a particularly meaningful step personally, since when I left university after my last master's degree, it had been the worst year of my life. Erasing that memory—with a better university, a better college, a better religion—had been one of my great motivations in going back to school. Had this year not gone well, those demons would perhaps still haunt me. Yet, as it happens, they are well and truly vanquished, and clichéd as it may sound, it really does feel like a new dawn.

In that previous article I think I did a good job of listing the types of events that punctuated the lifestyle I embraced at Oxford, and I kept it up at much the same pace through Hilary and Trinity terms. I do not wish to repeat that exercise again here, as by now the list of world-class experiences, celebrities, and privileged places and things I have seen has grown so long, that it would be impossible to go over it without sounding intolerably boastful. Oxford's reputation is well-deserved. A year ago I would not have dared to dream that I would have sat in the London Athenæum sipping tea as the guest of a former librarian at Eton College, or stomped divots at the Guards' Polo Club mere metres away from Prince Phillip, Christie Brinkley, and Petra Němcová.

Education, however, was the true purpose, and it continued to be phenomenal right up until the very end. The capstone course, which took place last week, was exceptionally well put together. While I had expected a fairly uninteresting chain of motivational speeches—punctuated however by great social events such as a garden party at Rhodes House and a dinner at Blenheim Palace—in fact the talks we had really did bring together everything we had learned in the MBA in a profound, meaningful way. When at our end of course ceremony we were challenged to go out and change the world, I truly felt that this time, I was not listening to mere platitudes. Oxford has given us the knowledge and the means to do just that.

For my own part, in the near future my family will occupy the greater part of my attention. My lovely wife was extremely patient, and had to make a lot of sacrifices, in order for me to pursue this course. My son missed me deeply, and I him. As I leave Oxford I could not be happier, and I am profoundly grateful to them, my parents, my recommenders, and my friends who all contributed so much to letting me have this wonderful year. It is a debt I hope to repay, with interest.

It is with great pride that, this autumn, I will embark on what is sure to be an intensive and memorable year, as I matriculate at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School, as a member of the MBA class of 2011.

I will certainly have occasion to write more about the MBA programme specifically in the future, and how it fits into my own career plans. But I am creating a new 'Oxford' category as well, which will be kept separate from those articles (they will go into the existing underused 'Work' section). Studying at the world's most prestigious university, the oldest in the English-speaking world, will also lead to more general articles about the Oxford experience, and those are what this new category is for. Like the 'France' category that exists already, I will put non-business related articles here about such traditions as formal halls, bops, sub-fusc, or punting on the Isis, as well as anything that may come up about living in England generally.

As I mentioned above, though, this is going to be an extremely intensive year, so I will apologise in advance for what is sure to be an erratic posting schedule!

And so Michaelmas term (the first trimester of the Oxford year) has drawn to a close. I was extremely fortunate, moreover, in having left Oxford promptly on the day following my last exam, as the snow was just beginning to fall—had I been on a train even six hours later, there would have been a very real possibility that I would even now still be stuck in England. Instead, I have benefited from the quiet repose of a long, snowy weekend at home with none of the stress and pressure that accompanied the end of term.

So, my first term at Oxford is finished. It was a productive one. Taking stock of the term, I see that I completed all six compulsory courses, audited three more voluntary ones (perhaps a bit much!), participated regularly in two extracurricular societies, visited the Oxford Union on a weekly basis, and was elected to, and served on, the MCR committee as my college's treasurer. I also found time to visit all 44 of Oxford's colleges and halls, dined in eight of them (a number I hope to better next term), and still attended formal hall at Oriel on average at least twice a week.

I attended a concert at the Holywell music room, the oldest concert hall in Europe (in which Handel and Haydn have previously performed), where I heard a Stradivarius violin played to its limits. (Although the private concert I received, from a friend playing the grand piano in Oriel's marvelous music room, will be the memory I will hold to far longer.) I saw firsthand a copy of Shakespeare's first folio, the Catullus 'O' manuscript, and the Oxford Juvenal (those being three of the rarest books in the world, and rarely shown even to Oxford students).

I heard founders and chairmen/CEOs from Tommy Hilfiger, BP, Twitter, LinkedIn, Creative Commons, the UFC, and the president of Albania. I drank ale in the pub where J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis shared manuscripts, and had a pint in the place where Bill Clinton did not inhale. In London, I was able to visit the Royal Society, the Reform Club, and the Travellers' Club. One week I dined with two titled "Sir and Lady" couples on two consecutive nights. I was roped into one of Oxford's infamous 'Drinking Societies', and a number of black tie dinners.

And what's more, I managed to squeeze all of this in only on the weekdays, as every weekend I returned home to France. Happily, going home every weekend went far better than I would have imagined (and was actually a great help to me, in forcing me to sit down for a few hours, so that I regularly had a quiet, dedicated time to catch up on my course readings!).

I have learned a lot. The quality of teaching exceeded my expectations, but above and beyond the coursework, I have learned far more about myself than I ever thought possible on such a course. (Not least because my previous master's degree had a pretty considerable introspective component, such that I didn't think I had that much about myself left to learn.) Thus I really see this MBA as providing me not only with technical knowledge, but with truly valuable experience and self-knowledge as well—something that in the end will probably turn out to be far more important for my future success.

I have met a lot of amazing people in my classmates, both fellow MBAs and those studying any number of subjects at Oriel. Unfortunately, as the preceding sort of implies, I have spread myself pretty thin over the first term—which I don't regret, as time flies so fast here that it is necessary to make the most of it—but high on my list of priorities for next term will be trying to make more time for getting to know people better. (The other big priority should be getting more serious about my next career steps.)

So, reflecting back on what is done leads one naturally to consider all that has been left undone. The one consolation that we have, in the shock of realising that our MBA is already 1/3 finished, is that we do still have two more terms which, in the spirit of New Year's resolutions, we can hope to address our weaknesses in. All the same, I am immensely proud of what I managed to squeeze into one term at Oxford, and at this point I honestly do feel that I am getting the most out of this brief, unique, experience. Given how high the expectations I had set myself were, that is no mean feat.

One of the things I missed most when I left university was not having access to a good university research library. At McGill I could spend an afternoon lost in the stacks and find facsimiles of mediæval Latin translations of Averroes, or some intriguing nineteenth century British volumes whose pages were filled with nothing but cuneiform. Then I could wander to another floor and read the debates in the House of Lords over granting Canada self-governance, and read microfiche copies of Pravda from the height of Stalin's power in the 1930s Soviet Union. To some extent the internet has helped feed my hunger for knowledge, but in academic subjects even it was quite poor five years ago. Today things are much better online, as more and more facsimiles and scans of books become available, but it falls far short of having access to a good library.

And now, I'm afraid that Oxford is going to spoil me for life.

The options in Oxford for library lovers are overwhelming. College libraries, private libraries, departmental libraries... and then there's the Bodleian. The most famous university library in the world, the Bodleian boasts a copy of every book published in Britain. Dating back to the Middle Ages, scholars originally wore fur coats because the library was kept unheated (for fear of fire), and the books were chained in place to prevent theft, as books were extremely valuable at that time. To this day, one must swear an oath in Latin in order to be granted access to the library (although people who don't have the patience for eccentric Oxford traditions just sign a form covering it):

Do fidem me nullum librum vel instrumentum aliamve quam rem ad bibliothecam pertinentem, vel ibi custodiæ causâ depositam, aut e bibliothecâ sublaturum esse, aut fœdaturum deformaturum aliove quo modo læsurum; item neque ignem nec flammam in bibliothecam inlaturum vel in eâ accensurum, neque fumo nicotiano aliove quovis ibi usurum; item promitto me omnes leges ad bibliothecam Bodleianam attinentes semper observaturum esse.

Among the Bodleian Library's treasures are Shakespeare's First Folio, one of 42 remaining complete Guttenberg Bibles, and four copies of the original Magna Carta. It is a very cool place, its entrance dominated by the impressive Tower of the Five Orders, and the massive Radcliffe Camera and breathtaking Duke Humfrey's Library are two of the most special places in the world to read, for any bibliophile.

As amazing as those treasures of the Bodleian and its other 11 million volumes are, as a student at Oxford, it is just one of the libraries whose resources we draw on. Why, one might wonder, would we need more? For one thing, the Bodleian is not a lending library—it does not let you check any books out. For this reason, and for convenience, most colleges provide impressive libraries themselves, which members can check books out from, and are often open 24 hours a day. (Unlike the Bodleian, which can be a real annoyance!) Given the great intensity of study at Oxford, with its short term periods, this can be a lifesaver. I'm proud to say that my own college, Oriel, has one of the best libraries: it has over 100,000 books, and being itself descended from a mediæval chained library has many rare and important historical manuscripts as well, and a gorgeous Senior Reading Room, which we can study in during the day. (In fact, Oriel's library itself had a copy of Shakespeare's first folio, but we sold it in 2003, for £3.5 million.) Other colleges have great libraries, too, one of the most beautiful being The Queen's College, but these college libraries are only open to members of that college. (If another college's library has a book you need that you can't get elsewhere, then you can be admitted to consult it, but I cannot conceive of this happening very often considering how many other options there are.)

Students whose college libraries are not so impressive need not despair, however, if they are members of the Oxford Union, the famous debating society which has hosted famous speakers from Albert Einstein to Michael Jackson, and from Richard Nixon to Malcom X. The Union has its own lending library, which is itself a pretty magnificent space, the walls and ceilings being graced by murals painted by important members of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. They will purchase any volume they do not have upon request, so it gives a fine opportunity for students whose college libraries are less extensive—or who just are looking for something entertaining to read outside of their studies.

Besides the Oxford Union there are other private libraries, such as the Tractarian library at Pusey House, that often contain world-class or historically important collections in a specific area of interest, as well as a good public library.

Graduate students like myself, however, will spend most of our time in yet a fourth category of library. (Indeed, for an MBA student, the first three types of library are primarily of interest as places to study when we need a change of atmosphere—the equivalent of the world's most opulent Starbucks, I'm ashamed to say!) This is the departmental library, the library maintained by each graduate department and specialised in its field. For business school students, this means our main haunt is the Sainsbury library, a beautiful and modern change of pace from its centuries-old cousins down the street. It is a nearly entirely electronic library, contained on two floors in the same building as the business school, and is entirely conceived and built for the needs of MBA students. Because of its location, adaptability to group work, and ease of integration with laptops and wi-fi, besides its airy atmosphere and great views, I would be surprised if many MBA students did not spend most of their "Oxford library time" in here. Other departments have similar libraries specifically conceived for their field of study, and some of these, such as the Sackler Library for classics and the Radcliffe Science Library, themselves contain rare treasures of great importance for the intellectual heritage of mankind.

All in all the library landscape at Oxford is impressive, immersive, and does an incredible job of being both adapted and accessible to students and the needs of their degrees (through specialised libraries for graduates and the easily accessible lending libraries in the colleges primarily for undergraduates), while also having the tremendous depth and breadth of the Bodleian system to ensure that no matter how deep one's research goes, one will be able to find the necessary materials.

For a book lover, Oxford just might be heaven.

In reading about Oriel I came across this interesting little anecdote about how the college library worked in the early 1300's—this was before even the heyday of chained libraries. (And obviously way before this picture of the Senior Library today was taken!)

Each year, at the Feast of All Souls, in presence of the Provost or his viceregent and of the whole college, an inspection of the college books was to be held; each Scholar was to choose a book most appropriate to his studies, which he might keep until the following All Souls' Day, when the process would be repeated. After the fashion of the Middle Age, it seemed to be assumed that the number of books and Scholars should correspond. In the event of there being more books than Scholars, it was provided that the excess should be disposed of in some way. Books in those days were too precious to be allowed to lie idle on shelves.
—"Oriel College" by David Watson Rannie, p. 14

Imagine that: studying at Oxford University—an even rarer privilege back then than it is today—and your resources are comprised of a single book for the whole year! The number of scholars, moreover, was actually determined on a one-to-one basis by the number of books they had!

I can't imagine studying with only one book for a whole year, but it is interesting to imagine what it must have been like back then.