My journey

The city of Oxford is home to two universities: the
actual, 800+ years old University of Oxford, and
Oxford Brookes University (which shall never
be mentioned again on this blog).
I graduated from the former in 2017.

All Oxford students are enrolled in an Oxford College,
which is, as odd as that may sound, probably the closest
thing to a Harry Potter ´House´ you can imagine. There are,
however, many more Colleges (around 40 or so), and while
they have many things in common, there are also significant
differences between them. A College and a Department
are very different things. Colleges provide accommodation,
organize some teaching, and act as your home away from home,
while Departments carry out and fund research.

Some of them look are all concrete and glass, having been
founded in the last 50 years or so, while others have existed
for centuries. They differ in the number of students, whether
they admit undergraduates or not, how competitive the atmosphere
is there, how international the student body is, etc. Location and size,
of course, is another important thing.

Depending on the course of study, a student might even
receive most of their teaching through their College,
always in very small groups (primarily
languages and human sciences students),
or they might be aught in large lecture halls and
practical classes, together with 50 or 100 other students.

Colleges also differ (quite strongly) in the amount of funding
they have available. Some Colleges have heavily discounted
accommodation (available directly from the College for
the entire duration of a course), very cheap (but good quality) food,
and plenty of grants and studentships for travel, research,
arts and drama groups, etc. Other Colleges own very little property,
so their students have to live in private accommodation most
of the time, ave extremely expensive food costs, and poorly
equipped rooms and other areas.
This of course depends strongly on how prestigious a College is,
and how many prosperous alumni it has.