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The Courses: History: Getting In
Colleges vary in their procedures for admitting students to read History, although you can be sure that the scary stories about interviews - trick questions in Latin, combusting newspapers, and rugby balls hurled as you walk through the door - are just myths. At Churchill College, interviews for History take place in early December. After an interview with the Admissions Tutor (for all arts subjects) candidates will spend half an hour with the Director of Studies or a Fellow in History where the conversation will focus very much upon your own interests. The interview is not an oral examination to test knowledge. Before the interview you will be allowed half an hour to study a short passage of historical writing for discussion, but we are interested only in your reaction to that, not your ability to date it or identify its provenance. We understand that interviews can be nerve-racking, so we do what we can to put candidates at ease; otherwise we would never see anyone in their best light.
Typically we receive between ten and twenty applications each year, a combination of direct applications and open applications allocated to us by the University. The standard entry requirements are available here. Each year we aim to admit a small number of candidates for the following academic year, and a similar number for deferred entry places. Overall the intention is to maintain a cohort of four students in each of the three academic years — so a total of twelve.
Unsuccessful candidates may well be entered into the Inter-collegiate Pool (from which they may be selected by another college in the following January), although we usually take more historians out of the pool than we put in. The misconception that Churchill is a science-obsessed college where no arts student can ever survive needlessly deters strong applicants who, in fact, may stand a better chance of being offered a conditional place here than they would at colleges more strongly associated with History. Christ's and Caius, for example, are strong History colleges, but are routinely deluged with applications, causing a great many hopeful candidates to be disappointed. In every instance, a direct applicant to Churchill can expect to have their forms scrutinized very carefully among the handful of others we receive each year, and it would be very unlikely that he or she would not be invited to an interview.
There is no secret about what we are looking for here: we need bright, energetic, hard-working, enthusiastic, open-minded, committed students with an uncommon passion for reading, thinking, writing and discussing History. If that is not really you, you may still be able to get through the interview, but it's unlikely you would thrive here, nor would you be very happy. So be honest. We want horses for courses — the right students (not necessarily the most brainy or the best-taught) for the way we teach and learn in this college, and this university. So if I have described you above then we would very much like to meet you, and would almost certainly be able to make you an offer of a place if you were able to demonstrate satisfactorily those qualities.
You may find it useful to do some preparatory reading, and — most importantly — to think about what you have read. Here are some suggestions.
- John Arnold, History: a Very Short Introduction (2000)
- Peter Burke (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing (1991)
- David Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now? (2002)
- E. H. Carr, What is History? (1961) — 2002 edn, introduced by Richard Evans
- Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History (1997)
- Arthur Marwick, The New Nature of History (2001) — replacing old editions
- John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (1991) — 2002 revised edition