Our mission is to educate and open doors for well qualified students from a limited number of participating US colleges and universities through a relatively short, intensive period of study under the guidance of Oxford tutors to the same standard and in the same manner as matriculated Oxford undergraduates, while providing a high level of support and pastoral care.
Academic Integration
All students are under the tutelage of an Academic Adviser who holds an academic post at Oxford University, and they are taught by Oxford tutors in the same way and to the same standard as matriculated Oxford undergraduates.
The tutorial system which is at the heart of Oxford (and Cambridge) University’s educational process entails 20-25 hours of extensive, highly critical reading and research towards the submission of a paper for analysis and discussion. The student will then meet his or her tutor usually alone, or with one other student, and be examined on the work submitted. This intensive, one-on-one, Socratic approach is both challenging and highly profitable and permits a level of depth and insight incapable of being achieved by other methods of teaching. It is difficult to describe the experience of an Oxford tutorial (or Cambridge supervision). It is both highly intense yet relaxed and informal. The process has to be experienced to be understood. However an idea can be gleaned from the following video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4rIlOYR1c8&feature=youtu.be
Students on the Programme are required to do a Primary Tutorial, which requires the submission of 7 papers, and a Secondary Tutorial, which requires the submission of 5 papers, earning them a total of 12 credits each term. Students may increase to 14 tutorials or drop down to 10. At the end of the term the student’s tutors send in detailed reports on the progress made and award an over-all grade using the performance of matriculated Oxford undergraduates as a benchmark.