Americans Can Study at Oxford University This Summer

02-02-2012

 

A One-Week Summer School, with No Requirements, No Exams, No Papers

 

Oxford, England, February 2, 2012—Anglophiles who wish they’d gone to Oxford instead of Podunk U. will have the chance this summer when The Oxford Experience takes place at Christ Church, one of the most beautiful and prestigious of Oxford colleges with its ancient quads, Tudor dining hall and oak-paneled classrooms.

 

This residential summer school program, open to everyone, lasts six weeks from July 1 to August 11, 2012.  It offers one-week courses in some 60 liberal arts subjects: everything from The Brontës to Roman Britain, as well as Tudor London, Page Fright and How to Overcome It, Elizabeth I, Introduction to Particle Physics, The Novels of Thomas Hardy, Cotswolds Folk Traditions, Cardinal Wolsey Renaissance Prelate, Oxfordshire Towns, Anthony Trollope and English Country Houses.

 

Each course starts on Sunday, finishing the following Saturday after breakfast (though anyone attending for two or more weeks gets free accommodation over the intervening weekends--and people do attend for two or even four or six weeks, year after year).  The program attracts not only American vacationers but a cosmopolitan mix from all over the world, varying in age from 25 to 90.

 

The Oxford Experience is also a chance to sample student life at Christ Church.  Accommodations are in student dorms—which range from picturesque 18^th-century to modern—and some rooms have private bath.  Summertime students can feel the magic of Christ Church, entering beneath Christopher Wren’s Tom Tower, being greeted by a bowler-hatted porter, while gazing at Tom Quad and the college chapel (which is also the Oxford cathedral).

 

Everyone dines in the magnificent Hall, familiar from the Harry Potter films, which is lined with portraits of famous Christ Church alumni—W.H. Auden, Lewis Carroll, John Wesley, Anthony Eden and several other prime ministers. Three daily meals are included: a full English breakfast, a buffet lunch and a served three-course dinner.  Each participant is invited to dine on High Table once, and on the final night a reception in the green and flowering Cathedral Garden is followed by a gala dinner in the Hall.

 

Throughout the week there are excursions to stately homes, castles, museums and such, tours of Oxford, strawberries and wine in the Master’s Garden, a display of traditional Morris Dancing, a whisky tasting, evening lectures and concerts.

 

The price of a one-week course—including tuition, accommodations and all meals (except those on excursions) is £1,135 or  $1,796.  Excursions and private bathrooms are extra.  The deadline for registration is May 1, but courses are already filling up, so early application is advised.  For  information visit http://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/oxfordexperience or write to The Oxford Experience, OUDCE, 1 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JA, U.K.

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