What is so special about Oxbridge?

What is so special about Cambridge and Oxford (‘Oxbridge’)? You can read a very eloquent summary here at Quora. Whilst there are many entries, I highly recommend Robin Koerner’s from April 7, 2020 - presented below:

Robin Koerner, M.A. (Cantab) Physics, University of Cambridge; Academic Dean, John Locke Institute.

Answered April 7

“I studied at the University of Cambridge for four years - three years pursuing my first degree, which was in physics, and one year pursuing a master's in the philosophy of science.

When people used to ask me what it was like to study at Cambridge, I'd ask them if they'd been to Disney World. If so, I'd tell them that Cambridge is like an academic Disney World.

What I meant is that to be there is to be in another world that is utterly delightful, exciting and all-consuming – and when you’re there, you can disengage from the outside world and concentrate entirely on the thrill of what the place has to offer.

First off, the physical environment is idyllic. To live in and around buildings that are stunningly beautiful and have centuries of history where great people, known by name, had great thoughts and did great things, is an awesome (in the literal sense) privilege. Even most millionaires can’t afford a lifestyle like the one that even us poor Oxbridge students enjoyed. To eat every day in a 15th, 16th, or 17th etc. century dining hall; to kick back in a room in a quad that is even older; to decompress by walking along a river with views that are not just incredible: they are globally iconic … all of that is a thrill – and it’s every minute of every day and night while you’re there.

My friends and I used to have “Cambridge moments”. They’d hit us at random times, but very often while we were walking through the town, passing college after college, notching up a half century or so at a time. When you have one, you stop in your tracks, look up at the architecture, and ponder, for example, that Sir Isaac Newton, Lord Kelvin, Watson and Crick, Henry Cavendish, et al. did exactly what you are doing exactly where you are doing it. And then you’re hit by the unbelievable privilege and unlikeliness of it all – and you want it to last forever. It’s all the more special because you earned it. You had to work bloody hard to be there – and you’re probably working just as hard to stay there.

You turn one corner and you pass the place where the atom was first split; another and you’re within feet of where the structure of DNA was worked out; perhaps you’re on the way to visit a buddy who now lives in Charles Darwin’s old room … or perhaps you’re going to have a drink with a friend in the pub where Watson and Crick went for their pint after they discovered the aforesaid molecular structure. You may or may not pass Newton’s room in Trinity. Or are you off to a talk at a philosophical society in the room in King’s where Wittgenstein and Popper went back and forth a few decades back?

Oxford and Cambridge are both institutions that, after all, have produced more Nobel prize winners than have most countries. To study at one of those is to make it, in small but life-changing part, your own.

Talking of Nobel prize winners, even if you’re not going to be one, there’s nothing quite like being told, at the end of a lecture, the location of the office of the person who won the Nobel prize for the discovery you’ve just been lectured on. You’re just a 19 or 20 year-old kid – but it’s all at your feet.

Just in case you’re not the kind to knock on doors of random professors, there’s the amazing supervision (Cambridge) or tutorial (Oxford) system, which ensures that you benefit from one-on-one or two-on-one time with a globally esteemed academic in whatever subject you’re currently studying. In other words, you don’t have to leave any stone unturned in your engagement with any topic, and the people who are helping you turn over all the intellectual stones are often the very people you’d choose if you could choose any on the planet.

The flip side of all of this is that you can’t hide and you can’t fake it. Oxbridge forces you to step up – and to do so in an almost unimaginable community of people who were all, like you, the smartest kid they knew before they got there …

For some, that transition isn’t easy. Most Oxbridge undergrads found much of their identity in being the smart kid at high school (or equivalent). But at Oxbridge, “smart” is not a distinguishing feature. So these great young minds begin to explore, and many discover, what else - who else - they are.

David Mitchell, the famous British comedian and friend of mine at Peterhouse, put it this way (and I thought the remark characteristically brilliant): “The wonderful thing about Cambridge is that it frees clever people from being clever.”

It’s worth being clear on this point: if you make it to Oxbridge as an undergraduate (which is much harder than doing it as a graduate), you didn’t get in just because you’re academically brilliant. Plenty of academically brilliant students with the necessary grades got rejected. What they didn’t have was the extra spark - the ability to engage deeply, creatively, rigorously and originally, with a subject.

(Of course I’m generalizing. You can always find the exception. Plenty slip through the cracks. But I’m giving you a general answer to a general question.)

In that relation, I remember my first lecture in a philosophy of science course on epistemology (which later became a specialization of mine) as part of my Natural Sciences Tripos. The first words of the professor went something like this: “If you understand absolutely everything we teach you, and everything you read, and you can display that understanding perfectly in your exams, you’ll get a 2:1. A first needs more.” Bang. Perfect understanding gets you the second best grade. At what other academic institutions is that close to being true? In the humanities, at least, Oxbridge is looking for the pushing of boundaries – the “spark”. Of course, that statement wouldn’t be literally true in all subjects, but it gives you a sense of the intellectual environment or perhaps more importantly, the telos of these two places.

After each term, I’d return home and compare my experiences with those of my friends at other institutions. I laughed at the amount of work they did (by which I mean didn’t do). They simply couldn’t believe the amount I did. Looking back, neither can I. I have never worked as hard as I had to work for my physics degree at Cambridge. The idea that a degree from Oxbridge is the equivalent of a degree from any other institution was, when I was there, absurd. And, I think, the world knows it.

To this day (decades later), my recurring stress dream takes place at Cambridge. It involves not being ready for my final-year exams. But also to this day, my memories of that place are other-worldly in the best way, and returning moves me sometimes to tears.

The reasons to go to Oxbridge are many – but perhaps the best one is because if you’re considering it, you’re an intellectual, and there is nowhere that will sharpen your mind and develop your rigor more thoroughly.

To choose Oxbridge and then to take seriously the opportunity it provides is to have all the resources you could possibly want to push yourself to your intellectual limit during the one period of your life when you get to choose to do just that.

As one of thousands of such exciting and excited young minds there, you will learn as much in the rooms of your college-mates at 2am as in the lectures. They will push you too. No one is too cool for school when the school is Oxbridge. Nerdy is fine. Genius is unexpectedly common. Whatever the flavor of your brilliance, it is welcomed and developed by the brilliance around it.

So “Is an offer from Oxbridge really worth it?” I must answer with a question, I’m afraid: what’s the above worth?”

Watch the videos below to get a sense of the two institutions. And then get in touch with us if you would like to discuss a possible application, and help plan your personal Road Map.