Molly Lockwood, Schools Liaison, Outreach & Recruitment Officer
When our undergraduate students pack up their bedrooms to return home for the Easter vacation, you might expect there to be tumbleweed drifting across the Queen’s quads for a few weeks. In fact, March and April see a flurry of pupils from Lancashire and Cumbria come to stay at Queen’s and to see first-hand what life at Oxford has to offer.
The empty undergraduate bedrooms offer a chance for prospective applicants, for whom it would be impossible to visit in a single day, to start to build a sense of belonging in university by living in College for a couple of nights. This blog post will take you through these key events in the outreach calendar: Offer Holder Event, Ancient Worlds Network Residential, overnight school visits for partner schools (including our The Access Project sixth form students), and the North West Science Residential.
Welcoming our future students
Offer Holder Event
We began the season with our Offer Holder Event, which brought 80 enthusiastic future students to Queen’s. The day is all about helping them picture themselves here and equipping them with the information they need to hit the ground running when they start in October. Incoming students met current first- and second-year undergraduates who shared recent experiences of transitioning to university. Our ambassadors gave comprehensive College tours, highlighting the spaces that offer-holders will soon be using on a daily basis, and led discipline-specific Q&A sessions to help students understand what to expect on-course. By the end of the day, students left feeling more confident, more informed, and ready to join the Queen’s community in October.
Ancient worlds, new perspectives
Ancient Worlds Network Residential
We were pleased to collaborate once again with our neighbours at Corpus Christi College to deliver the Ancient Worlds Network Residential, welcoming 27 students from across Greater Manchester, Liverpool and Merseyside, Cheshire, and Lancashire. Attendees came with varied interests and our academic programme matched this scope, spanning literature, language, ancient history, archaeology, and philosophy. Students attended meal times and academic sessions across Corpus and Queen’s and met student ambassadors from both Colleges, meaning that they were able to gain real, first-hand insight into the similarities and differences across the collegiate system.
We spent a morning at North Leigh Roman Villa, thinking about how the landscape might have affected the activities that took place there and reflecting on the ethics of archaeological discoveries. We also explored the Ashmolean Museum’s world-class collections, and took part in academic taster sessions, including a session on epigraphy from our own Fellow in Ancient History, Dr Charles Crowther, in which students were able to create their own paper squeezes of a stone inscription to take home. Students got a genuine taste of what studying at Oxford would be like with a small group tutorial on the final day led by Queen’s and Corpus tutors. The weather even held up long enough for our attendees to enjoy their tutorial with Prof Christopher Metcalf in the glorious sunshine in the College Garden!
North Leigh Roman Villa
I feel a lot more confident in making an application for Classics at Oxford as a result of this residential.
The Ancient Worlds Network is an amazing opportunity for all prospective students for the Humanities. It provides an excellent student experience so you really get a feel for what life at Oxford is like!
Opening doors to Oxford for our North West link schools
Over the course of the following week, we welcomed pupils from 10 different partner schools across Lancashire and Cumbria for overnight visits at Queen’s. Our visitors ranged in age from 13 to 17, and each itinerary was tailored to their prior knowledge and stage in school.
For many of the KS3 and KS4 students, this trip was their first encounter with a university environment. We explored medieval scientific instruments at the History of Science Museum, enjoyed looking around some other Oxford colleges, and engaged in taster sessions delivered by Queen’s postgraduate researchers. These interactive sessions helped students to think critically, to consider new subjects (or current GCSE subjects in new ways!), and to imagine what university-level learning might look like.
Even though these students are several years away from applying to university, early engagement is essential. It helps students (and their teachers) to understand how post-16 choices shape future opportunities, to build a sense of belonging in higher education, and to feel that university is a real and accessible option.
For our Year 12 visitors, the focus of the visit shifted towards making a competitive university application. They took part in admissions workshops, with advice from current undergraduates about drafting personal statements, preparing for admissions tests, and tackling the interview process. Students from D6 in Darwen and West Coast Sixth Form in Cumbria joined us through our partnership with The Access Project. By the end of the visit, all agreed that they ‘understand what it is like to study at the University of Oxford’ and most ‘feel confident in making a competitive university application’. This student feedback is testament that our partnership creates opportunities for students who may otherwise feel that Oxford is out of reach – both in distance and in aspiration – to experience life here for themselves.
Broadening horizons in sciences
North West Science Residential
Our final event of the vacation, the long-standing North West Science Residential, brought 26 budding scientists to Queen’s for a deep dive into university-level STEM. Over the course of the residential, students explored a wide range of the science subjects that Oxford has to offer – including Physics, Maths, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Biology, Materials Science, Earth Sciences, and Medicine – by attending lab-based taster sessions, chatting to current undergraduate students, and taking part in a tutorial. Attendees built academic independence by completing tutorial work in the College Library, mirroring the weekly workload of our Queen’s undergraduates during term time. Evenings offered a more relaxed insight into student life, including several games of Mafia and a trip to an Oxford favourite, G&Ds.
To capture the students’ perspectives, here’s what some of our participants had to say:
I liked researching on my own. It felt fun exploring my knowledge and understanding what I had researched. It was even better that the topics were discussed in the tutorial so I could understand my accuracy in my research.
The ambassadors did an amazing job of representing the college and provided some great advice and company over the four days.
Their feedback consistently highlights how valuable our current student ambassadors are in offering genuine insight into life on-course and practical advice about applying. A couple of our ambassadors even took part in the North West Science Residential themselves when they were in sixth form, demonstrating the real pathway from attending the programme to becoming an Oxford student.
We are very grateful to the outreach teams at several academic departments and the Queen’s Fellows, Lecturers, and postgraduates who delivered the academic programme (in no particular order!): Dr Kirsty Duffy, Dr Nakita Noel, Prof Chris O’Callaghan, Prof Chris Norbury, Petr Zagura, Polina Len, Prof Panos Panagiotis, Prof Jane Mellor, Prof Jonathan Doye, Dr Reka Toth.
What’s next?
As we move into Trinity Term, we are already preparing for the next round of inbound visits and the summer open days on Wednesday 1 and Thursday 2 July. We are looking forward to welcoming some of our North West link schools to Queen’s to stay overnight ahead of the open days, giving Year 12 students the chance to explore the full programme across colleges and departments. Keep an eye on our website and Instagram page for updates!
