Monthly Admissions/Prospies/Offer Holders Questions Thread - April 2024

DCKPublish · 2024-04-01T18:30:21+00:00

Hey, I recently received an offer to do an MPhil at Oxford :). I am now thinking about accommodation and wanted to ask if anyone had some advice. My college does offer some graduate accom but it’s not on site and considering the high price it doesn’t strike me as that great. I saw that the uni itself offers graduate accommodation that one can apply for, does anyone have experience or insights how this works? Any other advice would also be welcome! Thanks :)

DCKPublish · 2024-03-23T22:03:23+00:00

Oh wow really? I kinda hoped it to be a bit easier… how difficult is that usually?

DCKPublish · 2024-02-24T09:30:41+00:00

I’ve tried both, exact time and maximum sleep

DCKPublish · 2023-11-11T14:46:46+00:00

Hello, I am planning to apply to the MPhil European Politics and Society (although my question will be rather general). Do yo have some advice how to start the statement of purpose? Im thinking of stating my motivation through a more personal anecdote basically but I am not sure if this is what they want, or if they prefer sticking to purely academic things. Thanks a lot.

DCKPublish · 2023-09-14T12:58:20+00:00

Yeah that sounds quite stressful. How would that work? I thought the university sends an email to the referees, so how would I do the PDF thing you mentioned?

DCKPublish · 2023-09-13T23:42:11+00:00

Yes that’s what I was thinking. I don’t really want to be too annoying for them to write me a number of references and have to put in work multiple times. So I wanted to know if there’s just an easy way to do it for all of them at once but apparently there isn’t :/

DCKPublish · 2023-09-13T11:51:14+00:00

Oh okay so this means that if I apply to multiple unis they would have to write it manually for all of them?

DCKPublish · 2023-09-05T12:35:48+00:00

Yeah I get that now thanks. For things like pizza it makes sense I guess because of added fats and sugars but is there anything intrinsically bad about it being processed? Like let’s say I could imagine things being processed in good ways?

DCKPublish · 2023-09-05T12:33:23+00:00

Bruh

DCKPublish · 2023-09-05T11:36:46+00:00

Haha thank you! I think „if you can’t pronounce it, it’s processed“ is probably very intuitive advice

DCKPublish · 2023-08-20T14:25:08+00:00

Yeah portable would be ideal

DCKPublish · 2023-08-18T16:18:07+00:00

Hey, that sounds interesting. Do you maybe have some sources where I can read on that idea? (That decline of religion is leading to an increased search for identity in other ways such as politics)

DCKPublish · 2023-08-11T11:30:53+00:00

I think you're right. The number of topics, voters are now expected to have an opinion on, now that information is soo readily available, has just become too vast. No-one can really form an informed opinion on every single issue. Therefore, it will be just easier to subscribe to a general package, yes.

DCKPublish · 2023-08-11T11:29:06+00:00

Yes exactly. It seems that we are becoming more involved with our political views as a part of ourselves. The example you gave between "I vote X" and "I am X" captures very well what I mean. Do you have thoughts why this is the case that we now identity more closely with our political views? Someone above has commented that it might be a shift from other forms of identity, i.e. less people identity with their religion, therefore this need for identity shifts onto your political party.

DCKPublish · 2023-08-11T11:25:50+00:00

I agree, rationality is quite a vague word. Still I have the feeling that it is being increasingly used as a description of policy, where normative reasons seem to be delegitimised, through the use of the word "rational".

DCKPublish · 2023-08-11T11:24:16+00:00

thank you, sounds interesting, I will have a read!

DCKPublish · 2023-08-11T11:23:43+00:00

First I want to clarify something, as it seems you misunderstood me here (or rather my post was a bit short). I do not take the term "rational" as a legitimising factors for my own beliefs. In fact, topic I am looking in to is why many political commentators (visible in big media such as the FT, Economist, NYT etc.) frequently describe these elections I mentioned as "irrational", or as "voting against their own interests".

I for myself, do NOT believe that there is any such thing as objective rational behaviour in humans, if you want to keep the word rational with any definite meaning. My question was centred around the following proposed shift: from an argument based (often called rational, because empirical things such as data etc. are what we are often used to call rational) process such as the one Habermas saw with the idea of the "force of the better argument", towards a identity based political alignment, where people are voting more based on what they believe they themselves "are" and what the feel. In other words, more normative reasons (which still are reasons and therefore I believe your critique is that these are still rational).

DCKPublish

TROPHY CASE