Inside Oxford's MSc in Global Governance and Diplomacy

New QEH/Development Studies Department website

2012-01-19T07:50:00.002Z

QEH have updated their website, and I've gone through and updated some pages this site links to. They also have an interesting PDF about the application process you should examine.

Give me a week or so and I'll revise the "Programme Overview" and "Applying" tabs to make sure everything else still lines up. But as always, if there is a conflict in information, chances are the official website is accurate!

Cost of Oxford

2012-01-17T00:59:00.003Z

Someone recently emailed me to ask what Oxford will cost. The short answer is, it depends. Check out this link for a tuition estimate. GGD is Postgraduate taught, your fee status depends on your country of citizenship, and finally put in the year you will be potentially attending.

This page covers college fees, and finally this page covers cost of living.

Feel free to email me questions...

2012-01-05T06:18:00.001Z

... especially if you're applying for this month or March. I'll try and get back to you when I can.

November band applicants receiving results

2011-12-23T05:47:00.002Z

November band applicants are beginning to receive their results from GGD. Congratulations to those who have been accepted!

QEH (GGD's Oxford department) told Saif al-Islam Gaddafi "No"

2011-12-01T09:34:00.001Z

From The Guardian

So yes, it is hard to get into Oxford, even if you have dictator connections.

What the updated Oxford site has to say about the SOP

2011-10-16T00:38:00.002+01:00

I'm going to add this to the designated section of the site on applying, but it might be helpful to have it out and front here too.

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

If youare applying for a taught programme, i.e. any PGDip, PGCert or Masters (incl. BPhil, BCL and MJur) other than the MSt programmes in Legal Research and Socio-Legal Research, you should submit a brief‘statement of purpose’ explaining your motivation for graduate study atOxford. You may wish to consider the following when writing your statement:

Whatrelevant academic, research, or practical experience do you have?
Whyare you applying to this particular programme of study?
Whichareas of study within the subject interest you?

The statement of purpose should be one page long. There is no specific word limit, unless otherwise stated by thedepartment, and there are no restrictions on font size or line spacing,although the document should be clearly legible.

The statement must be written in English, unless otherwise permitted by the department. An English translation by a third party from your own work is not acceptable unless explicitly permitted by your own department. The statement must beentirely your own original work, except where clearly indicated.

Some new thoughts about the SOP and writing samples

2011-10-15T05:41:00.000+01:00

I've been talking with a couple people this week who are in the process of applying for GGD and other various programmes for the November deadline. The SOP and writing samples reflect a fairly constraining and conservative structure that makes innovation and setting yourself apart rather difficult, and I've posted several times about these required documents. But what follows are some suggestions of a more existential nature that reflect my own writing style that bridges policy and theory.

Ideally you want to leave a positive impression with the people who read your SOP and writing samples so much so that they offer you admission. The best way to do this is to write about something that you know well and will change the way the readers view a certain subject. An intrigued person will always want to read more.

This may sound slightly corny, but when I've been at my most successful, I've been able to do this and get pretty good results.

Engage with the structure of something you know well, yet are somewhat skeptical of (being a true believer in this something will make deconstructing it impossible). The European Union or another multinational organisation. Capitalism. Neo-liberalism. Wall Street. A Party. The political system of a particular country. Step outside of its temperality and visualise where and how asymmetrical relationships within it exist. Something no one else may have yet observed, or at least put together in a certain way. Gaps, intended or accidental, in how its policies may be set up. Then write about it as a writing sample or the research proposal in the final portion of your SOP.

The best examples of this process being accomplished can be seen in literature. Here are several books that have informed my writing process and policy analysis (this beats out dry readings of ontology and epistemology in qualitative research methods):

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Labyrinths collection of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

And in the philisophical realm of course the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault.

In the realm of film, I was recently introduced to a 1990's independent film called SLC Punk! that, in its own way, pulls this off as well. On television, the comedies Arrested Development and Community and the drama Life on Mars (original UK) would also be recommended in this fashion.

This post was a little different but hopefully it will help you out.

My thanks to Michael and Evan for intoducing me to some of the aforementioned works.

New site page on Oxford academic advisement

2011-09-02T08:13:00.000+01:00

Based on a question from a visitor, I've added a page about academic advisement at Oxford (which in typical Oxford style follows the rule of 3). The link is to the right along with the "about the site" page, blog archive and undergraduate GPA page.

Some other pages I'm thinking of adding in the near future would be about the dissertation, statistics, GGD's ESRC accreditation, and an examination of the alleged university degree bubble.

Site Relaunched!

2011-08-24T01:48:00.002+01:00

The main content for the site is now housed in thematically-centred tabs found at the top of every page. Hopefully this will be much easier to read than the old chronological format, and easier to keep updated on my end.

There is also a new mobile web browser version should you chose to visit the site on your internet-enabled smart phone, and the blog archive has been redesigned to make it more readable.

"About the Site" up...

2011-08-22T09:45:00.003+01:00

Should have the programme overview, Oxford colleges and grading systems good to go by the end of the week.

Future of the GGD Blog, Part II

2011-07-13T04:41:00.006+01:00

Some students from this year's GGD programme have started their own blog (http://mscggd.wordpress.com/). Now that their blog has been established, my plans for renovating the site will be going in a different direction. Google recently updated the interface for Blogspot which makes it much easier to have sub-pages on blogs. Some topics that will be covered from the beginning of the new site include a programme overview, the admission process, Oxford colleges, and the Oxbridge grading system adapted from already existing posts. These pages are now on the blog header, but no content is ready yet to share.

So instead of having to read the entire old blog in the order I originally wrote the posts, there will be one page for each topic, essay length if need be, instead of scattered pieces from 2008 and followed up on say in 2010. Most of the specific topics I addressed in the original blog no longer apply, and I'll leave it to others to cover that instead of trying to completely update the site half a world away from Oxford.

I'll be cutting down on the links listed on every page. Instead there will be a page devoted to general information people might want to visit if considering applying to grad school.

I'll also try and find a nice easy to read blog template. The library motif just didn't work, and there is a blank white page for now until the site relaunch.

Future of the GGD Blog

2011-04-23T19:22:00.004+01:00

It's hard for me to believe it's been four years since I was a student at Oxford and three years since this blog began. Last month I learned that my application to a different Oxford department was "unsuccessful." Before I submitted that application, I decided this would be "it" for my involvement with Oxford if things didn't go well (and I wasn't even sure Oxford would be my first choice for a second go at grad school anyway).

As time progresses the GGD Blog becomes more and more outdated but still receives thousands of hits a year, and my experiences from the first year of the program no longer correlate with the program as it currently exists, and it would be unfair to critique the program from five years in the past which could give current applicants the wrong impression. Earlier I committed to keeping the blog up, but in the next few months it will be going in a different direction. I will be developing a revamped site with general information for people applying to Oxford, recommended web resources, how to pick a college, the grading system, etc that could be useful to GGD applicants as well as other Oxford applicants. This would give the site a much longer lease on life, be easier for me to maintain, and also re-order the blog so that it would be structured more thematically than chronologically.