About the University
The University Year
The academic year at Oxford University runs from October to June. The year is divided into three eight week terms, Michaelmas (autumn), Hilary (spring), and Trinity (summer).
Major events which take place during the academic year include:
- The Boat Race
- Varsity Football Match
- Varsity Rugby Match
- Encaenia, the ceremony at which the University awards honorary degrees to distinguished men and women and commemorates its benefactors.
- Degree days, at which students graduate, take place throughout the year, as do undergraduate open days.
Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was born this day in 1894. He fulfilled his parents' ambition for him to attend Oxford with a scholarship to Balliol College in 1912. He and his friend Humphrey Sumner were the only scholars or exhibitioners of their year to survive the Great War. Thanks to this, he would remember it as 'the city of ghosts'. Credit: ODNB