This is Oxford
  • Oxford is unique

Oxford is Unique

Alumni

  • Throughout its history Oxford’s alumni have made a significant impact on every sphere of human activity. Among those who have studied or taught here are 25 British Prime Ministers, at least 25 world leaders, 47 Nobel laureates, at least 12 saints, at least six kings, at least 20 Archbishops of Canterbury, and at least nine Olympic medal winners.
  • Oxford boasts one of the most extensive global alumni networks in the world, with more than 100 alumni branches outside the UK in more than 60 countries
  • The Oxford alumni community is composed of around 170,000 individuals, more than 50,000 of whom are based outside the UK
  • The most common term used to refer to alumni of each of the 38 Oxford Colleges is 'Old Member' although the University tends to refer to its 'alumni', or the more specific 'Oxonians' from the Latin abbreviation of Oxoniensis, 'Oxon'
  • The Oxford Colleges hold special reunion events for their Old Members, known as gaudies. These usually involve a formal meal in Hall but may also include academic lectures, chapel services, etc. A gaudy is usually for alumni from a range of matriculation years (sometimes consecutive, eg 1978-81)
  • 21 Oxonians represented five different countries at the 2008 Olympics (Great Britain, USA, Canada, Croatia and New Zealand), securing 9 medals between them.
  • The Oxford Alumni Weekend is a reunion event for all former students, which takes place each September. It attracts more than 1,000 alumni each year and in 2008 participants came from as far afield as the USA, Hong Kong, Europe, Vietnam, Iran, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Malaysia, Trinidad and Canada, as well as the UK.

Centres of Excellence

  • Oxford’s Department of Chemistry is the largest in the western world.
  • The Oxford Internet Institute is the world’s first truly multi-disciplinary internet institute based in a major university.
  • The Institute of Ageing at Oxford is first international institute dedicated solely to understanding the implications of global population ageing.

Enterprise

  • Oxford, through Isis Innovation Limited, our wholly owned technology transfer company, pioneered the successful commercial exploitation of academic research and invention. It has spun out almost 60 companies since it was established in 1988, and files, on average, one patent application each week.
  • The combined value of Oxford’s spin-out companies has reached £2 billion, using quoted market capitalisations and investor valuations for unquoted companies.
  • Oxford Entrepreneurs is the largest student entrepreneur society in the UK, with over 1,200 members, one in ten of whom are running their own companies.
  • Oxford University Press, publisher of the world-famous dictionaries, is the largest university press in the world, with over 50 offices and 3,700 employees worldwide.

Oxford in the Community

  • On average, Oxford holds at least one access activity every working day of the year, including summer schools, school visits, student shadowing schemes, e-mentoring, aspiration days and events for teachers.

Oxford’s place in Britain and the World

  • In May 2007, Oxford University topped The Guardian’s UK rankings for the third consecutive year.
  • In the latest Times Good University Guide (August 2007), Oxford University was named Britain’s top university for the sixth year running.
  • Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world, and can lay claim to nine centuries of continuous existence.
  • Oxford is the leading centre for the study of China in Europe and has one of the top five departments in the world in Japanese Studies.
  • Oxford is one of the leading centres for the study of globalisation, through the James Martin 21st Century School, the Programme on Global Economic Governance, the Department of International Development (which created the world’s first refugee studies programme), and our global health programmes.

Research

  • Oxford is at the forefront of research at both nationally and internationally, and is renowned for the quality and diversity of its research across the academic disciplines.
  • Oxford has more world-leading academics (rated 4* in the 2008 national Research Assessment Exercise) than any other UK university. Oxford also has the highest number of world-leading or internationally excellent (4* or 3*) academics in the UK.
  • Oxford has almost twice as many academic staff employed on a research-only basis (2,805) than with both teaching and research responsibilities (1,480).
  • Oxford won more research income from external sponsors than any other UK university in 2005–6, earning over £214 million from this source. When £90 million of grants from HEFCE are taken into consideration, Oxford’s overall annual research income exceeds £303 million, the highest research income of any UK university.
  • A new £5 million-a-year funding initiative for young academics and pilot projects has been set up to encourage creativity and attract new research talent to Oxford. The John Fell OUP Research Fund, funded by Oxford University Press, will encourage new research initiatives in all subject areas, and particularly in interdisciplinary fields.

Resources

  • Our resources are unrivalled: for example, Oxford has the largest university library system in the UK, with over one hundred libraries, and Oxford University Library Services, which manages most of the main University libraries, holds over 11 million printed items, and vast quantities of materials in many other formats.
  • The Bodleian Library, the University’s main research library, has 120 miles of occupied shelving, 29 reading rooms and 2,490 places for readers. It is the second largest library in the UK after the British Library.
  • The Ashmolean Museum, established in 1683, is the oldest museum in the UK and one of the oldest in the world. It houses the University’s collections of art and antiquities, which range over four millennia and are of national and international importance.
  • The Museum of the History of Science is housed in the world’s oldest surviving purpose-built museum building and contains the world’s finest collection of early scientific instruments dating from the medieval period to the seventeenth century, along with substantial eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collections.
  • The University Museum of Natural History is home to 4.5 million specimens and is the largest collection in zoology, entomology, palaeontology, mineralogy and petrology in the UK outside of the national collections.
  • The Pitt Rivers Museum holds one of the world’s finest collections of anthropology and world archaeology, with objects from every continent and from throughout human history.
  • The University’s Botanic Garden is the oldest in Great Britain and forms the most diverse yet compact collection of plants in the world.
  • The Bate Collection of Musical Instruments celebrates the history and development of the musical instruments of the Western Classical tradition from the medieval period to the present day.

Students

  • Oxford has the lowest drop-out rate in the UK: latest figures show that only 1.4 per cent of students discontinued their course, compared with the national drop-out rate of 7.2 per cent.
  • Over 40 per cent of students completing an undergraduate degree go on to further study compared with a national average of 23 per cent.
  • Oxford graduates, holding both undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications, enter a wide range of occupations with nearly 80 per cent securing managerial, professional or associate professional posts.
  • Currently, 99.8 per cent of successful applicants to Oxford go on to achieve A-level scores of AAB or better, with an A grade in the subject equivalent to the subject they propose to study at Oxford. The average A level points score achieved by new entrants is 29.9.
  • Oxford’s bursary scheme, the Oxford Opportunity Bursaries, is one of the most generous undergraduate bursary schemes in the UK, and is worth up to £10,000 for a three year course or £13,000 for a four year degree.

Teaching and Learning

  • Oxford’s collegiate system is at the heart of the University’s success, giving students and academics the benefits of belonging both to a large, internationally-renowned institution and to a small, interdisciplinary academic community.
  • Oxford’s collegiate system fosters a strong sense of community, bringing together leading academics and students across subjects and year groups, and from different cultures and countries.
  • The tutorial is at the core of undergraduate teaching and learning at Oxford and offers students a unique learning experience, in which they meet regularly with their tutor, either on a one-to-one basis or with one or two other students, to discuss and debate written work or a set of problems prepared in advance.
  • Teaching is carried out by leading academics at the forefront of their fields, and students will often find themselves talking through a topic with the person who wrote the seminal book on it. This exposure to the cutting edge of research, and the close contact of regular tutorials, is what sets the Oxford student experience apart.
  • Currently, 99.8 per cent of successful applicants to Oxford go on to achieve A-level scores of AAB or better, with an A grade in the subject equivalent to the subject they propose to study at Oxford. The average A level points score achieved by new entrants is 29.9.

Within Oxford

  • Staff at Oxford spend around 36,000 hours each year selecting students using one of the most rigorous and transparent admissions systems in the UK, and 800 college tutors spend a week of their working year on this important task.
  • Oxford’s academic community includes over 70 Fellows of the Royal Society and around 90 Fellows of the British Academy.
  • In 2007 alone, nine Oxford academics were elected to the Fellowship of the British Academy. This represents almost a quarter of new Fellowships awarded in this year, and is more than from any other institution.
  • In 2007, three Oxford researchers were also elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, and four to the Academy of Medical Sciences.
  • The successes of Oxford’s academics are recognised regularly in the award of prestigious international prizes, such as the Gairdner International Award for achievements in medical research, awarded in 2007 to Professor Kim Nasmyth, and a Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research, won in 2005 by Professor Sir Ed Southern.
  • Five University centres have received the biennial Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education: the Clinical Trial Service Unit (2005); the Refugee Studies Centre (2002); the Centre for Clinical Vaccinology & Tropical Medicine (2000); the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine (1996); Isis Innovation Ltd (1994).