<p>I have just completed my first year of school and my experience was less than ideal. Although I was not (for the most part) miserable at my college, and developed a couple of very close friendships, I am not particularly enamored of any part of the college – especially socially – and though I decided not to apply to transfer this year, I am mulling over my options for next year.</p>
<p>The two main reasons I did not apply to transfer to another school were that I was hesitant about leaving the couple of good friends that I had (who are really wonderful) and because study abroad has always been my number one priority for college. It would have been very difficult to do so at the other American college I was looking at, especially since what I wanted to do was a year at Oxford, which has always been a dream of mine.</p>
<p>I have been poking around recently and I wondered if it would be possible to apply to Oxford as a new student, and simply start my three years there in what would have been my junior year abroad. I would only be missing one year with my friends here, since we are all studying in different places for all of junior year, which would be unfortunate (and I will obviously have to think very hard about whether or not that would be worth it) but not the end of the world. I know from the Oxford website that they often do like American applicants to have done some university work before applying (and I have done very well academically this year), but it was unclear to me whether that meant one or two years. If I were to apply this fall, and were lucky enough to get accepted, I would be two full years older than my classmates, which would be kind of odd. I’d also have to be in school for five years, but that’s another thing I’ll have to think about personally.</p>
<p>I was just wondering whether there were anybody here who applied to Oxford after going to an American university for a year – or two – who could comment on the experience. General comments from Americans at Oxford would also be appreciated – regarding school in general and the admissions process. I do not think that culture shock would be a huge problem, since I have been to England a couple of times and absolutely loved it, but obviously it would be very different from any American school. This is still a very tentative idea and I am not DESPERATE to get out of my current college, but I have been looking forward most of my life to having a great college experience (my parents absolutely adored their small, liberal arts college and tell stories about it all the time) and I feel extraordinarily dispassionate about my experience thus far. I knew something was wrong when I was basically structuring my years here to complement my potential year at Oxford, instead of the other way around. So I figured – as is my usual fashion – that I would do some research.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for any replies. (For the record I am an English major, if that makes any difference.)</p>
<p>Since the majority of Oxford students take a “Year out” between (high) school and univeristy, you wouldn’t be much older than them. A year at most and that doesn’t really matter considering 40% are grad students (so over 21) at Oxford anyway. No-one would know anyway.</p>
<p>Most US undergrads here have done one year at a US college. However “most” really means about 20 in total, as there aren’t very may US undergrads (but about 700 grads I think. Lots and lots). </p>
<p>You are correct that you would have to apply to start agin in the first year (really not uncommon in the UK as this is what people do here in order to “transfer”. Start again).</p>
<p>I was admitted to one of the colleges for fall 2009, and I’m just graduating from a US high school. I was told that there are 25-40 US undergrads per year at Oxford across all colleges - there’s 1 or 2 others at my college, I think, some colleges have no US undergrads.
It might be true that US undergrads often do a year of college here - I had 5 AP scores by the end of junior year which was how I could apply, and will have 10 by the end of the summer.</p>